TLDR;
- Your basic question is about 'AND' vs 'OR' targeting. In Meta, adding interests in the same box is 'OR'. To get 'AND', you must use the 'Narrow Audience' feature to layer your targeting criteria.
- However, chasing hyper-specific 'AND' audiences (like Rolex lovers in rich postcodes) is often a mistake. It creates tiny, expensive audiences that are almost impossible to scale profitably.
- A much better approach is to structure your audiences based on a funnel: Top of Funnel (cold interests, lookalikes), Middle of Funnel (website visitors), and Bottom of Funnel (cart abandoners). This is how you build a scalable system.
- Forget 'brand awareness' campaigns. You should almost always be running conversion-optimised campaigns, even for cold audiences. Let Meta's algorithm find the buyers for you.
- This letter includes an interactive calculator to help you figure out your customer lifetime value (LTV) and what you can actually afford to pay for a lead, which is far more important than just getting your targeting technically correct.
Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your question about Meta's targeting. It's a common point of confusion, but the way you're thinking about it might be holding your campaigns back a bit.
You've hit on the core of how the targeting interface works, but the real trick isn't just knowing how to create an 'AND' condition. It's knowing when—and more importantly, when not—to use it. Let's break it down properly.
We'll need to look at how Meta's targeting logic actually works...
First, to directly answer you're question: yes, you're spot on. By default, when you add multiple interests like 'Rolex' and 'Gucci' into the main detailed targeting box, Facebook treats it as an 'OR' condition. The platform will show your ad to people who are interested in Rolex, OR Gucci, OR both. It's designed to broaden your reach within a set of related themes.
To achieve the 'AND' condition you're looking for, you need to use the 'Narrow Audience' button. This creates a new layer. So, you would put 'Rolex' in the first box, then click 'Narrow Audience' and put 'Top 10% of US zip codes' in the second box. Now, Meta will only show your ad to people who match both criteria. You can keep layering this to get more and more specific.
It sounds like the perfect solution, right? A way to laser-target your absolute ideal customer. Here is a simple diagram to show you what I mean.
'OR' Logic (Standard)
Targets people interested in EITHER Rolex OR Gucci.
'AND' Logic (Narrowing)
Targets people interested in Rolex who ALSO live in a top 10% zip code.
But this is where expertise and experience come in. Tbh, for most advertisers, especially those trying to scale, this level of hyper-targeting is a trap. It's one of the most common and costly mistakes I see when auditing new client accounts.
I'd say you need to avoid the hyper-targeting trap...
The problem with creating super-narrow audiences is threefold:
1. Audience Size & Cost: When you layer on multiple conditions, your potential audience size plummets. An audience of 5 million might shrink to 50,000. This smaller pool of people is now subject to more intense competition from other advertisers trying to reach them. The result? Your CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) skyrocket, and your cost per click follows. You're paying a huge premium for a perceived 'perfect' audience.
2. Limited Scalability: Let's say your hyper-targeted ad set works initially. Great. But you'll saturate that tiny audience in a matter of days or weeks. Ad fatigue sets in, performance drops off a cliff, and you have nowhere to go. You can't increase the budget because there's nobody left to show the ads to. You've built a glass ceiling for your own growth.
3. You're Underestimating the Algorithm: This is the biggest one. You are paying to use one of the most sophisticated machine learning advertising algorithms ever built. When you run a campaign optimised for conversions (which you almost always should be), Meta's algorithm is designed to find the people within your broader audience who are most likely to take the action you want (e.g., make a purchase, fill out a lead form). By pre-emptively narrowing the audience yourself, you're tying the algorithm's hands. You're telling it "don't look over there, I know better". In 99% of cases, you don't. I've seen countless campaigns where a broader, well-defined interest group massively outperforms a tiny, layered, 'perfect' audience because it gives the algorithm room to work its magic.
I remember one client with a medical job matching platform. They were trying to be very specific, layering interests to target only certain medical professionals, and their cost to acquire a new user was over £100. It just wasn't sustainable. We took a different approach, broadening the targeting to let the Meta algorithm find the right people based on conversion data. By trusting the system and optimising for signups, we were able to reduce their cost per acquisition all the way down to £7. The algorithm was far more effective at finding their ideal users than manual hyper-targeting ever was.
You probably should use a structured funnel approach...
So if hyper-targeting isn't the answer, what is? The key is to think in terms of a funnel, not a single perfect audience. You need to build a system that moves people from being unaware of you to becoming a customer. I generally structure accounts into three core campaign types: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).
Top of Funnel (ToFu): Prospecting
This is where you find new people. Your goal here isn't to be hyper-specific, but 'directionally correct'. Instead of layering 'Rolex' AND 'Gucci' AND 'High-Income', you should test them in separate ad sets.
