Facebook & Instagram Geo-Targeting
Understand Facebook & Instagram Geographical Targeting and Reporting
Please note that Facebook and Instagram ads are only available in the U.S. and Canada.
Updates to Facebook Geographical Targeting
While Facebook continues to update their capabilities and platforms, we continue to keep our partners updated as well.
June 2026
As of June 2026, Facebook is deprecating its DMA targeting and replacing it with Comscore Markets.
What is the difference between the two?
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Nielsen DMAs assign geographic regions primarily by grouping entire counties. If a local TV station captures the dominant viewing share in a county, that whole county gets sucked into that DMA. This can create massive, clunky regions that don’t always align with digital behavior.
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Comscore Markets assign regions tightly by individual ZIP codes. Because they don’t force a county to stick entirely to one market, they prevent geographic “straddling” and better reflect localized internet and streaming habits.
While the two areas are very similar, there might be some small areas that are part of a DMA but not part of the Comscore Market or vice versa. If you do want to ensure that you are only running in a specific DMA, please provide your campaigns manager with the counties you want to target, and we can update the geo targeting.
Previous Updates
We used to be able to target people who live in the area OR people who have recently visited the geo area. With an update from Facebook, they have hs combined both of these options and will only be able to 'Living in or recently in this location.' This is a reason you can see delivery outside of the requested geo-targeting.
At this point, we do not have the ability to update this targeting parameter within Facebook, but we wanted to provide clarity around the geo reporting in Ui.Marketing.
A Summary from Facebook's Help Center Article:
Most advertising objectives allow you to refine your audience this way, though the awareness objective uses store location features to connect people with nearby physical businesses.
Meta technologies use a variety of signals to show ads to the people who are a part of your location-targeting selections. Because these signals vary, complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed. You may occasionally see a small number of ad impressions or even receive a message or lead from outside of your location settings.
Sometimes people may also see an ad organically. In these instances, you may have engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares on the ad outside of the targeted location. We may also show preview ads to people connected to the business, even if they’re outside the targeted location. You’ll not be charged for preview impressions.
Facebook: About location targeting
Facebook Reporting in Ui.Marketing
In Ui.Marketing, Designated Marketing Area (DMA) and state-level reporting is used to report on the locations your advertisements are serving in and how those ads are performing in each DMA or state.
This may mean the geographical reporting looks different than what you ordered. This is because of what a DMA is.
Designated Marketing Areas (DMA)- DMA (Designated Market Area) regions are the geographic areas in the U.S. in which local television viewing is measured by Nielsen. DMA data is essential for any marketer, researcher or organization seeking to use standardized geographic areas within their business. A DMA region is a group of counties and zip codes that form an exclusive geographic area in which the home market television stations hold a dominance of total hours viewed. There are 210 DMA regions, covering the entire continental U.S., Hawaii, and parts of Alaska. DMA boundaries and data are solely owned and exclusive to Nielsen.
It is important to note that certain DMAs cover more than one state. For example, the Denver DMA includes Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Nevada.
If you're campaign is targeting multiple locations you may see more than one DMA appear on the map that is outside of what you purchased. This is due to Ui.Marketing only displaying reporting by DMA and does not reflect the current targeting on your campaign.