Lookalike Audience
A lookalike audience is a new ad audience the platform builds by finding people who resemble an existing source list, such as your customers or followers.
A lookalike audience is an automatically generated targeting group that finds new people who share traits with a source audience you provide, like your customer list, website converters, or engaged followers. The platform analyzes the source's demographics, interests, and behaviors, then matches similar users across its network. It matters because it lets you scale prospecting beyond manual interest targeting while staying anchored to people likely to convert. Quality depends on the source: a small, high-value seed list usually outperforms a large noisy one. You control reach by choosing a percentage of the population, where a tighter 1% match is more similar and a 5-10% match is broader. Performance is judged by CPA, ROAS, and conversion rate.
Examples
- A 1% Meta lookalike built from your top 500 purchasers.
- A TikTok lookalike based on users who completed a signup.
- A lookalike seeded from your highest-LTV customer segment.
Related terms
Paid social is any social media content you pay a platform to distribute to a targeted audience, as opposed to unpaid organic reach.
Retargeting is advertising that shows ads to people who already interacted with your brand, such as site visitors or video viewers, to bring them back.
The specific group of people you want your content to reach and resonate with.