Two minutes.
Before you start#
- A connected Meta ad account. Areas are set on Meta campaigns only; on Google or TikTok the ads show country-wide.
- A role that can Draft campaigns: owner, admin or operator.
1. Tell Madder where you work#
In the brief, Where are your customers? has two answers. Near me asks for your town: type it, press Find, and pick it from Meta's own list — several towns share a name, so check the region and the country. Add a distance, or leave it empty for the town itself. Anywhere in the country is for a business that sells or ships nationwide.
If the town is not in the list, choose Anywhere in the country for now and set the area on the draft.
In chat, name the town. If a local business does not say where it works, Madder asks one question before it drafts. It does not guess a town from your name or your web address.
2. Read "Who will see it"#
On the Campaigns page, press Review on the Draft row. Who will see it is one sentence, for example People within 10 miles of Leeds, England, the UK, aged 18–65+. With no area it reads Everyone in the UK.
3. Change it before you approve#
Press Change beside the sentence.
- Choose The whole country or Near a place.
- Type a town under Town or city, press Find and pick it.
- Under How far around it, type a distance in miles or km, or leave it empty. Press Add place. Up to 10 places, one country.
- For a tighter area, open Use an exact spot instead: name it, paste the latitude and longitude from a map, add the two-letter country and a distance. Press Add spot.
- Press Save area.
An exact spot is shown by its two numbers with a map link — check it; the name you gave is only a note. Only a person can add one: Madder proposes towns and cities.
4. Approve#
You approve the area you see. If someone changed the draft after you opened it, the approval is refused with This plan changed since you opened it — review it again, and the card reloads.
After approval Madder builds that area and no other. To aim somewhere else, start a new draft. You can still edit the ad set yourself in Meta Ads Manager.
The limits are Meta's#
- Around a town: 10 to 50 miles, or 17 to 80 km (as of October 2026).
- Around an exact spot: 0.63 to 50 miles, or 1 to 80 km, inside the country you named.
- Housing, jobs and credit ads are special ad categories at Meta: no area under 15 miles (25 km). Madder does not create such campaigns; if one is marked so in Ads Manager, it stops instead of widening the area.
If Meta no longer has the place#
When Madder builds the ads it checks each town with Meta again — name, region and country — and afterwards reads back where Meta says the ads are aimed. If anything differs it stops: the campaign stays paused with no ads, and its row reads Ads not built — the area could not be checked with Meta. It never falls back to the whole country. Open the row for the reason, then start a new draft.
If it doesn't work#
- "Meta has no town or city by that name" — try the nearest larger town, or use an exact spot.
- "Around a town Meta takes 10 to 50 miles" — use the town itself, or an exact spot for a smaller area.
- "…is not in the UK" — the two numbers are outside the country. Latitude comes first.