Custom Audiences

Match Process
Learn how your email address, phone number and Facebook user ID lists are used to build custom audiences in your Facebook account.

Custom Audiences: Match Process | 2! ! What are custom audiences?

Custom audiences let marketers to find their offline audiences on Facebook. Using email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user IDs to make the match, you can now find the exact people you want to talk to, in custom audiences that are defined by what you already know. This means that in addition to targeting the types of people you want to reach among the Facebook population, you can now also reach segments of specific people based on information you have about your own, offline audiences.

How does custom audience creation work?

1. Audience definition: You segment your known customer base into groups of people you want to target with specific messages or objectives. Each audience is represented by a list of emails, phone numbers or UIDs. Each list should represent a meaningful audience segment. 2. Hashing: When you upload your list into power editor, Facebooks browser-based ad management tool, the tool hashes the list on your own computer. This converts the lists contents into a set of encoded hashes. 3. Upload: The list of hashes is sent to Facebooks servers. Your list of emails or phone numbers is not sent to Facebook. 4. M atch: The hashed list is compared to hashed records in the Facebook system. 5. Custom audience creation: Whenever theres a match, the corresponding Facebook UID is added to the custom audience you created in your account. At the end of this process, matched and unmatched hashes are discarded.

Ad targeting: Your custom audience is stored in your account for use in ad targeting and exclusion. The size of your matched audience is visible in the power editor, along with a reach estimate for any ad targeting you choose. No personal data about the individuals is shared.

Custom Audiences: Match Process | 3! ! Data Processing Top things to note:

The list that you upload is not shared with Facebook. When you input a list of email addresses or phone numbers, the list will be one-way hashed on your computer before being sent to Facebook. Facebook only receives a list of hashes. Facebooks system does not convert your hashes back into plaintext addresses or phone num bers. Rather, the uploaded hashes are matched to Facebooks hashes, generating your custom audience of matched Facebook users. All hashes are discarded after the m atching process, whether or not each one matched successfully. Only the custom audience of matched Facebook IDs is preserved. You cant segm ent the audience through Facebook. To create meaningful audiences on Facebook, choose customer segments that are important to your business objectives, and upload lists that correspond to those segments. The custom audience of matched Facebook IDs is stored in the account in which it was created. It will not be shared with other advertisers for targeting without your consent. If you remove people from an existing audience, the system will update the remove the IDs from the audience and wont maintain a record of removed users or deleted audiences. Facebook does not share personal information about the people in an audience with advertisers.

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More detail on how emails, phone numbers or UID lists are processed:

Youll be given access to the Audiences tool in power editor, Facebooks ad management tool, which is accessed through a web browser. Youll use power editor to process a file of email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook UIDs. When you put a list into power editor, it is hashed using one-way M D5 hashing on your local computer. This creates an encoded version of the list that can't be read directly but can be used to match the advertisers information to Facebook user info. Once the encryption is complete, power editor calls Facebook's API (over a secure HTTPS connection) and sends the list of hashes to begin the match process.

This means that the em ail list will be one-way hashed before being sent to Facebook and will not be read or stored in plain text by Facebook. The hashed information sent to Facebook will not be decrypted.

Facebook's system will compare the hashes with Facebook's one-way hashes to find the people youre trying to reach.

If Facebook recognizes a hash, it adds the associated person to the audience. If Facebook does not recognize the hash, then it is thrown away. All inform ation is discarded after the m atching process.

The format of the hash is "CRC-32" followed by an underscore, followed by MD5 of the lowercased normalized address.

How lists are stored and rem oved:

The matched Facebook user IDs will be added to the custom audience associated with your account. Audiences are lists of Facebook user IDs.

If you add or remove people from an existing audience, the system will update within days to the remove the UID from the audience. People youve removed or audiences youve deleted wont be saved on Facebook. This ensures you can remain in compliance with any user opt-outs or other changes to your targeting strategy.

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How the custom audiences you create are used:

Audiences are stored in the account in which they were created.

If you give anyone access to your account directly, through account groups, or any future account access structure, they will have access to any audiences youve created in that account, for use in that account.

Facebook won't share your audiences with other advertisers without your perm ission or unless required by law . For more information about how Facebook uses information, please review the Data Use Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/advertising