Build audiences for a Koast ad account

On a Koast ad account you build your audiences inside Koast, in Settings, then Audiences. Upload a customer list, build an audience from the people your pixel has seen or from engagement with your pages and videos, then grow any of them into lookalikes. Every audience you build here can be targeted or excluded when you launch.

Before you start

• Switch to the brand whose audiences you want. The tab shows the audiences of the brand's ad account, named in the line under the title: "Custom and lookalike audiences on" followed by the account ID.
• To build from your People, the Koast pixel has to be on your site. See Set up the Koast pixel.
• On a Meta ad account the tab reads "Audiences are built on the ad platform this account runs on. This account manages them in its own ads manager." Build those audiences in Meta Ads Manager.

What the tab shows

Audiences are listed in two groups, Custom audiences and Lookalikes. Each row shows:

• Name and source. The source is Customer list, People filters, Engagement or Lookalike, followed by "auto-refresh" when it rebuilds itself and "on the ad platform" once it has reached it.
• Where it stands. A status, the progress while it's processing, then how many people matched, such as "1,904 of 2,650 matched", and the match rate as a range. The match rate reads "Match rate calculating" until it's ready.
• Actions. Build lookalikes, add people, edit (or rename) and delete.

While any audience is still building, the list updates itself every 15 seconds. Select Refresh to read it again right away.

An engagement audience that's ready reads "Membership maintained by the ad platform", because the ad platform keeps adding people as they engage.

Upload a customer list

1. Select Upload a list.

2. Type an Audience name. If you leave it empty, Koast uses the file name.

3. Choose a CSV file under Customer list. It needs a header row and one customer per row, and it must be under 3 MB.

4. Check which column is which. Koast matches Email, Phone, First name, Last name, Country and Lifetime value to your headers by name. Pick Not in this file for anything you don't have.

5. Select Build audience. The new audience appears in the list as Queued and walks through to Ready on its own.

People are matched by email or phone, so map at least one of those two. To add more people later, select the add people icon on the row and choose a new CSV with the same column headers. The people already in the audience stay. This works on an uploaded list once it has finished building.

Build an audience from your People

Select From your People to build an audience from everyone your pixel and checkout have seen. Start from a template (Recent visitors, Customers, Visited, never bought, Leads, Came from my ads or Start empty), name it, and set:

• Seen in the last: 7, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days, or any other number up to 3650.
• Purchased: Anyone, Customers only or Never bought.
• Under Narrow it down:, the events they fired (including a completed payment at checkout), where they came from, their country, when you first saw them, or one custom event. Pick named events or one custom event, not both.

By default the audience only holds people with an email or phone the ad platform can match. Keep it up to date is on by default and can only be set when you build the audience. With it on, the audience rebuilds from your filters twice a day, and you can edit the filters later from the row. Saving new filters rebuilds it.

Build an audience from engagement

Select From engagement to build an audience of people who engaged with your Facebook page, Instagram profile, videos or lead forms. Start from a template or build the rules yourself: under Include anyone who, pick who, what they did, the page or account, and how far back to look.

You can add up to 10 rules to include people and 10 to exclude them. A few combinations aren't allowed: video rules can't be mixed with other sources, all video rules share one window, and a video audience can't exclude anyone. "Currently like the page" stands alone and has no window.

The page or Instagram account has to be one that can serve ads on this ad account.

Build lookalikes

Select the lookalike icon on a custom audience, set How many audiences (1 to 6) and Total reach (%) (1 to 20), then select Build lookalike. The reach is split evenly into bands from the closest match outwards: 3 audiences at 6% gives 0 to 2%, 2 to 4% and 4 to 6%. The reach must divide evenly by the number of audiences.

A lookalike needs a source audience that's Ready and has at least 100 matched people. Engagement audiences don't need the 100. A lookalike can't be the source of another lookalike.

Rename or delete an audience

Select the edit icon to rename an audience (on an auto-refreshing People audience, it opens the filters instead). Select the delete icon, then Yes, delete. Ad sets that used the audience keep running without it.

Target an audience when you launch

Open the campaign or ad set settings and go to Targeting & Delivery. Pick your audiences under Custom Audiences (Optional), or keep them out under Excluded Custom Audiences (Optional). Both lists show the audiences on the brand's ad account.

At the top of each list, Create a custom audience opens the same upload as Upload a list, so you can add a customer list without leaving the launch. See Targeting for the rest of the targeting options.

Messages you might see