Look-Alike Audience

Definition

A targeting strategy that finds new users similar to your existing customers based on behavioral and demographic characteristics. It's cloning your good customers.

Example Usage

We created a look-alike audience based on our best customers and used it to scale our ad spend profitably.

Origin

Introduced by Facebook around 2010 as part of their advertising platform.

Fun Fact

Look-alike audiences can find customers at 1/10th the CAC of cold prospecting, though lookalikes of poor customers waste money too.

Source: Social media advertising and audience targeting terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

impression

In marketing and advertising, a single instance of an ad being displayed, regardless of whether anyone actually looked at it or immediately scrolled past. Digital marketers obsess over impressions like they're collecting Pokemon, even though an impression doesn't guarantee anyone's eyeballs actually made contact. It's the vanity metric that makes your campaign look successful before you check the click-through rate.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

grecian urn

An advertising concept that looks beautiful and timeless in the boardroom but is completely impractical for actual implementation. Named after objects better suited for museums than utility.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

Call-to-action (CTA)

The button/link/desperate plea begging users to do something—click, buy, sign up—basically the entire point of your ad compressed into two words.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

header bidding

An advanced programmatic advertising technique where multiple ad exchanges bid on inventory simultaneously before the ad server is called, maximizing publisher revenue. It's like having multiple auction houses compete for your antique vase instead of just going with one.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

programmatic buying

Using automated technology and algorithms to purchase digital ad inventory in real-time, replacing human media buyers with machines that work faster and complain less. It's the robot apocalypse, but for ad placement.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

snackable content

Bite-sized marketing content designed for rapid consumption during micro-moments, because modern attention spans measure in seconds. The content equivalent of gas station jerky.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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