This article is designed to help you create your first audiences of consumers to target in the Denim platform. It's one of the last things to take care of before launching your first ads through the Denim platform - get excited!

When a new customer is provisioned login access to the Denim platform, audiences will need to be created in order to launch your first ad campaign. The Audience module is the product within your Denim platform account where you will construct the various segments of consumers to target with campaigns launched.

You're able to use third-party data such as demographics, interests, and behavioral characteristics to build a Target Audience, or supply your own first-party data to build a Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience. Regardless of the Audience you select to use in a campaign, the Denim platform will deliver advertisements to consumers who fit the criteria in each of the geographies supplied for your Users.

First, let me describe what each audience type is, and when to use each of them:

The type of audience where you don’t know exactly the first names, last names, and email addresses of the target consumers are, but you do know what their characteristics (ages, genders, demographics, interest, and behaviors) are by utilizing Facebook’s audience targeting criteria. You’re essentially creating a model of consumers you’d like to target in this example. Use this type of audience to attract new business opportunities.

Here is a guide for building your target audience. The more interests you add, the more broad it will be.

The type of audience where you know exactly who to target. Different from a Target Audience, a Custom Audience utilizes your own first-party data to deliver specific advertisements to a specific list of consumers. To create a Custom Audience, you will need to share the audience ID with your CSM at Denim Social.

Consumers on in your list are then matched to consumers with an account on Facebook and advertisements are delivered specifically to those individuals. Don't worry about security - neither Denim, nor Facebook ever has access to the original list due to a process called "hashing." Use this type of audience for cross-sell / up-sell campaigns, or as a form of retargeting. 

A Lookalike Audience is an audience of consumers who “look like” a previously created custom audience. Once your Custom Audience has been created in Denim and matched on Facebook, you have the ability to create a Lookalike Audience. When you're ready, click "Lookalike Audience" on the Audiences product, and select the Custom Audience you would like to create a Lookalike Audience from and viola!  The Denim Social Advertising solution will locate consumers who "look like" that Custom audience!

A Retargeting audience is unlike any other audience that can be built in the Denim platform. In a Retargeting Audience, your audience will only be people who have visited specific landing pages, but did not complete the action you wanted them to complete (ex: complete a form to convert to a become a lead). In a Retargeting audience, you're essentially delivering the ad only to people you know are engaged with you already, taking them down the next step in the journey. Creating a Retargeting audience in Denim is very easy. Here are the 2 simple steps to creating a Retargeting audience.

In order to use a Retargeting audience in a campaign, the sum of all page views will need to be >1000. Don't worry though - go ahead and create your Retargeting audience, and we will continually check whether the audience is ready to use. Once the status of your audience says "ready" you can use it in a campaign to retarget the visitors who did not convert to become a lead with another ad.