Meta Custom Audience Destination

MessageGears supports publishing audiences directly to Meta (Facebook) as a Custom Audience. This allows you to take CRM-derived segments built in MessageGears and use them to power paid targeting campaigns across Meta technologies — including Facebook, Instagram, and the Meta Audience Network — enabling retargeting, lookalike modeling, and suppression lists.

Prerequisites

Before setting up the Meta destination, make sure the following are in place:

• A valid Meta Business account with at least one active Ad account
• Admin-level permissions on the Meta Business account (required to grant third-party app access)
• A MessageGears audience or Blueprint ready to publish — see Creating and Editing Audiences and Blueprints for Campaign Segmentation

Step 1: Authorize MessageGears to access your Meta Ad account

MessageGears connects to Meta via OAuth. You must authorize the connection once before any audiences can be published.

1. MessageGears will provide you with a Meta authorization link. Click the link to begin.
2. If you are not already logged in, you will be prompted to sign in to your Meta Business account.
3. Review the permissions requested by MessageGears and click Confirm to approve access.
4. After approval, you will be redirected to a MessageGears confirmation page. No further action is required on your part.

Once authorization is complete, MessageGears will associate your Meta Ad account with your MessageGears account and configure the destination on your behalf.

info

If you manage multiple Meta Ad accounts, make sure you are logged in to the correct Business account before completing the authorization flow.

Step 2: Data requirements and hashing

Meta requires that all personally identifiable information (PII) is hashed before it is transmitted. MessageGears can handle this automatically, or you can provide pre-hashed data.

Supported identifier types

Meta Custom Audiences support the following identifier types. More identifiers generally lead to higher match rates.

Identifier	Field Name	Format Before Hashing
Email address	EMAIL	Lowercase, whitespace trimmed
Phone number	PHONE	Remove symbols, letters, and leading zeros
Gender	GEN	m for male, f for female
Birth year	DOBY	YYYY (1900 to present)
Birth month	DOBM	MM (01–12)
Birth day	DOBD	DD (01–31)
First name	FN	Lowercase, a–z only, UTF-8
Last name	LN	Lowercase, a–z only, UTF-8
First initial	FI	Lowercase, a–z only, no punctuation
State	ST	Two-character US state code, lowercase
City	CT	Lowercase, no punctuation or whitespace
Zip code	ZIP	First 5 digits (US); area/district code (UK), lowercase
Country	COUNTRY	ISO alpha-2 country code, lowercase
Mobile advertiser ID	MADID	Lowercase, hyphens preserved
External ID	EXTERN_ID	Your own identifier (e.g., loyalty ID, CRM ID)

Hashing

All PII fields are hashed using SHA-256 before being sent to Meta. MessageGears applies normalization and hashing automatically if the Apply Vendor Obfuscation option is enabled on your destination. If your data is already hashed upstream, this option can be disabled to avoid double-hashing.

tip

If you are unsure whether your data is pre-hashed, leave Apply Vendor Obfuscation enabled. MessageGears Support can confirm the correct setting for your configuration.

Audience action types

When configuring the campaign, you can choose how MessageGears interacts with your existing Meta audience:

Action	Behavior
Add	Adds the records to the existing audience
Remove	Removes the records from the existing audience
Replace	Replaces all existing members with the new list
Use Audience Data	Uses the audience data without modifying membership

California residents and CCPA (Limited Data Use)

If you have California-based users in your audience, you can enable the Limited Data Use flag on the destination. When enabled, Meta will apply California-specific data processing restrictions to those users automatically.

Step 3: Build your audience in MessageGears

Use the MessageGears audience builder or a Blueprint to define the segment you want to send to Meta.

Your audience data should include at least one supported identifier field. Including multiple identifier types (e.g., email and phone) increases match rates. Ensure the data is clean and properly formatted before publishing.

For guidance on building audiences and Blueprints, see:

• Creating and Editing Audiences
• Blueprints for Campaign Segmentation

Step 4: Create an External Campaign targeting the Meta destination

Once your audience is defined and the Meta destination is configured, create an External Campaign to publish the audience:

1. Navigate to Campaigns > External.
2. Under Settings, select your audience or Blueprint.
3. In the Destination dropdown, select your Meta destination.
4. Set your schedule (one-time or recurring) and click Save or Launch.

For a full walkthrough of the External Campaign workflow, see External Campaigns.

Managing your connection

Token validity

The OAuth access token issued during authorization may become invalid if:

• You remove MessageGears' access from your Meta Business account settings
• Your Meta account permissions change
• The token is revoked by Meta

If your Meta destination stops publishing successfully, contact MessageGears Support to initiate a reauthorization.

Reauthorizing

If your token is revoked or expires, MessageGears will provide a new authorization link. Follow the same authorization steps to reconnect your account.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Resolution
Audience not appearing in Meta Ads Manager	Authorization incomplete or token invalid	Contact MessageGears Support to verify the connection
Match rate is unexpectedly low	Data not normalized correctly before hashing	Confirm emails are lowercase, phones have no symbols, and Apply Vendor Obfuscation is enabled
Campaign fails to publish	Incorrect destination configuration or expired token	Contact MessageGears Support to verify Ad account ID and token validity
CCPA users not treated correctly	Limited Data Use flag not enabled	Contact MessageGears Support to enable the flag on your destination

For additional help, contact MessageGears Support.