How to Increase Reach on Facebook Ads

Getting your Facebook Ads in front of more people doesn't have to feel like a guessing game. It's about combining intelligent targeting with creative that resonates and letting Facebook's algorithm do the heavy lifting for you. This article will walk you through the practical, actionable strategies you can use today to expand your ad reach, lower your costs, and grow your audience.

First, What Does "Reach" Really Mean?

In the world of Facebook Ads, terminology matters. It's easy to get "reach" and "impressions" mixed up, but they measure two different things.

• Impressions: This is the total number of times your ad was displayed on a screen. If one person sees your ad five times, that counts as five impressions.
• Reach: This is the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once. If one person sees your ad five times, that counts as a reach of one.

Why does this matter? Reach tells you how wide your net is. It's a measure of brand awareness and how many new potential customers you're introducing your business to. If your goal is to get your message out to the largest possible audience within your budget, maximizing reach is your primary objective. Higher impressions with low reach just mean you're showing the same ad to the same people over and over again, which can lead to ad fatigue.

8 Actionable Strategies to Increase Reach on Facebook Ads

To get more juice from every ad dollar, you need a smart approach. Here are eight tactics that work, starting with the fundamentals and moving to more advanced optimizations.

1. Get Your Ad Objective Right

Facebook asks you to choose a campaign objective for a reason. This choice tells the algorithm exactly what you want to achieve, and it will optimize ad delivery to find users most likely to help you hit that goal. If maximizing reach is your main goal, you should use an objective that aligns with it.

• Awareness or Reach Objectives: This is the most direct way to maximize reach. When you select the "Awareness" objective, Facebook's system will prioritize showing your ad to the maximum number of people within your budget. This is ideal for top-of-funnel campaigns, announcing a new product, or making a splash in a new market.
• Consider Other Objectives: Sometimes, reach is a byproduct of another goal. For example, a "Traffic" or "Engagement" campaign can also generate significant reach because Facebook is looking for people who click or interact, and it will show your ad to many people to find them. However, if your only goal is getting seen by the most people for the lowest cost, stick with the Awareness/Reach objectives.

Choosing the right objective sets your entire campaign up for success from the very beginning.

2. Broaden Your Audience (The Smart Way)

It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes the more you restrict your audience, the more expensive it becomes to reach them. A tiny, hyper-specific audience means you're competing in a smaller auction, which often drives up your Cost Per Mile (CPM), the price you pay per 1,000 impressions. Going broader can significantly increase reach and lower costs.

But "going broad" doesn't mean targeting everyone. Here's how to do it intelligently:

• Stack Interests: Instead of creating a separate ad group for every single interest, group related interests together. For example, if you sell hiking gear, a single ad set targeting people interested in "Hiking," "Backpacking," "National Parks," and "Outdoor Recreation" is likely to perform better and reach more people than four separate, tiny ad sets.
• Use Advantage+ Audience: Facebook's a lot smarter than it used to be. Trusting Advantage+ Targeting (letting Facebook go beyond your initial interest selections if it thinks it can find cheaper or better results) can work wonders. Your targeting selections become strong suggestions rather than rigid rules, giving the algorithm the flexibility to find new pockets of potential customers.

A broader audience gives Facebook's delivery system more room to work, finding the cheapest and most effective way to show your ads to people who might be interested.

3. Master Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences are your most powerful tool for finding new people who act just like your best customers. Facebook analyzes the common traits of a "source audience" you provide and then finds a new, larger group of people on the platform who share those characteristics. This is a game-changer for expanding reach effectively.

Creating High-Quality Lookalike Audiences:

• Start with a strong source: The quality of your Lookalike Audience depends entirely on the quality of your source. The best sources are people who have already demonstrated high intent. Think customer email lists, people who have made a purchase, or a list of your most engaged followers.
• Don't forget website and app actions: Use your Facebook Pixel or Conversions API data to create source audiences from high-value actions, like "Add to Cart," "Initiate Checkout," or "View Content" on your key pages.
• Leverage video viewers: If you use video in your marketing, you can create a source audience of people who watched a high percentage (e.g., 75% or 95%) of your video ad. This signals strong interest and creates a powerful Lookalike source.

