A familiar scene: a shop owner in Riyadh opens Ads Manager, selects women aged 25 to 40, adds twenty interests and launches the ad. A week later the likes are coming from countries he never meant to reach, and the messages are from people who don't buy. The settings looked precise. The results weren't.
Meta's ad system has changed over the last few years, and what used to count as precise targeting now has less effect. Here is what decides who sees your ad today.
How does Facebook and Instagram ad targeting work now?
Meta relies on broad targeting more than on specific interests. With Advantage+ audience, you give the platform an audience suggestion, and it widens it when it expects better results outside it. Meta has also removed most options for excluding people by interest.
In practice, three things steer your ad more than your interest list does. The campaign objective you pick, the conversion data your website sends through the Pixel, and the ad itself, since the platform shows it to people who respond to that kind of message.
What should you still set manually in Saudi Arabia and Jordan?
Location, language, and age when you need it. These stay under your control. In Saudi Arabia, choose the cities you really deliver to or serve, because Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam are different markets in distance and delivery cost. In Jordan, Amman alone may be enough for a service that requires a visit, while an online store can reach the whole country.
Saudi Arabia also has a large expatriate audience speaking different languages. If your message is only in Arabic, or only in English, set the language or make a separate ad for each language. Keep each country in its own campaign too, because prices, cost of reach and the way people talk differ between the two markets, and a combined campaign hides which one is working.
If your ad is about jobs, housing or credit, Meta puts it in a special ad category that restricts targeting options such as age and precise location. Pick the right category when you create the campaign so the ad isn't rejected.
Which audiences give better results?
Audiences built from your own data. People who visited your website, engaged with your Instagram account, or watched most of one of your videos, and your current customer list if you have their consent. These are custom audiences, and you use them in two ways: to reach people who already know you again, as in remarketing to website visitors, or to exclude existing customers from ads aimed at new ones.
From a customer list you can also build a lookalike audience, where Meta looks for people who resemble your customers. It works better the larger the list is and the closer it is to the kind of customer you want more of.
How do you write a message that reaches the right person?
Write the ad for one specific person, because the message now does a large part of the targeting. An ad that says "For clinic owners in Jeddah: bookings without phone calls" attracts clinic owners, and everyone else scrolls past. A generic ad about "digital solutions" attracts anyone.
- Name the city or the customer group in the first line or in the image.
- Show the product or the result in the first seconds of the video.
- Test local dialect against simple Modern Standard Arabic.
- Use photos or video of your real work, since stock images look like every other ad.
Plan around the seasons as well. Ramadan, Eid and back-to-school change buying behavior and ad costs in both countries.
Where should people go after they click: WhatsApp, a form or your website?
Pick the destination your team can answer quickly and track. Click-to-WhatsApp ads suit many businesses in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, since people like to ask before they order, but they need someone who replies fast and a way to record who became a customer. Instant forms inside Facebook and Instagram are easy for the user and may bring in less serious inquiries, so add a question or two that filter them. Your website gives you more control over the message and the tracking, as long as the page loads quickly on mobile.
Test one destination at a time, and in the end compare the cost per customer who went on to buy. A cheap message from someone who never buys does you no good.
How do you test ads on a small budget?
Change one thing per test, and let the ads run long enough before you judge. If you change the audience, the image and the copy together, you won't know what made the difference.
- One broad audienceCity and language only, with a clear conversion objective
- Two or three messagesA different angle for each ad
- Wait for dataA week or more with no daily edits
- Cut the weakestBased on cost per inquiry
- A new messageChallenges the winning one
Ads Manager has an A/B test tool that splits the audience between the two versions, which is more accurate than comparing two ads inside the same campaign. If inquiries still don't come in after all this, read paying for ads and getting no leads?
We run Meta campaigns for Saudi Arabia and Jordan and write the messages as part of our digital marketing service. Tell us what you sell and where, and we'll suggest your first three messages to test.
Questions our partners ask
Is interest targeting still useful?
Sometimes, as a starting point. Meta now treats interests as a suggestion and widens the audience when it sees a better opportunity. What really steers the ad is the campaign objective, your conversion data and the message itself.
Should I write the ad in Modern Standard Arabic or in dialect?
Try both. Local dialect makes the ad feel closer to the audience in many industries, and simple Modern Standard Arabic suits professional services. Testing settles it for your audience.
Should I run one campaign for Saudi Arabia and Jordan?
It's better to separate them. Prices, habits, dialect and the cost of reach all differ, and a combined campaign hides which market is working.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
