Lookalike audiences in Meta ads: sources, size and Advantage+ audience

This guide is built from the Meta Business Help Center: About lookalike audiences, Create a lookalike audience, Create lookalike audience sets, Create a value-based lookalike audience, About the customer value column, About Advantage+ lookalike, Audience controls and audience suggestions, How to use custom or lookalike audiences, How to use Advantage+ custom audience, About Advantage+ audience and How to choose a Special Ad Category, plus Meta's developer guide to lookalike audiences in the Marketing API. Checked on 10 November 2026. Meta renames and moves these settings often, so check the pages before you rely on a detail.

What a lookalike audience is

A lookalike audience is Meta's way of finding new people who resemble a group you already know. Meta describes it as "a way your ads can reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they share similar characteristics to your existing customers." To build it, Meta's system uses information "such as demographics, interests and behaviors" from your source audience.

The difference from a custom audience matters. A custom audience is made of people who already know you: your customer list, website visitors, app users or people who engaged with your Page. We cover those in our guide to remarketing audiences. A lookalike is built from such an audience but contains other people. Meta states that "people in your source audience are excluded from your lookalike audience," so it is a prospecting tool, not a retargeting one.

Choosing the source audience

The source (Meta also calls it the seed) is the audience the lookalike is based on. It can be a custom audience, or people connected to your Page, Meta Pixel or app. A saved audience (a set of targeting options you stored) cannot be used: "Saved audiences can't be used as a source."

Meta's size rules for the source:

• At least 100 people. Meta "generally recommend[s] a source audience that has between 1,000-5,000 people."
• If the source is too small, the lookalike shows the status Audience not created, and Meta's advice is to try again with a bigger source.
• You can make up to 500 lookalike audiences from a single source.

Size is not the whole story. Meta notes that "the quality of your audience also matters" and that you may get better results "if you use an audience made from your best customers rather than one that includes all your customers." A list of repeat buyers usually tells the system more about who you want than every newsletter sign-up ever collected.

You also need the right access: admin or advertiser permission on the ad account for a custom audience source, admin permission on the Page or Pixel for those sources, and an admin or developer role on the app for an app source. If your source is a website or event audience, its quality depends on the tracking behind it; see our guide to the Meta Pixel and Conversions API.

Audience size and location

When you create a lookalike, you choose a percentage with a slider. Meta explains the trade-off this way: "Smaller percentages more closely match your source audience, but larger percentages create a bigger, broader audience." Meta's developer documentation lists the accepted range as 1% to 20%, in steps of 1%.

You can also create several lookalikes from one source in one go, as a set of non-overlapping bands. Meta's example set is the most similar audience (0% to 1%), the second most similar (1% to 3%) and the least similar (3% to 6%). Because the bands do not overlap, "you don't have to exclude other audiences that are more or less similar," and you can put each band in its own ad set to bid differently for audiences you value differently.

Location has changed. Lookalikes used to be built for a chosen country. Now Meta says "you no longer select audience location when creating a lookalike." Instead, "we'll use the ad set's location settings to find people similar to your source audience." Two practical effects follow:

• A new lookalike shows no estimated size in Audience Manager. You see the estimate only when you add it to an ad set.
• The same lookalike can serve ad sets aimed at different countries. In the Marketing API, the country and location fields are no longer accepted from version 27.0.

Lookalikes created before this change are not affected.

Creating one, step by step

1. Open Audiences in Meta Ads Manager (you can also do this inside ad set creation, in the Audience section).
2. Select Create audience, then Lookalike audience.
3. Pick an existing source or create a new one.
4. Choose how many lookalike audiences you want and set the percentage with the slider.
5. Create the audience and check its status in the Audiences list.

The status tells you what happens next. Populating means Meta is matching the audience to profiles, which "can take up to 3 days"; you can start ads straight away, and the audience grows as it fills. Ready means it is usable. Meta's developer guide adds that a lookalike in use is refreshed: "Facebook refreshes members in a lookalike every 3 days if the lookalike belongs to an ad set." So you do not need to rebuild it to keep it current, but you do need to keep the source itself current. A customer list that has not been updated in over 30 days is marked Outdated, which Meta says "may impact your ad delivery."

You can add several lookalikes to one ad set. In that case the ad set reaches people in any of them.

Value-based lookalikes

A standard lookalike treats everyone in the source the same. A value-based lookalike lets you tell Meta which customers matter more. You do it with a customer list that includes a customer value column: a number you assign to each person to measure "the customer qualities you consider most desirable." Meta gives examples such as order value, number of items ordered, membership (0 or 1) and predicted lifetime value. The column must contain decimal or whole numbers.

