Custom Audience

Updated: Dec 19, 2025

Beginning September 2, 2025, we will start to roll out more proactive restrictions on custom audiences that may suggest information not permitted under our terms. For example, any custom audience or lookalike audience suggesting specific health conditions (e.g., "arthritis", "diabetes") or financial status (e.g., "credit score", "high income") will be flagged and prevented from being used to run ad campaigns.

What these restrictions mean for your campaigns:

• You won't be able to use flagged custom audiences when creating new campaigns.
• If you have an active campaign using flagged custom audiences, you should edit or pause it and choose a different audience to avoid performance and delivery issues.

For API developers:

• Beginning September 2, 2025, operation_status will return 471 to signal if your custom audiences have been flagged.

More information on this update and how to resolve flagged custom audiences can be found here⁠.

Build an audience of your customers, website visitors, mobile app visitors or people similar to them. To add or remove users from a custom audience, see the Custom Audience User reference.

To use custom audiences, business users must first sign our Terms Of Service.

To improve how audiences are created and managed, custom audiences that have not been used in any active ad sets in over two years will be deleted on a rolling basis automatically. See the Custom Audiences: Overview: Deletion for more information.

Flagged custom and lookalike audiences

If one or more custom or lookalike audience is flagged with an operation_status of 471, the effective_status field of the ad set will change to WITH_ISSUES and the issues_info list will be populated with one issue per flagged audience. The fields_violating_integrity_policy field will be populated with the list of flagged fields.

Attempting to edit a flagged custom audience without changing the custom audience fields listed in the fields_violating_integrity_policy field will result in an error.

{  
  "error": {  
    "message": "Invalid parameter",  
    "code": 100,  
    "error_subcode": 1713231,  
    "error_user_title": "Update Restricted Fields and Rule",  
    "error_user_msg": "This custom audience has integrity restrictions. To continue, you must update the restricted fields and the rule in your current edit",  
  },  
}

Attempting to edit a flagged lookalike audience or customer file custom audience (DFCA) will result in an error.

{  
  "error": {  
    "message": "Invalid parameter",  
    "code": 100,  
    "error_subcode": 1713228,  
    "error_user_title": "Custom Audience Cannot Be Edited",  
    "error_user_msg": "This audience cannot be edited due to integrity restrictions. Please appeal the restrictions or create a new audience",  
  },  
}

Example

{  
"account_id": "<OWNER_ACCOUNT_ID>",  
"approximate_count": 5000,  
"approximate_count_lower_bound": 4900,  
"approximate_count_upper_bound": 5100,  
"customer_file_source": "USER_PROVIDED_ONLY",  
"description": "Audience Description",  
"fields_violating_integrity_policy": ["<FIELD>", ...],  
"id": "<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>",  
"name": "Audience Name",  
"operation_status": {  
"code": 471,  
"description": "The custom audience or lookalike is blocked because it suggests the use of information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta's terms, and is restricted from running ads. Review the audience and remove prohibited information, or choose a different one."  
},  
"retention_days": 0,  
"subtype": "CUSTOM",  
"time_created": 1755083743,  
"time_updated": 1755083943,  
"time_content_updated": 1755083943,  
"owner_account_info": {  
"account_id": "<OWNER_ACCOUNT_ID>",  
"account_name": "Account Name",  
"business_id": "<OWNER_BUSINESS_ID>",  
"business_name": "Business Name"  
},  
...  
}

To resolve flagged audiences

If your custom or lookalike audiences are flagged, consider these options.

To resolve flagged custom audiences:

• Review flagged audiences: Use Audience Manager to review your custom audience along with other information included in an audience, and remove any information that is not allowed under Meta's terms⁠.
• Create new or choose different audiences: Alternatively, you can create a new custom audience or choose a different existing custom audience and make sure that it does not include information not allowed under our terms and use that to run campaigns.

