No Gender in Audience Controls

This could be a problem.

When using Advantage+ Audience, you can adjust gender within 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 suggestions…

but there’s no option for gender within Audience ControlsAdvertisers aren’t able to exclude locations or customize age targeting from directly within the ad set of an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign. But Audience Controls within the Ad Account Settings allow the ability to make these adjustments account-wide for all Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. More. Only age minimum, location, custom audience exclusions, and language.

This is a problem I’ve heard about from women who market to women. They adjust the audience suggestion to reachReach measures the number of Accounts Center Accounts (formerly users) that saw your ads at least once. You can have one account reached with multiple impressions. More only women. Meta may start showing ads to only women. But if they get results from men, delivery will expand to them.

This could be fine for sales campaignsThe campaign is the foundation of your Facebook ad. This is where you’ll set an advertising objective, which defines what you want your ad to achieve. More. If men don’t buy your product, the algorithm should learn. The problem is at the top of the funnel.

This kind of 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 is already problematic, but it’s worse with broad and expanded targeting. If you optimize for post engagementPost engagements include all of the actions that people took on your Facebook ad post. Examples include:
• Post Shares
• Post Reactions
• Post Saves
• Post Comment
• Page Likes
• Post Interactions
• 3-Seconds Video Plays
• Photo Views
• Link Clicks
More and target women only, Meta can show your ads to men, too. And you can bet that some men will jump into the comments.

It doesn’t matter if it’s creepy engagement or they’ll never buy. Meta doesn’t care. It’s taken as an indicator that men will engage with your ads, so your ads will be shown to more men.

This is a major issue and Meta needs to fix it. Add gender to Audience Controls. But also fix optimization to work for the top-of-the-funnel.

Otherwise, it will never work with broader targeting.