Lookalike Audience / Advertising Terms Lookalike Audience A lookalike audience is a type of audience targeting used in digital advertising platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn and Google Ads. It allows advertisers to reach new people who share similar characteristics with an existing audience, such as customers, donors or website visitors. By analysing traits like behaviours, interests and demographics, the platform creates a new audience that closely mirrors the original group. To create a lookalike audience, you first define a source audience. This might be a customer email list, people who completed a purchase, recent donors or users who visited specific pages on your site. The advertising platform compares this source with its broader user data and identifies individuals who match key patterns. You can then target ads to this new audience within specific locations, age ranges or interest groups to ensure alignment with your campaign goals. Lookalike audiences are highly effective for scaling outreach while maintaining relevance. They allow organisations to find qualified prospects who are more likely to engage, convert or take action. For nonprofits, building a lookalike audience from past donors or volunteers can help attract supporters with similar values. For B2B and SaaS companies, it can shorten the sales cycle by reaching people who already resemble high-value customers. To get the best results, update your source audience regularly, test different audience sizes and refine your targeting based on performance data.