No one knows your customers better than you do! Now you can use that knowledge to your advantage by creating Custom Audiences for targeting based on your first-party data.
You can create Custom Audiences using customer lists or event data:
Customer lists: Create an audience by uploading .csv or .txt file containing customer data you collected directly from your customers
Event data: Create an audience of users who took specific actions, based on activity tracked by the Roku pixel or Events API
Custom Audiences are mapped to Roku households that can then be targeted in (or excluded from) ad campaigns to increase performance, extend your reach, and amplify your message to the right households.
This article will describe when, why, and how to use Custom Audiences.
If you’re interested in learning more about location targeting, please see this article. For more info on standard audiences, go here.
When and why to use Custom Audiences
Custom Audiences are the perfect tool for advertisers who want to use their own data to target their ad campaigns.
Any advertiser can use Custom Audiences as long as they have one of these:
Customer data files (including email addresses, phone numbers, mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), or IP addresses)
Roku Pixel or Events API installed to track events, including via third party partners like Shopify and AppsFlyer
Custom Audiences based on customer lists and event data are well suited for these use cases:
Customer lists:
Updating or upselling current leads or customers on new product offerings or availability.
Removing recent current customers who are unlikely to respond to your ad, leaving you with only net-new customers.
Event data (via Roku Pixel or Events API)
Retargeting customers who visited or took an action your website (like landing your site but not exploring a product page, or adding-to-cart but not completing the purchase) to convert potential customers and/or drive existing customers to buy again.
Removing customers who recently completed a specific action, honing your targeting and reducing waste.
How to create a custom audience
Head to your Audiences page and click “Create audience” to get started.
Next, select which type of audience you’d like to create:
Customer Lists: Create an audience from first-party customer data
Event Data: Create an audience from data gathered from the Roku Pixel or Events API
For Customer Lists, follow these instructions.
For Event Data, follow these instructions.
Note: You can also create new Custom Audiences within your campaign. To do so, find the Audiences fly out and click “Create new”.
Creating a custom audience using a customer list
A Customer List matches data from your customer list (email, phone number, mobile advertiser ID, or IP address) to Roku data, resulting in an audience of your customers to target on Roku.
Creating a Customer List audience is easy! All you need to do is upload your customer list(s) using our templated CSV file (here). We’ll automatically ingest your list and hash your customer information, match it against Roku households, and produce an audience for you to target in or exclude from your campaigns.
Note: Formatting is important! Customer list files must match our format exactly to be uploaded.
Note: If your customer list does not match at least 1,000 Roku households, we can’t create your audience due to privacy concerns.
Follow these steps to create your Customer List audience:
Download our example file to ensure your list matches our required formatting (here).
Add your records into our formatted CSV document.
Upload your Customer list to Ads Manager so we can start creating your audience.
Once your Customer List file is uploaded, it will go through two stages automatically: Uploading and processing.
Stage 1, Uploading: In this stage, Roku checks your file type and format to make sure it is compatible with our platform. This will happen quickly, and once it’s completed, your audience file will be created.
Note: No audience record will be created if there is an error during upload (e.g, incorrect file format.
Stage 2, Processing: This stage begins after successful upload. It can take up to an hour to finalize processing, so feel free to leave the page.
You’ll find that your Customer List audience is automatically created and added to your Audiences page in a “Pending” state while we finish processing your Customer List audience.
Once processing is complete, the status will change to Active. You’ll also see a household count to understand your addressable audience size.
Tip: If your processed file has an error, click the audience to understand how to fix the issue
Your Customer List audience is now active and can be targeted in or excluded from your campaigns as described below.
Including (i.e., targeting) or excluding (i.e., suppressing) Customer List audiences
To include your audience and serve ads to this group of customers:
Go to your campaign
In the Audience section, click “Edit.”
On the Audience fly out, select “Include”
Find your Customer List audience in the Custom Audience field.
To exclude your audience and stop ads from being shown to this group of customers:
Go to your campaign.
In the Audience section, click “Edit.”
On the Audience fly out, select “Exclude.”
Find your Customer List audience with the Custom Audience field.
You will find your newly created Customer List audience on your campaign’s page, beneath any additional audience selections within the Audience card.
If this is a draft campaign, publish your campaign to begin spending. If this is an existing campaign, your changes will be saved automatically.
Note: Customer List audiences expire after 90 days. Pay close attention to this timing to avoid disrupting your campaign activity. You can always recreate the same audience to reset the 90-day expiration.
Creating a custom audience using event data
Event data is a valuable tool that can be used to build dynamic Event-based audiences that ensure your campaigns reach (or avoid) the right customers.
These custom audiences will enable you to target or retarget valuable audiences (for instance, users who have visited or taken action on your website). It’s equally powerful for creating audiences to remove from your campaigns (like recent purchasers).
Event data can come from two places: a Roku Pixel appended to your website code, or data pushed to Roku using our Events API.
You can automatically match this event data to Roku’s Households to create custom audiences consisting of your customers, which you can target or exclude from your ad campaigns
Tip: See these articles for more info on setting up a Roku Pixel or using our Events API to allow you to begin creative Events audiences.
