In this guide
- Meta custom audiences come from website events, customer lists and engagement.
- Website audiences are built from pixel and Conversions API events, so server events make them larger and more accurate.
- Use them for retargeting, exclusions and as the source for lookalikes.
Custom audiences are one of the most useful tools in Meta advertising, and one of the most affected by tracking quality. If your pixel misses events, your audiences are smaller than your real traffic, and your retargeting reaches fewer people. This page explains the audience types, the practical rules and how server-side events help. Meta changes its options and limits, so check Ads Manager for the current ones. See Facebook tracking and Meta event match quality.
The types
| Type | Built from | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Pixel and Conversions API events: visitors, product viewers, add to cart, purchasers | Retargeting and exclusions |
| Customer list | Hashed e-mail, phone and other identifiers you upload | Target or exclude customers, seed lookalikes |
| Engagement | People who interacted with your video, page, Instagram or lead forms | Warm audiences |
| App activity | Events from your app | App retargeting |
Works with your stack
Grab a logo and throw it. These are the tools Open Tracked already talks to.
Website audiences and retention
Website audiences are rules such as "people who viewed a product in the last 30 days but did not buy". Meta lets you choose a retention period up to a maximum (commonly 180 days for website audiences). The audience refills as events arrive. If events are missing, the audience is smaller. Server-side events with matching data add the visitors the browser missed. See Conversions APIs explained.
Customer lists
Upload hashed e-mail and phone, with other fields if you have them. Meta matches them to accounts. The match rate depends on your data. Refresh the list regularly and remove people who unsubscribed. You need consent to use the data for advertising. See customer lists in Google Ads for the same idea on Google.
Orders from your store, back to the ad that earned them
Your store sends the order once. Open Tracked passes it on to each ad platform, cleaned and deduplicated.
Lookalike audiences
A lookalike audience finds people similar to a source audience. The source should be a good one: high-value customers or recent purchasers, not all visitors. Meta needs a minimum number of people in the source and recommends more for better results. A clean source list improves everything built on it.
Use them well
Exclusions
Exclude purchasers from acquisition campaigns, so you stop paying to reach existing customers.
Retargeting by stage
Show product viewers a different ad from cart abandoners.
Seed audiences
Build lookalikes from your best customers.
Refresh
Update lists and check sizes.
Make the audience data better
- Send server-side purchase and lead events with hashed e-mail and phone.
- Keep
fbpandfbcalive with Cookie Keeper (every plan in Open Tracked). - Add stored data for returning visitors with the Data Store and Enricher.
- Respect consent for audience building.
Privacy
Audiences are built from personal data. Have a lawful basis and a clear notice, honour opt-outs and avoid sensitive categories. See GDPR and server-side tracking.
Check your tracking in one pass
This is an example. Run the check on your own site to see where yours stands.
Frequently asked questions
What are Facebook custom audiences?
Audiences built from your own data: website events, customer lists and engagement with your content.
How do server events affect audiences?
They add events the browser missed, so website audiences are larger and more accurate.
What should I use as a lookalike source?
High-value customers or recent purchasers, not all visitors.
Do I need consent for customer lists?
You need a lawful basis, usually consent for advertising.
How often should I refresh a list?
Weekly or monthly, and remove people who unsubscribe.
Do I need spreadsheets to read my results?
No. Once tracking is live, the Open Tracked analytics shows spend, revenue, ROAS and profit, and you can ask Ari, the built-in AI assistant, questions about your own numbers in plain words. Ari's allowance depends on your analytics plan.
Is Open Tracked different from Open Track or Open Space Track?
No. Open Tracked is the official name of our server-side tracking platform, and the website is opentracked.io. Many people search for it as Open Track, OpenTrack or Open Space Track. All of them lead to the same product: server-side Google Tag Manager hosting, first-party analytics and a CRM pipeline.
Fix your tracking at the source
Open Tracked hosts your server-side Tag Manager, keeps first-party cookies alive and shows what each ad is really worth.
The Open Tracked team
We build Open Tracked: server-side tracking hosting, analytics and the tools around them, for stores that spend on ads. Questions about this guide, or an idea for the next one?
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