-> Ad Set 1: Interest - Rolex
-> Ad Set 2: Interest - Gucci
-> Ad Set 3: Interest - Competing luxury watch brands
-> Ad Set 4: Lookalike Audience of your past purchasers (once you have the data)
You run these ad sets within a conversion-optimised campaign. Let them run for a few days and see which one delivers conversions at the best cost. Meta will show you which audience is actually full of buyers, not just window shoppers. Double down on the winners, turn off the losers. This testing methodology is infinitly more effective than trying to guess the perfect combination upfront.
Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Engagement Retargeting
These are people who have shown some interest but haven't visited your site yet, or have visited but not taken a high-intent action. This is a warm audience.
-> Target people who have watched 50% of your video ads.
-> Target people who have engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page.
-> Target all website visitors from the last 30-90 days (excluding purchasers).
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Conversion Retargeting
This is your hottest audience. These are people who were on the verge of converting. Your job here is to get them over the line. These audiences are smaller but have the highest conversion rates.
-> Target people who added a product to their cart in the last 7-14 days.
-> Target people who initiated checkout in the last 7-14 days.
By separating your audiences like this, you can tailor your messaging. Your ToFu ads should be about introducing the problem and your solution. Your BoFu ads can be more direct, maybe with an offer or a reminder about what they left in their cart. It's a proper strategy, not a single shot in the dark.
You'll need to know what you can afford to pay...
This whole discussion about targeting becomes much clearer when you know your numbers. The most important question isn't "who do I target?" but "how much can I afford to spend to acquire a customer?". The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
Tbh most business owners don't know this number, and it cripples their ability to advertise effectively. They get scared by a £50 cost per lead, even if that lead could be worth thousands to them over time. Once you know your LTV, you can work backwards to determine an acceptable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and from there, a target Cost Per Lead (CPL).
I've built a simple calculator for you below. Play around with the numbers for your own business. It'll give you a much better sense of what you can and should be spending.
When you see that you can afford to pay, say, £3,333 to acquire a customer, you stop worrying about whether you've perfectly layered your interests and start focusing on the bigger picture: building a reliable funnel that can consistently deliver customers within that budget.
This is the main advice I have for you:
So, to bring it all together, here's a summary of the approach I would recommend instead of getting bogged down in 'AND' vs 'OR' targeting. It’s about building a system, not finding a single magic bullet audience.
| Step | Action | Why it Works |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Stop Hyper-Targeting | Forget trying to build the 'perfect' audience by layering multiple interests and demographics. Avoid the 'Narrow Audience' feature unless you have a very specific, proven reason to use it. | It prevents high costs, small audience sizes, and allows the Meta algorithm the freedom to find customers for you, which it is incredibly good at. |
| 2. Structure with a Funnel | Create separate campaigns for ToFu (prospecting), MoFu (warm retargeting), and BoFu (hot retargeting). | This allows you to tailor your messaging to the audience's temperature, guiding them from awareness to purchase methodically. |
| 3. Test Broadly at ToFu | Within your ToFu campaign, create multiple ad sets, each testing ONE core interest, behaviour, or Lookalike audience. Don't combine them. | This is a true split test. It gives you clear data on which audiences actually contain buyers, allowing you to scale the winners effectively. |
| 4. Optimise for Conversions | Set your campaign objective to 'Sales' or 'Leads'. Avoid 'Reach' or 'Brand Awareness' campaigns as they actively find non-buyers. | This tells the algorithm exactly what you want it to do: find people likely to convert. Awareness is a byproduct of effective conversion advertising, not a goal in itself. |
| 5. Know Your Numbers | Use the LTV calculator (or your own data) to understand what a customer is worth and what you can afford to pay to acquire one. | This removes emotion and guesswork from your optimisation. It empowers you to make confident, data-backed decisions about which campaigns to scale and which to kill. |
As you can probably tell, effective paid advertising is less about knowing the technical settings inside-out and more about having a robust strategy and testing methodology. The platform's interface can be misleading, guiding you towards options that seem logical but are often counterproductive for growth.
Getting this structure right from the start can be the difference between burning through your budget with little to show for it and building a predictable, scalable engine for customer acquisition. It takes a fair bit of experience to know which audiences to test first, how to interpret the data correctly, and when to make changes. This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference, saving you months of trial and error and a lot of wasted ad spend.
Hope this helps clear things up and gives you a much stronger framework to work with. If you'd ever like to have a chat and a free, no-obligation review of your ad account to see how these principles could be applied directly to your business, feel free to get in touch.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
