What Is Advantage+ Detailed Targeting on Meta?

Picking interests and behaviours tells Meta who you expect to buy. Advantage+ detailed targeting tells Meta it may go past that list. When Meta’s system finds better performance opportunities outside the audience you defined, it widens delivery towards them, and it may widen further to similar opportunities. Meta also calls this “using detailed targeting as a suggestion”, and its system turns it on when it judges that doing so could improve performance.

What does it loosen, and what stays fixed?

It is narrow in scope. Meta says Advantage+ detailed targeting is specific to detailed targeting.

Setting	Can Advantage+ detailed targeting go beyond it?
Interests, behaviours and demographics you picked in detailed targeting	Yes
Location	No
Age	No
Gender	No
Language	No
Exclusions	No

The expansion is judged against your optimisation goal: Meta shows the ad to additional people it believes are likely to get you more results, cheaper results, or both.

Can I turn it off?

It depends on what your ad set optimises for. Meta says that if you optimise for link clicks, landing page views, conversations, conversions, app events, app installs or value, Advantage+ detailed targeting is applied automatically with no option to opt out.

For other goals, you can set detailed targeting as a strict control:

1. Open the ad set and find the audience section.
2. Select “Further limit your audience” or “Further limit the reach of your ads”.
3. Find Detailed targeting and make sure the Advantage+ detailed targeting box is unchecked.

How does it relate to Advantage+ audience?

Inside Advantage+ audience, detailed targeting you add is already a suggestion, so delivery can go beyond it. Meta has said it does not expect its 2025 consolidation of detailed targeting interests to affect performance for advertisers who use Advantage+ detailed targeting or detailed targeting as a suggestion within Advantage+ audience.

Where is it not available?

• Social issues, elections or politics. Meta says Advantage+ detailed targeting isn’t available for these campaigns.
• Some special ad categories. Meta notes that some detailed targeting options, and using detailed targeting as a suggestion, aren’t available for some special ad categories. For housing, employment and financial products and services ads covered by its rules, Meta also says excluding any detailed targeting selection is unavailable.

FAQ

Why does my estimated audience size look smaller than my real reach?

When Advantage+ products expand your audience, Meta says the estimated audience size will not reflect the total number of accounts that meet the targeting criteria. The estimate describes the audience you defined. Delivery can then extend beyond it when the expansion applies, so use reach in your results to see who your ads actually got to.

Does it ignore my excluded custom audiences?

No. Meta says any exclusions, and targeting selections outside detailed targeting such as age, gender, location and language, continue to apply. Only your interest, behaviour and demographic picks become flexible. People you exclude through a custom audience stay excluded however far the expansion reaches.

Do Meta’s anti-discrimination rules still apply when it expands?

Yes. Meta states that its advertising standards prohibiting wrongful discrimination still apply when Advantage+ detailed targeting is used. Expansion changes who Meta’s system may reach for performance reasons; it doesn’t relax the rules on how you may choose or describe your intended audience.