Custom audiences is an option for ad audiences that helps advertisers identify existing audiences among users on Facebook.

You can create custom audiences based on different sources, such as customer lists, website visitors, app traffic, or interactions on Facebook. These audiences consist of people who are already familiar with your business.

There are different types of custom audiences you can create:

1. Custom audiences for website visitors
2. Custom audiences based on app activity
3. Custom audiences based on customer lists
4. Custom audiences based on interactions

You can create up to 500 custom audiences per ad account.

When you are ready to expand your business, you can use your custom audiences to create lookalike audiences.Lookalike audiences consist of people who are similar to those who already interact with your business and who you want to target for marketing.

Learn more about lookalike audiences here.

We will go through:

1. About the integration
2. Installation
3. Creating segments in Rule
4. How often can you update?
5. Encryption
6. Troubleshooting

About the integration

With Rule's integration to Facebook audiences, you can press the "Connect" button inside the segment in Rule. This will create a new custom audience in Facebook Audiences with active subscribers from the segment.

Examples of segmentations from Rule to Facebook Audiences could be subscribers who have not made a purchase in 120 days, by creating a custom audience for these subscribers, you can reach them in more channels than email and SMS.

Installation

In order for the integration to work, you need to have a Facebook Business account with Ads Manager connected. If you have multiple business accounts connected to Facebook Ads Manager, you will choose which account to connect during the login step.

When sending an audience to Facebook for the first time, you will need to log in to your Facebook Business account and accept the terms below.

Creating segments in Rule

1. Click on 'Subscribers' to bring down the dropdown menu
2. Click on 'Segment'

Then choose an already set up segment, or create a new one. If you are unsure how to create a segment, you can read more about it here!

1. Once you are in your segment, click on 'Connect external audience'
2. Then 'Connect' to Facebook audiences

When Rule and Facebook are connected, the subscribers will be transferred immediately and you will receive a notification that the export has been successful. If there are a large number of subscribers (100,000 or more, it may take a few minutes)

1. Here you can see if it is connected
2. Which account is connected
3. How many customers have been added to the segment
4. Here you have the option to sync again

When logging in to https://business.facebook.com/ and clicking on "Audiences" the newly created audience will be there, and you can see the number of rows (subscribers) from the segment.

How often can you update?

We use a replace list when updating, as it does not affect any current campaigns you may have running. This means that each update must be reviewed by Facebook and can take up to 24 hours before a new list can be sent. We will display a message if the audience is not ready for an update while it is being processed.

You can also check the status under Facebook Audiences by clicking on Audiences -> Actions -> Edit. If "Replace customers" is greyed out, it means that Facebook is working on the changes from Rule. If you need a new updated audience while an older one is being processed, we recommend creating a new segment. Keep in mind that changes to audiences can take up to 48 hours before they are reflected in campaigns according to Facebook.

Encryption

All data sent to Facebook is encrypted with the SHA256 Algorithm. You can read more about how Facebook describes the encryption of user information. 

Troubleshooting

If an audience does not want to be sent from Rule to a Facebook Business account, you can try creating a manual audience in Facebook and importing test subscribers.

Please contact support@rule.se with any questions!