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This guide covers how to set up retargeting campaigns, build lookalike audiences, plan your budgets, and structure tests for the best results.

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Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting shows ads to people who have already interacted with your business — website visitors, email subscribers, video viewers, and more. In AdStellar, you set up retargeting through audience templates using Custom Audiences.
1

Create Custom Audiences in Meta

Go to Meta Ads Manager > Audiences and create custom audiences (website visitors, email lists, video viewers, etc.).
2

Create an Audience Template in AdStellar

Go to Audience Templates, create a new template, and select your custom audiences in the targeting section.
3

Launch a campaign

Use this audience template in a new campaign. The ads will be shown to people in your custom audience.
Create separate audience templates for different retargeting segments (e.g., “Website Visitors - 7 days”, “Add to Cart - 30 days”, “Email List”) so you can test each segment independently.

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Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences find new people who are similar to your best customers. They’re one of the most effective ways to scale cold prospecting on Meta.
1

Create a source audience

In Meta Ads Manager, create a Custom Audience from your best converters (e.g., purchase customers, high-value leads).
2

Create a Lookalike Audience

In Meta Ads Manager > Audiences, create a Lookalike Audience from your source. Choose a percentage (1%–10%) — lower percentages are more similar to your source.
3

Add to an AdStellar audience template

Create or edit an audience template and select your Lookalike Audience in the targeting section.
4

Launch a campaign

Use the audience template in a new campaign to target the lookalike.
Start with a 1% lookalike for the most similar audience, then expand to 2–5% as you scale. Use separate audience templates for each percentage so you can compare performance in AI Insights.

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Budget Recommendations for Testing

ScenarioRecommended Budget
Minimum for Leads$5/day per ad set
Minimum for Sales$10/day per ad set
Recommended for testing$20–50/day per ad set
CBO campaigns$100+/day total (Meta auto-allocates to top performers)
  • For Creative Testing Mode, budget is split across more ad sets — increase your total budget accordingly.
  • Let campaigns run 3–7 days (or until ~50 conversions per ad set) before making decisions.
  • With CBO at $100+/day, Meta will automatically shift budget to your top-performing ad sets.

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Testing Strategies

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Creative Testing

Test 3–5 creative variants at a time. Use Creative Testing Mode to isolate each creative in its own ad set for a clean comparison. After 7 days, check AI Insights to see which creative wins.

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Audience Testing

Create 3–4 audience templates with different targeting approaches (interests vs. lookalikes vs. broad). Launch them all in one campaign to see which audience converts best. AI Insights will rank each audience by your result metric.

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Copy Testing

Put 2–3 headline variants and 2–3 primary text variants in each creative template. AdStellar creates all combinations automatically — so 3 headlines × 3 primary texts = 9 copy variations per creative, with no extra work.

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Scaling Winners

Once you identify winning combinations through AI Insights or Proven Winners:
  1. Relaunch winners — Add winning combinations to a new draft directly from the Proven Winners page.
  2. Increase budget — Raise the budget on your winning audience/creative combination (increase by 20–30% at a time to avoid resetting the learning phase).
  3. Build lookalikes — Create Lookalike Audiences based on your converting audience segment and launch them in new campaigns.
  4. Let AI scale for you — Use AI Builder to generate campaigns that lean into your proven elements automatically.
Avoid changing campaigns during the learning phase (first ~50 conversions). Edits to budget, targeting, or creatives reset the learning phase and delay optimization.