How do I remove discontinued targeting options from my Facebook audiences?

Facebook has recently been making changes in how advertisers can target their ads. One result of these changes is that many targeting options (demographics, interests, and behaviors) have been discontinued for various reasons. It’s possible that you’ve created audiences that include one or more of these targeting options. Unfortunately, those audiences cannot be mapped with Audience Map. It is necessary to remove them if you wish to map an audience that contains even one of them.

If the audience in question is on the Tapcast Audiences tab, follow these steps:

1. In your Facebook account’s Ads Manager, locate the ad set that contains the audience that you need to fix.

2. Check its box and click on the edit icon to open the ad set for editing.

3. Scroll down to the Audience pane. If the audience contains discontinued targeting options, you will see a Facebook message to that effect above the Audience Details.

4. If a Saved audience was used in this ad set, scroll to the bottom of the Audience pane and click the “Edit” button. This will open the “Edit Audience” window. Otherwise, move on to the next step.

5. Scroll down to the “Detailed Targeting” section. Each targeting option that has been discontinued will be marked with a red “stop sign.”

Hovering over the item will reveal any alternate targeting suggestions that Facebook may have. You can decide whether or not you wish to use any one or more of these suggestions.

6. Whether you decide to use Facebook’s suggested replacement(s) or not, delete the discontinued item by clicking on the ‘x’.

7. Continue for each discontinued item until all have been removed from your audience.

Note: Removing these items could in all likelihood impact and change your audience in some way. The change could be small or drastic. If the changes would change your audience too drastically, you may want to consider using Audience Builder to figure out alternative ways to target these customers.

8. If this was a Saved audience, scroll to the bottom of the window to click the “Update” button after all discontinued items have been removed.

9. Click the “Publish” button in the lower-right corner of the ad set to save your changes and publish it.

The ad set will then be updated on the Tapcast platform, and you should be able to optimize or map it.

If the audience in question is on the Saved Audiences tab, follow these steps:

1. Locate the Saved Audience in your Audience Asset Library in Facebook and open it for editing by checking its box and selecting “Edit” from the Actions button dropdown menu.

2. Follow steps 5 through 8 in the process above.

The audience will then be updated on the Tapcast platform, and you should be able to optimize or map it.