You could create one ad set that targets all potential customers. Meta will help get you the most optimized actions within your budgetA budget is an amount you’re willing to spend on your Facebook campaigns or ad sets on a daily or lifetime basis. More.

But instead, you create several ad setsAn ad set is a Facebook ads grouping where settings like targeting, scheduling, optimization, and placement are determined. More that segment your audienceThis is the group of people who can potentially see your ads. You help influence this by adjusting age, gender, location, detailed targeting (interests and behaviors), custom audiences, and more. More. It could be different ad sets by age group, gender, or detailed targeting.

This fragmentation of your audience makes optimizationThe Performance Goal is chosen within the ad set and determines optimization and delivery. How you optimize impacts who sees your ad. Meta will show your ad to people most likely to perform your desired action. More less effective. Instead of getting you the most results regardless of these labels, the algorithm is forced to try and find results within each segment.

You’re also splitting up your budget between ad sets. This generates less volume for each ad set, fewer learning opportunities for the algorithm, and the potential for issues exiting the learning phase.

What Meta Wants

Meta wants you to consolidate your audience and your budget.

If you’re splitting your audience by demographic group for reporting purposes, this is completely unnecessary. You can use breakdowns for that.

If you’re splitting up your audience by detailed targeting, these audiences are expanding if you use Advantage+ Audience or set a performance goal of conversions, link clicks, or landing page views.

There are always exceptions, but avoid fragmenting your audience.

Automated RulesAutomated Rules allow advertisers to set automated processes (pausing, adjusting budget, or adjusting bid) based on performance. More

One option is to use an Automated Rule to manage this. You can create a rule that monitors for Audience FragmentationAudience Fragmentation is the potential result of running multiple ad sets that target different groups of people but are optimized in the same way to promote similar ad creative. When it becomes problematic, you should combine ad sets. More and either automatically combines impacted ad sets when fragmentation is a problem or alerts you so that you can decide whether to act.