To resolve flagged lookalike audiences:

• Resolve issues with the underlying custom audience: If the underlying custom audience (also known as the seed audience) of your lookalike audience is flagged, you will need to resolve the issue with the underlying custom audience on which the lookalike audience is built. Please refer to the preceding section on how to resolve flagged custom audiences.
• Create new audiences: Consider developing new lookalike audiences and make sure that they don't include information that is not allowed under our terms.

Request a review

If you believe your custom audience or lookalike audience has been flagged in error and doesn't include non-permitted information, you can request a review via Ads Manager under the campaigns table or, or in Audience Manager by clicking on individual audiences and under the summary tab of the impacted audience.

Reading

Custom audiences are designed to provide advertisers the ability to target their ads to a specific set of people with whom they have already established a relationship on and off Facebook. Advertisers may choose to define audiences by email address, Facebook User IDs, phone numbers, names, date of birth, gender, locations, app user IDs, Apple's Advertising Identifier (IDFA), Android's advertising ID⁠ or by a combination of rules used to identify users who took specific actions on their website.

When utilizing Facebook User IDs please ensure you comply with Facebook Platform Terms and Developer Policies. You must accept the Custom Audience Terms of Service in order to use custom audiences. You can query which terms have been accepted by checking the tos_accepted field of a given ad account. See Ad Account for more information.

Example

curl -G \
-d 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>

Parameters

Parameter	Description
ad_account_id numeric string	ID of the recipient ad account in which custom audience is used.
special_ad_categories list<string>	special_ad_categories
special_ad_category_countries list<string>	special_ad_category_countries

Fields

Field	Description
id numeric string	Custom audience ID default
account_id numeric string	Ad Account ID
approximate_count_lower_bound integer	Lower bound of the approximate number of people in this audience. A call for this field returns -1 for inactive lookalikes.
approximate_count_upper_bound integer	Upper bound of the approximate number of people in this audience. A call for this field returns -1 for inactive lookalikes.
customer_file_source string	Source of customer information in the uploaded file
data_source CustomAudienceDataSource	JSON dictionary of type, sub_type to indicate by which method the custom audience was created. Note: Subtypes IG_BUSINESS_EVENTS, FB_EVENT_SIGNALS and MULTI_DATA_EVENTS can only be created through Ads Manager, Audience Manager, and not through the API.
delivery_status CustomAudienceStatus	JSON dictionary of code and description. It indicates whether or not an audience can be used in ads. Possible values include: * 200: Returned if the audience is active and ready to be used. * 300: Returned if the audience is smaller than it should be. This audience is currently inactive and cannot be used. * 400 and above: Returned if the audience is not usable for a variety of reasons, including policy violation.
description string	Custom audience description
external_event_source AdsPixel	Read-only JSON dictionary with id keys containing the Pixel ID whose traffic generated this custom audience. Will throw an error if the app making the call lacks the required permissions.
fields_violating_integrity_policy list<string>	A list of custom audience fields (either name, description or rule) that are flagged for a custom audience that may suggest information not permitted under our terms.
is_value_based bool	Whether the audience is used to seed value based lookalike
lookalike_audience_ids list<numeric string>	The IDs of the lookalike audiences generated from this audience
lookalike_spec LookalikeSpec	Generated only when the subtype is LOOKALIKE. More info at Lookalike Audience
name string	Custom audience name
operation_status CustomAudienceStatus	JSON dictionary of code to int value and description to a description string. The operation status represents the status of the last operation performed on an audience. In general, it will have following states: * 0: Status not available * 100: If an audience hasn't been used in an active ad set for over 2 years, it will begin to expire. Expiring audiences that remain unused for 90 days will be deleted. * 200: Normal. There is no updating or issues found * 400: Warning. There is some message we would like advertisers to know * 410: No upload. No file has been uploaded * 411: Low match rate. Low rate of matched people * 412: High rate of invalid entries in the last upload session. Customer file has unusable data * 414: Replace in progress * 415: Replace failed * 421: No pixel. Your Facebook pixel hasn't been installed on your website yet * 422: Pixel not firing. Your Facebook pixel isn't firing * 423: Invalid pixel. Your Facebook pixel is invalid * 431: Lookalike Audience refresh failed * 432: Lookalike Audience build failed * 433: Lookalike Audience build failed * 434: Lookalike Audience build retrying * 441: We're finding people who fit your audience criteria. You can start running ads with this audience right away, but be aware that your audience size will increase as the audience is populated * 442: Your Custom Audience could not be prefilled * 450: This audience either hasn't been used in an ad for at least 30 days or was created over 90 days ago and has never been used. For this reason, your audience is out of date. * 470: The account that created this audience is no longer active * 471: The audience has been flagged for integrity reasons. * 500: Error: there is some error and advertisers need to take action items to fix the error
opt_out_link string	Your opt-out URL so people can choose not to be targeted
permission_for_actions AudiencePermissionForActions	JSON dictionary of permissions (string) to boolean value if the custom audience has that permission
pixel_id numeric string	ID of the pixel which is collecting events for this Website Custom audience
retention_days int32	Number of days to keep the user in this cluster. You can use any value between 1 and 180 days. Defaults to forever, if not specified. Only available for Customer File Custom Audience, including Custom Audiences created from CRM data.
rule string	Audience rules to be applied on the referrer URL
rule_aggregation string	Aggregation on top of the rule, examples of aggregations include: count, sum etc
sharing_status CustomAudienceSharingStatus	Sharing status of this custom audience for the ad account
subtype string	Type of custom audience, derived from original data source. Note: Subtypes IG_BUSINESS, FB_EVENT, EXPERIMENTAL and MULTI_DATA can only be created through Ads Manager, Audience Manager, and not through the API.
time_content_updated unsigned int32	Last update of people in this custom audience, this field is only supported for Customer List Custom Audiences.
time_created unsigned int32	Creation time
time_updated unsigned int32	Last time this audience metadata was updated

