Manage audiences

Audience Management lets you view and create audiences for retargeting and lookalike expansion across ad platforms. You can also build customer lists from Cascade's measurement tag and connected ecommerce and CRM data, then continuously sync them to each ad platform. Settings for sending results such as closed orders and friend adds to ad platforms are also available on this screen.

Open Ad Settings > Audience Management from the left menu.

What you can do

Requirements

• Available on the Business plan. Guests cannot view this screen.

• Connect the ad platforms you want to use in Settings > Integrations. Only connected ad platforms appear as tabs.

• Owners, Admins, and Editors can create and delete ad account audiences.

• Owners and Admins can create customer lists, add or remove sync destinations, start or stop conversion feedback, and change the data usage policy. Editors can also stop or resume existing customer lists, refresh their data, and create lookalike audiences.

• When creating or syncing customer lists, make sure you have obtained consent to share customer information with ad platforms under your terms of service and privacy policy.

Steps

1. View ad account audiences

In the Ad account audiences tab, only connected ad platforms appear as tabs. Supported ad platforms are Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Yahoo! Display Ads, Amazon Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Microsoft Ads, Yahoo! Search Ads, X Ads, and SmartNews Ads.

Switch to an ad platform's tab to see its audiences. Use the filters at the top to search by name, type, or status.

2. Create a new audience

Click Create audience at the top right to create an audience for the currently selected ad platform in 3 steps.

1. In Select type, select an audience type available for that ad platform.

2. In Details, fill in the fields for the selected type (such as name, retention period, customer list, and source audience).

3. Check the details in Review. If you use a customer list, select the consent checkbox, then click Create.

Audience types

• Customer list — Upload email addresses or phone numbers for matching. Enter 1 entry per line (entries containing @ are treated as email addresses; others are treated as phone numbers). CSV header rows and name columns are automatically ignored. Google Ads requires at least 100 entries in total across email addresses and phone numbers. Microsoft Ads and LinkedIn Ads accept email addresses only.

• Website visitors — Target users who visited your site based on the measurement tag. In Google Ads, Meta Ads, Yahoo! Display Ads, and Microsoft Ads, filter by URL rules (contains, equals, or does not contain). In TikTok Ads, filter by pixel events (such as page views). In SmartNews Ads, specify a URL prefix match. In Yahoo! Display Ads, select the source tag from Measurement Tag / Site Retargeting Tag.

• App users — Specify your audience based on app event tracking.

• Engagement — Target users who interacted with ads or posts.

• Similar audience — Select an existing audience as the source audience and choose an expansion size (1–10). Some ad platforms also require a target country. Values closer to 1 prioritize similarity to the source list and precision. Values closer to 10 prioritize broader reach.

Audience types available by ad platform

When options cannot be retrieved

Fields that load options such as pages, pixels, or tags from an ad platform distinguish between retrieval failures and cases where no options exist, and show the reason for a failure.

• If retrieval fails — "(Option name) could not be read. Check the connection status and try again later."

• If only some options are retrieved — "Some (option name) could not be read. If options are missing, try again later."

• If the connected account has no options — "The connected account has no (option name). Set them up on the ad platform first."

In all cases, click Retry to reload. If no options appear, you can also enter an ID directly after checking it in the ad platform's management screen.

3. Delete an audience

In Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Yahoo! Display Ads, Microsoft Ads, X Ads, OpenAI Ads, and SmartNews Ads, select a row to delete the audience. This action cannot be undone.

You can only delete audiences created in Cascade. Audiences created on the ad platform, Saved audiences in Meta Ads, and Lookalike audiences in Google Ads are excluded. You may not be able to delete audiences used by active campaigns. In X Ads, an audience may remain in the list with a Deleted status on the ad platform.

4. Create and sync a customer list

In the Customer lists tab, group customers identified through Cascade's measurement tag and connected ecommerce and CRM data into lists by purpose. These lists continuously sync as custom audiences on ad platforms. Unlike manually uploaded customer lists, they update automatically whenever new customers are added.

1. Click Create customer list.

2. In Type, select the type of customer list to create.

3. In Period, specify the customer lookback period in days (1–730 days). If left blank, the period is 90 days for prospects, 180 days for dormant customers, and all time for other types. For high-value customers, also enter a purchase amount threshold.

4. In Consent, review the consent details for sharing customer information with ad platforms and select the checkbox. Select the ad platforms to sync to, then click Create.

You can sync to Meta Ads, Yahoo! Display Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, and OpenAI Ads. You cannot create a duplicate customer list while one with the same criteria is active. There is a limit on the number of customer lists you can activate.

The list shows Name / Status / Criteria / Customer Count / Email match / Last updated / Sync destinations. The row menu provides the following actions.

• Refresh data — Recount eligible customers using the latest tracking results.

• Stop / Resume — Stop or resume list updates and syncing.

• Sync to ad platforms — Sync immediately to the configured destinations.

• Add sync destination / Remove sync destinations — Change sync destinations by ad platform. When removing a destination, you can choose whether to also delete the list on the ad platform.

• Create lookalike audience — Create a lookalike audience on the ad platform using the synced list as the source.

Sync statuses appear as Pending, Syncing, Synced, Failed, Waiting for customers, or Pending. In TikTok Ads, you cannot use an audience for ad delivery until at least 1,000 people are matched. A warning appears when there is significant overlap between targeting and exclusion lists.

Automated recommended audiences

When you sync a customer list to an ad platform, Cascade AI sends a proposal to Ad Optimization that combines "create a list > sync to an ad platform > exclude purchasers > create a lookalike audience." If you enable Automated recommended audiences at the top of the Customer lists tab, future proposals are configured automatically without an approval step, and you receive notifications of the results. Owners and Admins can enable this setting by reviewing the consent details and clicking Agree and enable.

5. Set up conversion feedback

The Conversion feedback tab has the following 3 settings.

For sending closed order and purchase data and LINE friend adds, see Send order data to ad platforms. For sending website results, see Send website conversions to ad platforms.

Troubleshooting

Related articles

• Use Targeting Optimization

• Send order data to ad platforms

• Send website conversions to ad platforms

• Send website conversions to Microsoft Ads (set up enhanced conversions)

• Post ads

• Track inquiries, bookings, and purchases (install the tag)