Targeting Overview

Available targeting options for restaurants

DoorDash Ads provides advanced targeting options that help advertisers reach customers based on order behavior, membership status, customer attributes, and demonstrated interests.

You are able to target based on:

• Customer status: New, existing, or lapsed customers

• Order frequency: Low- or medium-frequency customers

• Average ticket size: High average ticket size, medium average ticket size, or low average ticket size customers

• Membership: DashPass or non-DashPass customers

• Customer interest by dish: Customers with demonstrated interest in specific dish categories or dish types

• Customer interest by brand: Customers with demonstrated interest in specific brands

• Dayparting: Specific days and times when your campaign is eligible to run

These options can be layered to help build audiences that align with your campaign goal.

Important: In Ads Manager, "customer" can refer to any consumer on DoorDash, whether or not they've ordered from your business before. Review your audience setup carefully to confirm it matches your intended targeting strategy.

You can also exclude certain audience segments from one ad group and target them in another ad group. This can help you separate strategies by customer type, test different offers, or compare performance across audience groups.

Audience layering in Ads Manager

Audience layering lets you combine multiple audience attributes in one ad group. Audience targeting can be combined using structured logic:

• Use AND logic across audience categories

• Use OR logic within a category

For example, you can target customers who are:

• New AND interested in a specific dish category

• DashPass customers AND lapsed customers

• Customers interested in pizza OR desserts

This flexibility allows you to build audiences that are broad enough to scale while remaining relevant to your campaign goals.

Adding more layers can make your audience more specific, but it can also reduce reach. If your audience becomes too narrow, campaign delivery and performance may be limited.

Inclusion and exclusion rules

You can refine targeting by including or excluding specific audience segments. Use inclusions to define who should be eligible to see your campaign. Use exclusions to remove customers who don't match the ad group's goal.

For example, you might include all past customers while excluding those who ordered within the last 30 days. This approach allows you to isolate specific segments, such as lapsed customers, and tailor your campaign accordingly.

Common setups include:

• Lapsed customer targeting: Include customers who ordered from your business in the past, then exclude customers who ordered recently

• New and lapsed customer targeting: Include a broader customer audience, then exclude recent customers

• Retention targeting: Include existing customers to encourage repeat orders

• Frequency-based targeting: Include low-frequency or medium-frequency customers to help increase order frequency

• Offer testing: Exclude one audience from an ad group and target that audience in another ad group with a different offer or setup

Reach estimator guidance

The reach estimator helps you understand whether your selected audience is broad, moderate, or narrow before your campaign goes live.

As you adjust audience attributes, the estimator updates to reflect how your selections work together. This gives you directional visibility into your full audience setup and can help you avoid overly narrow targeting.

Reach indicators may include:

• Broad: Larger potential reach

• Moderate: Balanced reach and specificity

• Narrow: More limited reach

• Too narrow: Very restricted reach that may limit delivery

Use the reach estimator to check whether your audience is likely to support your campaign goal. If your audience is narrow or too narrow, consider:

• Removing one audience layer

• Expanding your customer status selection

• Selecting broader dish or brand interest categories

• Adjusting membership targeting

• Expanding your store or market selection

• Reviewing dayparting to make sure your schedule isn't too limited

• Splitting different audience strategies into separate ad groups

The reach estimator is directional. It doesn't guarantee delivery, spend, or performance.

What to do next

• Learn how to create a Promotion ad group

• Learn how to create a Sponsored Listings ad group

• Check out the Sponsored Listing Targeting Playbook