Build and manage audiences

Audiences shows every custom and lookalike audience in your Meta ad account. You can build new ones, upload customer lists and see who changed what.

Everything you create here is created in Meta, so it also appears in Meta Ads Manager.

For related setup tasks, read Create a campaign and Create a product catalog.

Before you start

• Connect Meta for this advertiser.
• Open Audiences from the Meta area of the left menu, and check the ad account at the top. Audiences belong to one ad account.

Find an audience

Search by name or audience ID (pasting an ID from Ads Manager jumps straight to it). The list is grouped by type, and each row shows type, delivery status and approximate size.

Click Filter to narrow by:

Filter	Options
Type	App activity, Catalog, Custom, Engagement, Offline
Status	Ready (usable in delivery), Too small, Inactive, Expiring
Size	Small (under 1K), Medium (1K–100K), Large (100K–1M), Very large (1M+)
Sharing	Shared or not shared

Click Refresh after making changes in Ads Manager. Meta reports sizes in rounded steps, so a small audience may show as 1.0K.

Create an audience

Click New audience and pick a type. Each form has a name, optional description and label, and Create audience at the bottom. Nothing is created until you click it.

Type	Who’s in it	Max retention
Website	Visitors matching URL or event rules from your pixel	180 days
Engagement	People who engaged with your Page, Instagram, videos, lead forms, Instant Experiences or shop	730 days
App activity	People who used your app	365 days
Offline activity	People in an offline event set (in-store, phone orders)	180 days
Catalog	People who viewed, added or bought products in a catalog	Not needed
Lookalike	People similar to an existing audience or Page	Not needed

1. Name it clearly

Include the source and time window, for example Cart abandoners 30d. The ID alone won’t tell your team what it is.

2. Set who to include

Choose the source (pixel, Page, app, event set or catalog), the rule or action, and the retention in days. Add more rules with Add inclusion rule.

3. Exclude people (optional)

Add exclusion rules, for example people who already bought, so you don’t pay to show them the same offer.

4. Prefill and create

For website audiences, turn on Prefill with past matches to start with people from the last 180 days. Click Create audience. It may take some time to fill.

How retention works

A person stays in the audience until the retention period ends, counted from their last matching action. Each rule keeps its own retention. Shorter periods give a more active audience; longer ones give more reach. Keep it short for fast-moving products and longer for high-consideration ones.

Creating a lookalike

1. Choose Existing custom audience as the source and pick the audience to copy. Meta recommends a source of a few thousand people or more.
2. Choose one or more target locations.
3. Set the audience size band (0–10% of the population). Smaller bands are closer to your source; wider bands reach more people.
4. Create up to six size bands at once with Number of audiences.
5. Under Advanced, turn on Financial services if your ads fall under those rules.

Build lookalikes from your best customers, not all visitors: a smaller, high-quality source usually wins.

Upload a customer list

Click Customer list to turn a CSV into an audience.

1. Source

Choose a CSV file (first row must be headers), or paste rows and click Parse pasted rows. Download a sample CSV shows the column names to use.

2. Map columns

Match each column to a Meta field, such as Email or Country. Map at least one identifier (email, phone, name, ZIP or an ID). Unmapped columns are skipped.

3. Details & consent

Name the audience, optionally add an https opt-out link, and turn on Limited Data Use if US state privacy laws apply. Confirm your lawful basis and the Custom Audience terms, then click Create audience.

YieldBI hashes personal data before it reaches Meta and doesn’t store raw values. Meta matches only part of any list, so the audience will be smaller than your file.

Update a customer list

Open the audience and click Manage members. Choose to add, remove or replace people, then upload a CSV in the same format.

Warning: Replace removes everyone who isn’t in the new file.

Edit, audit or delete an audience

• Edit changes the name, description, labels and (for customer lists) opt-out link. For some rule-based types the rule is locked, so duplicate the audience and change the copy. Rule changes can take a few hours to refill.
• Audit history lists every change with when, what, who and outcome. Filter by period, person or activity. Times are in UTC.
• Delete removes the audience itself. Check no campaign still depends on it first.

Tip: Check Status before using an audience in a campaign. Too small audiences don’t deliver. For customer lists, also check that consent shows as confirmed.