Edges

Edge	Description
adaccounts Edge<CustomAudienceAdAccount>	The ad account ids associated with this custom audience
ads Edge<Adgroup>	Ads that are using this custom audience
health Edge<CustomAudienceHealth>	health
sessions Edge<CustomAudienceSession>	Data upload sessions of this custom audience
shared_account_info Edge<CustomAudiencesharedAccountInfo>	List of Ad Accounts and Businesses this Audience is shared to

Error Codes

Error Code	Description
100	Invalid parameter
80003	There have been too many calls to this ad-account. Wait a bit and try again. For more info, please refer to /docs/graph-api/overview/rate-limiting#custom-audience.
200	Permissions error
190	Invalid OAuth 2.0 Access Token
270	This Ads API request is not allowed for apps with development access level (Development access is by default for all apps, please request for upgrade). Make sure that the access token belongs to a user that is both admin of the app and admin of the ad account
2500	Error parsing graph query

Creating

Limitations

• The subtype field for engagement custom audiences is only supported for video.
• Mobile app custom audiences for inclusion targeting is no longer supported for the POST /{ad-account-id}/adsets endpoint for iOS 14+ SKAdNetwork campaigns.
• New iOS 14+ app install campaigns will no longer be able to use app connections targeting.

Examples

Create a blank audience:

curl \
-F 'name="My new CA"' \
-F 'subtype=CUSTOM' \
-F 'description="People who bought from my website"' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

You can't perform this operation on this endpoint.

Updating

If a person opted out of being targeted, you must remove them from all custom audiences in which they appear. To opt-out a person from an audience after they have clicked through to your opt-out URL, make an HTTP DELETE call to:

https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/usersofanyaudience

Provide the same fields as you do in a user update. This will remove the people you specify from ALL custom file custom audiences belonging to the specified ad account.

Examples

To update the audience name:

curl \
-F 'name=Updated Name for CA' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>

To edit an opt-out link:

curl \
-F 'opt_out_link=http://www.yourdomain.com/optout' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>

/{custom_audience_id}

You can update a CustomAudience by making a POST request to /{custom_audience_id}.