Creating an Events audience is easy! All you’ll need to do is select the timeframe and events that matter to you. We’ll automatically and continuously update your audience to stay within the rules you set, producing an audience for you to include or exclude from your campaigns.
Follow these steps to create your Events audience:
In the “Create Event-Based audience” fly out, enter a lookback window.
This defines how far in the past you want to look for users who fired a specific event (e.g., 30 days, 90 days, etc.).
Choose the event group (if you have more than one) and/or event(s) that you want to include.
These are actions that your customers will need to have taken within the specified timeframe (i.e., page views, purchases, etc.).
You can choose as many events as required to build the right audience.
Click “Create audience” to start building your audience.
After creating your audience it will be added to your Audiences page in a “Pending” state while we finish processing.
Once processing is complete, the status will change to Active. You’ll also see a household count to understand your addressable audience size.
Your Event-Based audience can now be targeted in or excluded from your campaigns as described below.
Note: It can take up to 72 hours for your Event-Based audience to full process. We recommend waiting until audiences are Active to add them to your campaign.
Including (i.e., targeting) or excluding (i.e., suppressing) Event-Based audiences
To include your audience and serve ads to this group of customers:
Go to your campaign.
In the Audience section, click “Edit.”
On the Audience fly out, select “Include.”
Find your Event-Based audience in the Custom Audience field.
To exclude your audience and stop ads from being shown to this group of customers:
Go to your campaign.
In the Audience section, click “Edit.”
On the Audience fly out, select “Exclude.”
Find your Event-Based audience with the Custom Audience field.
You will find your newly created Events audience on your campaign’s page, beneath any additional audience selections within the Audience card.
If this is a draft campaign, publish your campaign and begin spending. If this is an existing campaign, your changes will be saved automatically.
Tip: Events audiences never expire and are continuously updated based on the time frame you’ve selected.
Custom Audience statuses
See the below table to learn more about Custom Audience statuses:
Status | Description |
ACTIVE | Your audience is created and may be applied to a campaign. |
PENDING | This status is for when audiences are still processing. CRM audiences can take up to an hour to fully process whereas Event-Based audiences can take up to 72 hours. |
ERROR | This status is only for Customer List audiences and indicates that either (a) the records within your customer list were not formatted correctly, (b) your matched records are below 1,0000, or (c) there was a system or network error.
|
EXPIRED | This status is only for Customer List audiences and indicates that it has been more than 90 days since your audience was created.
|
FAQs (need to frame as Q/A)
Can I mix & match Customer List and Event-Based audiences for a given campaign?
Yes! Both types of custom audiences can be added to a single campaign. They will be joined by an “or” statement.
Can I use multiple custom audiences for a given campaign?
Yes! When multiple custom audiences are used in a single campaign they are joined by an “or” statement.
Can I edit my custom audience after I create it?
You can edit the custom audience name, but not the underlying customer file or event logic. You can always create new audiences, though!
Why can’t I select certain custom audiences to attach to my campaign?
We do not allow you to attach a custom audience that’s expired, in an error state, or without a household size. This helps prevent downstream issues with ad serving.
My custom audience is Active and showing a household size, so why can’t I see my campaign forecast?
Campaign forecasts for custom audiences can take up to 72 hours.
I’m using an Active custom audience, so why isn’t my campaign delivering as intended?
It’s possible that your audience is too small to scale to your desired budget. We recommend switching to broad targeting until you have enough customers to scale via custom audiences.
I received an email that my custom audience expired and my campaign is paused. What’s going on?
Customer-list audiences expire after 90 days. We send a warning email 7 days before expiration. Once the audience expires, we send another email and pause your campaign. To restart your campaign, remove the expired audience.
You may also create a new customer-list audience, which will restart the 90-day window.
Will my Event-based audience update as new events are triggered?
Yes! Events-based audiences are constantly updating based on the events that have been triggered during the specified lookback window. The lookback window is always being calculated from the current day.
Are Event-based audiences backfilled upon creation?
Yes! Once you create an Event-Based audience we’ll evaluate all the Roku households that took the specified action during the specified lookback window and create the audience.
Best practice? Get your Roku Pixel set up early so you lookback windows are ready before launching.
Can I assign a pending audience to my campaign?
Yes, you can attach a pending audience to your campaign. However, we advise against going live while an audience is pending as it may impact delivery. We’ll warn you before adding a pending audience to your live campaign and before publishing a campaign with a pending audience.
What happens if my Customer List audience expires?
You will receive an email warning 7 days before the audience expires. When the audience expires, you’ll receive another email warning and your campaign will be paused.
Can I use custom audiences from different event groups on a given campaign?
Yes! When multiple custom audiences are used in a single campaign they are joined by an “or” statement.
Can I use both custom and standard audiences in the same campaign?
Yes, but please note that audiences are joined with an “or” statement within an audience category and an “and” statement between categories.
For example, the audience targeting configuration below will target users who are 25-54 AND make $100k+ AND are homeowners AND are in CustomerList1.csv
Do I have to pay extra to use custom audiences?
No, advertisers incur no additional costs by using custom audiences.