Audiences

‹ Caitlin's SandboxCONCEPT · NOT BUILT · FIGURES ARE ILLUSTRATIVE

Audiences belong to the client, not to a campaign, so they sit on the client profile in a new Targeting tab, next to the Library. Built once, then picked in any brief, media plan or live campaign. Negative keyword lists live in the same tab (see the Search toolkit concept).

Clients › Calderbrook University4 platforms connected

ProfileProjectsLibraryTargetingSettings

People you can target or exclude in any campaign for this client.

Audience	Type	Google	Meta	TikTok	Microsoft	Used in
Current applicants Uploaded 2 Oct · 1,840 people	Customer list	Ready	Ready	Ready	Ready	3 campaigns, excluded
Alumni 2018-2024 Uploaded today · 12,400 people	Customer list	Matching, up to 48h	Matching	Ready	Matching	Not used yet
Course page visitors, 30 days Website rule · pages containing /courses	Website visitors	~6,200	~4,900	Filling	Tag not found	2 campaigns, targeted
Lookalike of current applicants Similar people in the UK · 3%	Lookalike	Signal only	Ready	Ready	Not offered	1 campaign

Each audience is created separately on every platform, so status is shown per platform. Hover a status for what it means. How ad platforms are structured

The user uploads a spreadsheet of existing customers. Emails and phone numbers are scrambled (hashed) before they leave the browser, and Snifferdog™ keeps only each platform's audience ID, never the list.

Retargeting audiences are rules, not lists. Snifferdog™ offers simple presets and translates each one into every platform's own rule. They only work if the tracking tag is firing, so the tag check from the pre-launch checklist appears here too.

One “Lookalike” button, but it behaves differently per platform, so the screen says exactly what each one will do. Only audiences big enough to use can be a source.

Audiences are picked, not built, inside a campaign: in the media plan before launch, and in live edit mode afterwards. Same panel in both places. Each audience can be targeted or excluded.

Calderbrook - January Intake › Media plan › MetaDraft

AudiencesManage on the Targeting tab

Show ads to

Course page visitors, 30 daysLookalike of current applicants

Don't show ads to

Current applicants

PickerWhat the user sees after pressing + Add

Audience	Size on Meta
Alumni 2018-2024	Still matching
Course page visitors, 30 days	~4,900	Added
Current applicants	1,610 matched	Excluded

How each platform uses this. Meta and TikTok target these audiences directly. Google Performance Max treats them as signals, a hint rather than a limit. On Google Search they're used to adjust bids, not to restrict who sees the ad.

On a live campaign, adding or removing an audience on Meta or TikTok counts as a big change and can restart learning. Snifferdog™ shows this in the review step before anything is published. Learn more

Decisions so far

Audiences belong to the client, on a new Targeting tab on the client profile, next to the Library. Negative keyword lists sit on the same tab.
Built once, picked anywhere: the media plan, the editor and live edit mode all use the same picker, with Target and Exclude.
Status is per platform, because each audience is really four separate audiences, one per platform, that fill and match at different speeds.
One Lookalike button, with the screen spelling out what each platform will actually do.

Build order

Tracking check (API-15, already live). Retargeting is useless without working tags.
Customer list upload (API-16, in build).
Website visitors (API-17).
Lookalikes on Meta and TikTok (API-01). Easy once 2 and 3 exist.
Google lookalike segments (API-18). Only once Snifferdog™ can build Demand Gen campaigns.

How it maps to each platform

Audience type	Google Ads	Meta	TikTok	Microsoft Ads
Customer list	Customer Match. Eligibility rules mean some new or low-spend accounts can't use it.	Custom audience from a customer list. Terms must be accepted once per ad account, possibly inside Meta.	Custom audience (customer file).	Customer list.
Website visitors	Remarketing list from the Google tag.	Website custom audience from the Pixel.	Pixel audience.	UET remarketing list.
Lookalike	No lookalikes for Search (similar audiences retired in 2023). Lookalike segments in Demand Gen only. Lists act as signals in Performance Max.	Lookalike audience, 1 to 10% of a country.	Lookalike audience, Narrow, Balanced or Broad.	TO CONFIRM what's available.
How it's used	Search: bid adjustments (observation). Performance Max: signal. Demand Gen: targeting.	Targeting or exclusion.	Targeting or exclusion.	Bid adjustments or targeting.
Minimum sizes	TO CONFIRM Every platform has a minimum matched size before an audience will serve, and they differ. Read them from the APIs and show “Filling” or “Too small” rather than hard-coding.

Privacy

Customer lists are personal data even when hashed. Hashing protects the data in transit; it doesn't make it anonymous. The client is the controller and must have a lawful basis to use the list for advertising; Snifferdog™ is processing it on their behalf.

Hash in the browser (SHA-256, after normalising: lower-case, trimmed emails, phone numbers in international format) so the raw list never reaches our servers.
Keep only platform audience IDs. No file, no hashes, no match results beyond counts.
Consent tick box on every upload, logged with who ticked it and when.
Terms and privacy policy need a section on customer lists before this ships. Add to the solicitor's list.
Exclusion lists (for example current applicants) are the most valuable use for universities and carry the same obligations.

Watch-outs

Matching takes hours, up to a couple of days, so the UI needs a “Matching” state rather than a spinner.
New retargeting audiences start empty. Don't let a campaign launch targeting only an audience that's still filling.
Adding or removing audiences on a live Meta or TikTok campaign restarts learning. Use the shared learning-phase warning.
Users will expect “lookalike” to behave the same everywhere. It doesn't, so never hide the Google difference.

Open questions for the devs

Can Meta's custom audience terms be accepted through the API, or is it a one-off step in Meta?
How does Snifferdog™ detect Google Customer Match eligibility before upload, rather than after a failure?
Minimum audience sizes per platform, and whether the APIs return estimated sizes we can show.
What Microsoft supports for lookalikes today.

Help Centre

Linked: Tracking 101, Create and install a Microsoft UET tag, The learning phase explained.
To write: “Customer lists: what we do with your data”, “Retargeting website visitors”, “Lookalikes on each platform”, and a glossary entry for audience signals.

Written 9 Oct 2026 from the API difficulty sheet. Platform rules change, so re-check before the build starts.