Example

Select language

HTTPPHP SDKJavaScript SDKAndroid SDKiOS SDKcURL

---

POST /v25.0/<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>/ HTTP/1.1  
Host: graph.facebook.com  
  
name=Updated+Name+for+CA

Try it in Graph API Explorer

If you want to learn how to use the Graph API, read our Using Graph API guide

Parameters

Parameter	Description
allowed_domains list<string>	A list of domains that the audience is restricted to
claim_objective enum {AUTOMOTIVE_MODEL, COLLABORATIVE_ADS, HOME_LISTING, MEDIA_TITLE, PRODUCT, TRAVEL, VEHICLE, VEHICLE_OFFER}	Specifies the objective of audiences with subtype=CLAIM
content_type enum {AUTOMOTIVE_MODEL, DESTINATION, FLIGHT, GENERIC, HOME_LISTING, HOTEL, LOCAL_SERVICE_BUSINESS, MEDIA_TITLE, OFFLINE_PRODUCT, PRODUCT, VEHICLE, VEHICLE_OFFER}	Specifies a mandatory content type for claim_objective: TRAVEL, AUTO_OFFER, HOME_LISTING, VEHICLE.
customer_file_source enum {USER_PROVIDED_ONLY, PARTNER_PROVIDED_ONLY, BOTH_USER_AND_PARTNER_PROVIDED}	Source of customer information in the uploaded file
description string	The description for this custom audience
enable_fetch_or_create boolean	Fetch custom audience instead of create new one when there exists custom audience with identical name, claim_objective, content_type, event_source_group/event_sources/sliced_event_source_group, inclusions, exclusions and rule
event_source_group numeric string or integer	Specifies a mandatory content type for claim_objective: TRAVEL, AUTO_OFFER, HOME_LISTING, VEHICLE.
event_sources array<JSON object>	Specifies a mandatory content type for claim_objective: TRAVEL, AUTO_OFFER, HOME_LISTING, VEHICLE. --- id int64 id required type enum {APP, OFFLINE_EVENTS, PAGE, PIXEL} type required Show child parameters
lookalike_spec JSON-encoded string	The specification for creating a lookalike audience
name string	The name of this custom audience
opt_out_link string	Your opt-out URL so people can choose not to be targeted
product_set_id numeric string or integer	The Product Set to target with this audience
rule string	Audience rule to be applied on the referrer URL. Used for website custom audiences, product audiences, and video remarketing audiences.
rule_aggregation string	Aggregation rule
use_for_products list<enum {ADS, MARKETING_MESSAGES}>	use_for_products
use_in_campaigns boolean	use_in_campaigns

Return Type

This endpoint supports read-after-write and will read the node to which you POSTed.

Struct  {
success: bool,
message: string,
}

Error Codes

Error Code	Description
100	Invalid parameter
200	Permissions error
2650	Failed to update the custom audience
80003	There have been too many calls to this ad-account. Wait a bit and try again. For more info, please refer to /docs/graph-api/overview/rate-limiting#custom-audience.
190	Invalid OAuth 2.0 Access Token
368	The action attempted has been deemed abusive or is otherwise disallowed

---

Deleting

When you delete a custom audience, it will be permanently removed from your account and your ads using it will stop running. You won't be able to restart any ads that used this audience in the past.

/{custom_audience_id}

You can delete a CustomAudience by making a DELETE request to /{custom_audience_id}.

Example

Select language

HTTPPHP SDKJavaScript SDKAndroid SDKiOS SDKcURL

---

DELETE /v25.0/<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID>/ HTTP/1.1  
Host: graph.facebook.com

Try it in Graph API Explorer

If you want to learn how to use the Graph API, read our Using Graph API guide

Parameters

This endpoint doesn't have any parameters.

Return Type

Struct  {
success: bool,
}

Error Codes

Error Code	Description
200	Permissions error
2656	Failed to delete custom audience because associated lookalikes exist
368	The action attempted has been deemed abusive or is otherwise disallowed
100	Invalid parameter
613	Calls to this api have exceeded the rate limit.

---