The Scenario
You are a media planner building a targeting strategy for a fitness brand. The brief calls for reaching people interested in yoga, running, and nutrition across three campaign phases. Before you can configure ad sets, you need to know what Meta actually has in its interest library — audience sizes, exact interest names, and IDs.
The strategy deck is due Monday. It is Friday afternoon.
The bad version of Friday:
- Open Ads Manager, go to Ad Set creation, open the Detailed Targeting field
- Type "yoga" and browse the dropdown — but you cannot export what you see
- Screenshot the results, type them into a sheet by hand
- Repeat for "running" — 20+ interest categories
- Repeat for "nutrition"
- Try to find audience sizes — they appear on hover but cannot be bulk-exported
- You have a partial list with no audience sizes and inconsistent formatting by 5 PM.
One prompt from the sheet builds the full reference library before you pack up.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Google Sheet that can query the Meta Ads targeting search API directly, so you pull interest names, IDs, and audience sizes into the sheet without touching the Ads Manager UI.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Search Meta Ads targeting for interests matching 'yoga', 'running', and 'nutrition'. For each result, write the interest name, interest ID, and estimated audience size into this sheet. Group results by search term with a header row for each group.
SheetXAI runs three targeting searches, collects all results, and writes them into the sheet grouped by keyword. You have a complete interest reference with audience sizes before you leave the office.
What You Get
A structured targeting reference sheet:
- Interest name — exact spelling as it appears in Meta's targeting system
- Interest ID — the ID you use when building ad sets via API
- Estimated audience size — the reach number Meta returns for each interest
- Grouped by search term — yoga results, then running results, then nutrition results
The interest IDs are what matter most. When your media buyer configures ad sets, they paste IDs, not names — names can be ambiguous, IDs are exact. This sheet is the handoff artifact between planning and execution.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Targeting research rarely stays at three keywords.
When you need location targeting options alongside interests
The campaign targets three specific metro areas. You need the Meta location keys, not just interest IDs.
Look up Meta Ads location targeting options for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Write the matching location key, location name, and type (city/region/country) into columns A through C. Then below that, search for interests matching 'fitness' and 'gym' and write interest name, ID, and audience size into columns E through G.
When the brand has a specific competitor's audience to target
The brief mentions targeting people who follow competitor brands. You want to check if those brands appear as interests.
Search Meta Ads targeting for interests matching each brand name in column A of this sheet. For each search, write the best-matching interest name, ID, and audience size into columns B, C, and D. If no match is found, write 'no match' in column B.
When you want to filter interests by minimum audience size
Small audience interests are not viable for the campaign scale. You only want interests with an audience above 500,000.
Search Meta Ads targeting for interests matching 'yoga', 'running', and 'nutrition'. Write all results into this sheet with interest name, ID, and estimated audience size. Then in column D, write 'viable' if the audience size is above 500000 and 'too small' if below. Sort by audience size descending.
When you need the full targeting research document — interests, locations, and demographics — in one sheet for the strategy deck
The Monday deck needs a complete targeting appendix.
Run the following targeting research and write results into separate tabs: (1) Search for interests matching the keywords in column A of the Keywords tab — write name, ID, audience size into a tab called 'Interests'. (2) Look up location keys for the cities in column A of the Locations tab and write location key, name, and type into a tab called 'Locations'. Sort both tabs by audience size descending.
The pattern: instead of building the targeting reference manually from hover tooltips in Ads Manager, you describe the research and SheetXAI runs it end to end.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull Meta Ads targeting data into any Google Sheet you have open. The Meta Ads integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related work, see how to launch bulk campaigns from a targeting brief or the Meta Ads in Google Sheets overview.