(Update on November 14, 2021 at 8:30AM PT: This blog post was published in 2016. For up-to-date information about reaching your audience on Instagram, learn more about ads on Instagram.)

Whether your audience is ice cream lovers in Southern California, cattle ranchers in South America, or car enthusiasts around the world, audience targeting helps you show your ads to the people you care about most.

When you create an ad in Ads Manager, Power Editor or directly from your business' Instagram account or Facebook Page, you have the opportunity to target your ads to a specific audience. This audience can be based on location and demographics like age, gender and interests. You can even target your ad to people based on what they do off of Instagram.

It's up to you to choose the audience you want to reach. You can choose from one, or a combination of targeting options that suit your business' needs. By targeting your ads, people receiving the ads are ones more likely to be interested in your product, app or service.

In addition to targeting ads my location and demographic, you have more targeting options based on connections.

- Custom Audiences: Create an audience of your existing customers.

- Lookalike Audiences: Reach a new audience of people who are similar to customers you care about.

- Automatic Targeting: We help you quickly create an audience who might be interested in your business using a variety of signals including location, demographics and interests.

With a half a billion users on Instagram from around the world, targeting your ad helps you reach the ones who matter to you most