What Is a Custom Audience and How Is It Built From My DataUpdated 5 days ago

A Custom Audience on Meta is built from data the store already owns — website visitors, past buyers, email subscribers or social media engagers — rather than broad interest targeting based on Meta's general categorization.

Custom Audiences are the most valuable in any Meta Ads account because they are built from people who already demonstrated specific interest in this brand.

Here is how I build Custom Audiences from the store's data during setup:

Website visitor audiences segmented by behavior:

• All website visitors in the last 30, 60 and 90 days
• Product page viewers who did not add to cart
• Add to cart visitors who did not complete the purchase

Past buyer audience — built from the Shopify customer list or Pixel purchase events. Used to exclude existing buyers from acquisition campaigns and to seed Lookalike Audiences.

Lookalike Audiences — once the past buyer audience is built, Meta creates a Lookalike finding new people who share behavioral and demographic similarities with real buyers. This is the most scalable cold audience available because it is sourced from genuine buyer data.

Email subscriber audience — the email list imported and matched to Meta users for retargeting subscribers who have not yet purchased.