To build it, create a lookalike as above and choose the customer list with the value column as the source. Meta's advice on size is to share as much as you can: "The more people and values you share with us, the better we're able to optimize." If a very large file will not upload in your browser, Meta suggests removing rows with "0" values first, then the lowest-value rows, until it goes through.

This is worth the extra work when customer value varies a lot, for example a few accounts that bring most of the revenue. If every customer spends about the same, a plain lookalike of your best customers does the job.

Lookalikes in Advantage+ audience

This is where most confusion comes from. In current Ads Manager, an audience you add to an ad set is usually a suggestion, not a limit. Meta explains that with audience suggestions "we'll show ads to people matching your suggestion, and other audiences when it's likely to improve performance." Audience controls (locations, minimum age, excluded custom audiences and languages) remain hard limits.

For lookalikes this is called Advantage+ lookalike. Meta says it "can help improve your campaign performance by allowing our system to deliver ads to people outside your defined lookalike audience if it's likely to improve performance." Delivery uses the source audience as a guide, and if the system "finds better performance opportunities beyond the percentage you selected," it may expand the audience. Advantage+ lookalike "is automatically enabled for new, duplicated and draft campaigns and ad sets using lookalike audiences created from mobile, website or customer list custom audiences."

So a 1% lookalike in a new ad set is not a strict 1% audience unless you make it one. To keep delivery inside the lookalike, Meta's steps are to select Further limit your audience (Awareness, Traffic and Engagement) or Further limit the reach of your ads (Sales, App promotion and Leads), add the lookalike there and untick Use as a suggestion.

Should you limit it? Meta recommends A/B testing with Advantage+ audience for almost all campaign types, and does not recommend Advantage+ audience for retargeting campaigns. In Advantage+ sales, app and leads campaigns, lookalikes cannot be chosen at creation at all. A strict lookalike makes sense when you need to know exactly who saw the ads, for example when testing whether a source works.

Where lookalikes are limited

• Special ad categories. For ads about housing, employment or financial products and services, lookalike audiences are among the options that are "limited or unavailable" for advertisers based in or reaching the US, and for those reaching Canada and certain countries in Europe. These categories also have no access to Advantage+ audience.
• Young people. For audiences that include people under 18 (older in some countries), targeting is limited to location, age and gender; Meta says you "can't use detailed targeting, custom audiences, Lookalike Audiences or saved audiences" to reach these age groups.
• Deleted Pages. Lookalikes built from engagement audiences of a deleted Facebook Page cannot be used in new ad sets or other campaigns.
• Europe. Meta notes that changes to align with privacy rules in Europe may affect campaigns reaching people in the European Region.

How we use them

This is our practice for clients, not a Meta rule:

• Start from the best source you have, such as purchasers or qualified leads, not all visitors. If the best source is under Meta's 1,000-person recommendation, test it against a broader one rather than assuming.
• Keep the source fresh. Update customer lists before they reach the 30-day Outdated mark.
• Decide on purpose whether the lookalike is a suggestion or a limit, and write it down for the account, because Advantage+ lookalike is switched on by default.
• Exclude existing customers with a custom audience exclusion when the goal is new customers; Meta's own example of exclusion targeting is exactly this.
• Judge results on cost per result in the campaign, not on audience size. Bidding and budget are separate settings, covered in our guide to Meta ads bid strategies.

LinkedIn retired its lookalike audiences in 2024; what replaced them is covered in our guide to LinkedIn Matched Audiences.

Frequently asked questions

How many people do I need for a Meta lookalike audience?

The source audience needs at least 100 people. Meta generally recommends a source of 1,000 to 5,000 people, and you can create up to 500 lookalikes from one source.

What lookalike percentage should I choose?

Smaller percentages match the source more closely and larger ones give a broader audience. The Marketing API accepts 1% to 20%. A set of bands such as 0 to 1%, 1 to 3% and 3 to 6% lets you compare similarity levels without overlap.

Why can't I choose a country when creating a lookalike?

Meta removed location from lookalike creation. The lookalike now uses the location settings of the ad set it is added to, which is also why Audience Manager no longer shows an estimated size for new lookalikes.

Does my ad only reach people in the lookalike audience?

Not by default. Advantage+ lookalike is on automatically for lookalikes from website, mobile app or customer list sources, so Meta may deliver beyond the selected percentage. To keep delivery inside it, add the lookalike under Further limit your audience and untick Use as a suggestion.

How often is a lookalike audience updated?

Meta's developer guide says it refreshes members every 3 days when the lookalike belongs to an ad set. Keep the source current too, since a customer list not updated in over 30 days is marked Outdated.

For more on Meta advertising, see our guides to Meta ads basics, Advantage+ campaigns, custom conversions, A/B testing and the Meta Pixel and Conversions API, or talk to us about our marketing services.