Testing Lookalike Percentages:

When you create a Lookalike, you'll choose a percentage (from 1% to 10%) of a country's population. A 1% Lookalike is the smallest and most similar group to your source audience. As you increase the percentage, the audience gets bigger but less precise. Start with a 1% Lookalike. Once that's performing well, you can expand reach by creating audiences for 1-3%, 3-5%, and so on to scale your campaigns.

4. Optimize Your Ad Placements for Reach

Placements are where your ads appear across Meta's ecosystem (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network). While it can be tempting to manually select only the most premium placements like the Instagram Feed, letting Facebook automate this can drastically increase your reach.

• Start with Advantage+ placements: This setting allows Facebook to automatically show your ads across all available placements where they are most likely to perform well and be cost-effective. The algorithm is incredibly good at figuring out that it can show your ad on the Audience Network for a fraction of the cost of the main feed, getting your message in front of more people for the same budget.
• Think about where eyeballs are: More casual, lean-back placements like Facebook & Instagram Stories, Reels, and even the Audience Network tend to have lower CPMs and can be a fantastic way to extend your reach to new users without breaking the bank. Creating content for these specific placements (like vertical video) is a must.

5. Invest in Standout Creative

You can have the best targeting in the world, but if your creative is boring, no one will pay attention. Facebook's algorithm rewards ads that people engage with. Stronger engagement (likes, comments, shares, clicks) leads to a higher relevance score, and Facebook rewards relevant ads with more impressions at a lower cost.

• Video is King: Short-form vertical video is tailor-made for placements like Reels and Stories, which are huge drivers of reach. Grab attention within the first three seconds, use captions (most people watch with the sound off), and have a clear call-to-action.
• Keep it Authentic: Overly polished, corporate-style creative often gets ignored. User-generated content (UGC), casual behind-the-scenes footage, or influencer content feels native to the platform and builds trust more effectively.
• Test, Test, Test: Don't just run one ad. Test different headlines, images, videos, and calls-to-action. Let the data tell you what your audience responds to, then put more budget behind the winners.

6. Manage Your Bid Strategy & Budget

Your budget directly impacts how many people you can reach. While a bigger budget will almost always lead to more reach, how you manage it matters, too.

• Daily vs. Lifetime Budgets: A daily budget gives you consistent spending day-to-day. A lifetime budget gives Facebook more flexibility to spend more on days when there are better opportunities (like weekends for an eCommerce brand) and less on slower days, which can often maximize results over the campaign's duration.
• Bid Strategy: For reach-focused campaigns, the default "Highest Volume" (or "Lowest Cost") bidding is usually your best bet. This tells Facebook to get you the most results for your budget. You can also experiment with a "Cost Per Result Goal" if you need to keep your costs under a certain threshold.

7. Schedule Your Ads at Peak Times

Although Facebook's algorithm handles a lot of the optimization, you can give it an edge by telling it when to run your ads. If you know your audience is most active in the evenings and on weekends, why spend your budget at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday?

To use dayparting (ad scheduling), you must set a lifetime budget at the ad set level. Once you do, the "Ad Scheduling" option will appear, allowing you to select specific days and hours to run your ads. This ensures your budget is spent when your target audience is most likely to be online and engaged.

8. Monitor Your Ad Frequency

Finally, keep an eye on your Ad Frequency. This metric tells you the average number of times each person has seen your ad. As Frequency climbs, you risk "ad fatigue" - people get tired of seeing the same creative, stop paying attention, and may even hide or report your ad.

When you see Frequency creeping up (a general rule of thumb is more than 3-4 in a short period for a prospecting audience) and performance metrics like Click-Through Rate declining, it's a clear signal that it's time to refresh your creative or target a new audience. A tired ad will have its reach throttled by the algorithm, so keeping it fresh is vital for sustained performance.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, increasing your reach on Facebook Ads comes down to a strategic blend of clear objectives, smart audience selection, compelling creative, and ongoing optimization. Give Facebook's algorithm the right signals and enough flexibility, and it will reward you with broader reach at a more efficient cost.

A great paid media strategy is always supported by strong organic content. Your social media channels are an incredible testing ground for finding out what messaging and creative truly excite your audience - insights you can pour directly into your ad campaigns. We built Postbase because we ran marketing teams and struggled with clunky, outdated tools that made content planning and analysis difficult. With a simple visual calendar and unified analytics from Postbase, you can see what’s working organically and make much smarter decisions about where to invest your ad dollars.