Customer file

Before you begin
Prepare your customer list in advance

To make a Custom Audience from a customer list, you provide us with information about your existing customers and we match this information with Facebook profiles. The information on a customer list is known as an “identifier” (such as email, phone number, address) and we use it to help you find the audiences that you want your ads to reach.

Your customer list can either be a CSV or TXT file that includes these identifiers. To get the best match rates, use as many identifiers as possible while following our formatting guidelines. You can hover over the identifiers to display the formatting rules and the correct column header. For example, first name would appear as fn as a column header in your list.

Next steps

1. Add your customer list: You can create your Custom Audience in Ads Manager. Once in your account, go directly to Audiences, then go to Create audience > Custom Audience > Customer list
2. Prepare your customer list: Select the identifiers to include, then add the customer list that you want to use for your new Custom Audience and give it a name.
3. Review your customer list: Confirm that you mapped your identifiers correctly or check to see that all errors are resolved. You’ll get one of the following notifications:

The green tick symbol means that your identifiers were mapped correctly and are ready to be hashed, then used for the matching process.

The yellow exclamation symbol  means either that you chose not to include certain identifiers or that some identifiers need to be manually updated. You have higher chances of getting a better match rate to build your audience if you make the corrections before uploading your file.

4. Upload your customer list: Once your list has been added and is ready for use, select Upload and Create.

When we’ve finished hashing your customer list information, we’ll let you know that your audience is ready to use. Once ready, you can immediately create an ad to reach your new Custom Audience, or create a Lookalike Audience to find new people who share similar behaviours and interests with your existing customers.

Before you add your list at the beginning of the audience creation process, you need to make sure the column formatting matches the identifier type that Facebook accepts. This helps Facebook process your hashed columns to find matches later on. You’ll also need to make sure your customer information is entered using the correct format types.

For example, if you had a column header that’s for first names, you would rename the column header to fn so it can be mapped properly.

Formatting customer information

The following list shows the information types that Facebook accepts:

MAIN IDENTIFIERS

Identifier type	Column header	Description and formatting guidelines	Examples
Email	email	We accept email addresses in up to 3 separate columns. Only one email can go in each cell. US and international formats are accepted.	username@hotmail.co.uk·        your.name@gmail.com·        myname@yahoo.com
Phone	phone	Phone numbers must include a country code to be used for matching. For example, the number 1 must precede a phone number in the United States. We accept up to 3 phone numbers as separate columns, with or without punctuation.Important: Always include the country code as part of your customers’ phone numbers, even if all of your data is from the same country.	1-234-567-8910·        12345678910·        +44 844 412 4653
Mobile Advertiser ID	madid	We accept 2 types of mobile advertiser IDs: Android’s Advertising ID (AAID), which Google provides as part of Android advertising, and Apple’s Advertising Identifier (IDFA), which Apple provides as part of iOS in its ads framework.	· AECE52E7-03EE-455A-B3C4-E57283966239·        BEBE52E7-03EE-455A-B3C4-E57283966239
Facebook App User ID	uid	An ID corresponding to someone who uses an app that can be retrieved through the Facebook SDK. We accept numerical user IDs associated with your Facebook application.	·        1234567890·        1443637309
Facebook Page User ID	pageuid	An ID corresponding to someone who has interacted with your Facebook Page. We accept numerical user IDs associated with your Facebook Page.	·        0987654321·        9037363441
First Name	fn	We accept first name and first name initial, with or without accents. Initials can be provided with or without a period.	·        John·        F.·        Émilie
Last Name	ln	We accept full last names with or without accents.	·        Smith·        Sørensen·        Jacobs-Anderson

ADDITIONAL IDENTIFIERS

Identifier type	Column header	Description and formatting guidelines	Examples
City	ct	We accept full city names as they normally appear.	·        Paris·        London·        New York
State/Province	st	We accept full names of US and international states and provinces, as well as the abbreviated versions of US states.	·        AZ·        California·        Normandy
Country	country	Country must be provided as an ISO two-letter country code.Important: Always include your customers’ countries in their own column in your list, even if all of your country codes are from the same country. Because we match on a global scale, this simple step helps us match as many people as possible from your list.	·        FR·        US·        GB
Date of Birth	dob	We accept 18 different date formats to accommodate a range of month, day and year combinations, with or without punctuation.	·        MM-DD-YYYY·        MM/DD/YYYY·        MMDDYYYY·        DD-MM-YYYY·        DD/MM/YYYY·        DDMMYYYY·        YYYY-MM-DD·        YYYY/MM/DD·        YYYYMMDD·        MM-DD-YY·        MM/DD/YY·        MMDDYY·        DD-MM-YY·        DD/MM/YY·        DDMMYY·        YY-MM-DD·        YY/MM/DD·        YYMMDD
Year of Birth	doby	We accept year of birth as a 4-digit number, YYYY.	·        1986
Age	age	We accept age as a numerical value.	·        65·        42·        21
Zip/Postal Code	zip	We accept US and international ZIP and postal codes. US ZIP codes may include a 4-digit extension as long as they are separated by a hyphen. The extension is not required and will not further improve match rate.	·        W11 2BQ·        94104-1207·        94104
Gender	gen	We accept gender in the form of an initial, such as F for female and M for male.	·        M·        F