Facebook income targeting: how accurate is it, and does it work?

It’s tempting to target ads based on income. After all, if you are selling high-end items, you may want to pursue those with the means directly. I have never trusted this data and believe I have now confirmed my cynicism here.

I always suspected that users would not volunteer this info and, in fact, they don’t. According to Facebook: “Income is either consumer self-reported through a survey or estimated based on a variety of demographic data such as age, occupation, home ownership, and a median income for the local area., provided by Acxiom.” Is the data they cull accurate? It’s impossible to know.

However, a client of mine recently ran some ads which targeted high income individuals specifically. I have never seen ads perform so poorly.

So I don’t know if the income data Facebook possesses is accurate. I do, however, have preliminary proof that this type of targeting does not work well. I would much rather use a lookalike audience to reach new potential customers.