Targeting in the Andromeda Era — Facebook & Instagram Ads for Course Creators

When I started running Facebook ads for my notary training business, the conventional wisdom was clear: stack interests like building blocks. Target “online courses” + “professional development” + “entrepreneurship” and you’d find your people. I spent hours building these intricate targeting towers, convinced that narrower meant better.

That approach is dead.

Welcome to the Andromeda era of Facebook and Instagram advertising. The old rules don’t just need updating—they need to be thrown out entirely.

The Big Shift: Creative Is Your New Targeting

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: broad targeting with strong creative consistently outperforms narrow interest targeting.

Why? Because Meta’s algorithm has gotten remarkably good at finding people who will take action on your offer. When you narrow your audience too much, you’re actually telling the algorithm “don’t look over there”—even though “over there” might contain your best customers.

The algorithm finds better audiences than manual interest stacking. It has more data than you, more processing power than you, and none of your assumptions about who your customer “should” be.

Advantage+ Audience: The New Default

When you create a campaign in 2026, Advantage+ Audience is the default setting—and you should leave it on in most cases.

Here’s what Advantage+ actually does: it takes whatever targeting inputs you provide and treats them as suggestions rather than constraints. If you select “interest in online courses” and “age 30-55,” the algorithm might show your ad to a 28-year-old who’s never explicitly shown interest in online courses but has behavioral patterns matching your converters.

This expansion is a feature, not a bug.

When to use Advantage+ Audience: Almost always. This should be your default for prospecting campaigns, especially when you’re testing new creatives.

When to turn it off: Rare situations where you have legal compliance requirements or when you’re running highly specific retargeting sequences where precision matters more than reach.

The Right Way to Start: Location + Age Only

For most course creators running prospecting campaigns, your starting point should be simple:

Location: Where your customers actually live (if you sell in English, start with US, CA, UK, AU)
Age: Your general customer age range
Gender: Only if your course is specifically for one gender

That’s it. No interests. No behaviors. No job titles.

Then let your creative do the targeting. If you sell a course on real estate investing, your ad copy and visuals should make it crystal clear who it’s for and who it’s not for. The people who resonate with that message will engage. The algorithm learns. The audience optimizes.

Interest Targeting: The Comparison Test

Interest targeting still exists, but its role has changed. Instead of using interests as your primary targeting method, use them as a comparison test.

Here’s how:

Run your broad campaign (location + age only) with Advantage+ on
Create a duplicate campaign with your stacked interests
Let them run for 3-5 days with adequate budget ($20-30/day minimum per ad set)
Compare cost per result

In 2026, broad wins about 70-80% of the time for course creators. But when interests win, it’s usually because you’ve found a genuinely underserved niche or your creative isn’t strong enough to do the targeting work.

If interests consistently outperform broad, you have a creative problem, not a targeting problem.

Lookalike Audiences: Still Powerful

Lookalike audiences remain one of your most powerful tools—but the rules for building them have evolved.

Seed audience requirements:

Minimum: 100 conversions in your seed audience
Recommended: 300-1,000+ conversions
Best: Purchasers, not just leads

The bigger and higher-quality your seed, the better your lookalike will perform. A 1% lookalike built from 500 purchasers will outperform a 1% lookalike built from 5,000 email subscribers who never bought anything.

Best seed audiences for course creators:

Purchasers (gold standard)
High-value leads (people who completed your application or attended your webinar)
Email list (decent, but lower intent)
Page engagers (lowest quality, use only if you have nothing else)

Start with 1% lookalikes. Only expand to 2-5% if the 1% is profitable and you’ve exhausted its scale.

Custom Audiences: Your Retargeting Foundation

Custom audiences are where you retarget people who already know you. These remain essential.

Build these custom audiences immediately:

Website visitors: 30-day, 60-day, and 180-day windows
Landing page visitors: People who hit your course sales page specifically
Video viewers: 50%+ completion on your ad videos
Email subscribers: Upload your list monthly
Instagram engagers: People who liked or commented on your posts

Negative Audiences: Stop Wasting Money

This is where most course creators leave money on the table. You need negative custom audiences to prevent showing ads to people who’ve already taken action.

Create these negative audiences:

Purchasers: Exclude anyone who bought your course in the last 180 days
Recent opt-ins: Exclude people who joined your email list in the last 7-14 days
Unsubscribes: Upload your email unsubscribes monthly
Customer service contacts: If someone asked for a refund or complained, exclude them

Your Targeting Framework

Here’s your actionable framework for 2026:

Tier 1: Broad Prospecting (60% of budget)

Advantage+ Audience ON
Location + Age only
Strong, specific creative that qualifies and disqualifies
Exclude purchasers and recent opt-ins

Tier 2: Lookalike Prospecting (25% of budget)

1% lookalike from purchasers
Advantage+ Audience ON
Exclude purchasers and recent opt-ins

Tier 3: Retargeting (15% of budget)

Website visitors, video viewers, email subscribers
Different creative that acknowledges prior exposure
Exclude purchasers

The Andromeda era rewards simplicity and creative quality over targeting complexity. Stop building elaborate audience stacks. Start writing better ads. The algorithm will find your people.