For years, Indian performance marketers have had to guess their way into high-income audiences. You’d build lookalikes off luxury buyers. Stack interests like iPhones, golf, or designer brands. Try your luck with manual filters. Sometimes it worked. Most times, not really.

And when Meta removed interest exclusions in March 2025, that already thin control disappeared.

But this week, Meta quietly rolled out something big: Household Income (HHI) targeting is now available in India.

You can now target income brackets like:

• Top 10%
• 11–20%
• 21–30%
  …and more, depending on your account.

Just to let you know, this is the same system that’s been available to U.S. advertisers for over six years. However, it has its own power and limitations. Here’s how to use it well, and what to watch out for.

You’re not targeting individual income. You’re targeting the household a person belongs to.

This is crucial.

Meta’s HHI targeting is based on estimated household income brackets, not personal salary. It looks at where a user lives, who they live with, and possibly what kind of area that is.

For example, imagine someone earning ₹40,000 a month but living in a home with 3 other working adults. The combined household income could place them in the Top 30% bracket, even if individually, they wouldn’t qualify.

• In the U.S., these income bands are cleanly tied to ZIP-code level averages.
• In India, Meta hasn’t published its data methodology. No word on whether it’s based on PIN codes, sensor zones, third-party datasets, or modelled income segments.

That means: treat the data as directional. Not absolute. If you expect laser precision, you’ll misread results. If you run clean tests and read the patterns, you’ll uncover real insights.

Why Household Income (HHI) targeting matters more right now?

Back on March 31, 2025, Meta removed the ability to exclude interests from campaigns. And, on June 10, those exclusions disappeared from boosted posts too.

For example, earlier you could tell Meta: “Don’t show this ad to users interested in ‘discount stores’, ‘free shipping’, or ‘budget travel’.”

So if you were running a premium brand or high-ticket service, your ad delivery got riskier. You couldn’t stop your ad from reaching the wrong segments. This lead to more impressions and less conversions.

Now, with HHI targeting, you can finally segment from the top:

• Serve creative that fits the actual economic context of your buyer.
• Test offer styles across bands — concierge delivery for Top 10%; EMI plans for 21–30%.
• Read ROAS and AOV shifts across brackets and reallocate spend with clarity.

How can Indian advertisers test the all new HHI targeting without wasting ad budget?

If you already have a winning ad set:

1. Duplicate it.
2. Create two versions:
   • One targeting Top 10%
   • Another targeting 11–20% or Top 25%, depending on what your account shows.
3. Keep creative, placements, budget, and bids the same.
4. Run each until you hit a stat floor (e.g. 3–5k impressions or 30+ clicks).
5. Keep a check on metrics like:
   • CPA (Cost Per Action)
   • ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
   • AOV (Average Order Value)
6. Shift 20–40% spend to the stronger band.
7. Refine creatives for the runner-up, then repeat.

This isn’t complex. It’s just controlled testing with a variable you never had before.

You might not see Household Income targeting just yet

Like other Meta features, we can expect the rollout to be gradual.

So, try this path in Ads Manager:

• Go to Detailed Targeting
• Click Browse
• Open Demographics → Financial → Household Income

Or just search for “income” in the targeting box.

Still not showing? Use affluent geo overlays or lookalikes seeded from high-ticket converters as a temporary substitute.

Don’t forget to re-check weekly. Meta hasn’t formally announced the rollout, but new accounts are being added quietly.

Who benefits the most from income-based targeting?

This feature is built for marketers with margin to protect. If you’re spending to acquire high-value leads or premium buyers, income targeting can help you reduce waste and focus creative.

Think:

• Real estate teams who screen leads
• Luxury brands with tight ROAS targets
• Financial products with eligibility filters
• High-ticket education offers

Restrictions that already exist in US

In the U.S., Meta doesn’t allow HHI targeting for ads in categories like housing, employment, credit, healthcare, and finance.

It’s unclear whether these restrictions apply in India yet. But we recommend assuming similar limitations are coming — especially if you’re running campaigns in any regulated sector.

This basically boils down to Meta’s core advertising principle. Focus on value fit, not exclusivity.

Bottom line: Test it, but don’t bet your entire budget on it (yet)

Meta’s Household Income targeting in India is a welcome move. It creates space for smarter creative decisions. And it opens up new ways to segment your spend based on economic context.

But this is India — and income data here is a real challenge.

The majority of Indian households operate in the unorganised sector. Income flows are irregular, undocumented, and often hidden by design. There’s a deeply rooted cultural hesitation around discussing or displaying personal wealth.

Unlike Western markets (where financial behavior is often visible through credit systems and public records), Indian families are far more private, sometimes even secretive, about what they earn – or what they own. So, it beats me – how can a tech platform operating from modeled digital signals provide this level of data?

It doesn’t mean the feature is useless. It just means you shouldn’t take the targeting at face value. Expect patterns, not precision. Use it as a filter, not a funnel. And always validate what you’re seeing with actual performance data: CPA, ROAS, AOV, and downstream funnel metrics.

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