Meta Audience Builder

About Audience Builder

Audience Builder lets you create seed audiences from your first-party referral data, synchronise them with Meta, and target more people like them via lookalike audiences.

Audience Builder is available as an add-on. Reach out to your Mention Me Account Manager to learn more and upgrade if needed.

Prerequisites

At least Advertiser or Admin permission for your Meta Ads account with Full Control permission.
- Log in to your Meta Business Manager account settings
- Go to Users > People, select your user account
- Select the ad account you want to create audiences in
- Ensure Manage ad account is enabled

Meta Business Manager ad account permissions showing Manage ad account enabled — Meta Business Manager ad account permissions, with Manage ad account enabled.

Access to the Mention Me platform (contact your CSM if you do not have access).

Step 1 - Connect Your Ads Account

On the Mention Me platform, click Connect to begin.

Mention Me Audience Builder Connect button with Meta selected — The Audience Builder connect button with Meta selected.

Agree to the Terms and Conditions

Allow Mention Me to transfer data to Meta on your behalf.

Terms and Conditions acceptance for Meta data transfer — The Terms and Conditions screen for Meta data transfer.

Create a new authentication

Create new authentication dialog — The dialog for creating a new authentication.

Name your authentication and select Create

Naming the Meta authentication before creating it.

Grant Mention Me permission

Mention Me cannot post anything to your page.

Granting Mention Me permission to access Meta.

Select the Meta Ad Account

Choose the account you want to send your Mention Me data to.

Selecting Meta Ad Account to send data to — Selecting the Meta ad account to send data to.

Step 2 - Build Your Audience

Select the country(s)

Choose which countries to build the audience from.

Country selection for audience building — The country selection screen for building an audience.

Select one country per seed audience for best results. If contact numbers are low, select multiple countries in similar markets.

Select the dataset and click Next

We recommend Existing customers who have successfully referred a friend. If you have fewer than 1,000 contacts, choose the next dataset in the list.

Dataset selection with audience options and contact counts — The dataset selection screen with audience options and contact counts.

Audience data is collected from your best customers over the last 12 months:

Audience data set	Description
Highest value successful referrers (ECR)	Advocates with the greatest revenue when accounting for both their spend and their friend’s spend. Learn more about ECR
Active referrers (ECR)	Advocates who have either referred or purchased recently. Learn more about ECR
Existing customers who successfully referred a friend	Our recommended data set - your biggest brand advocates.
Existing customers who have shared	Highly engaged advocates.
Existing customers who have joined the referral programme	Customers on the path to becoming advocates.
Referred customers who have placed their first orders	New customers gained from your advocates.

Step 3 - Name Your Audience

Name your audience and click Next.

A default name is created automatically. This name appears in Meta Ads Manager.
The countries you selected also appear in the audience description in Meta Ads Manager.

Use a naming convention that is easy to identify, e.g. MM - UK - Successful Referrers.

Audience naming convention example — An example of a clear audience naming convention.

Confirm that you have the relevant consent required by law or Meta to enable Mention Me to process this data.

Consent confirmation and audience review screen — The consent confirmation and audience review screen.

Review your audience details and click Build to start the sync.

You can edit the audience name directly on this page.
The build starts immediately but can take 24-48 hours for Meta to process.
Email addresses are hashed before being sent to Meta.

Once the build starts, the summary screen lets you view all audiences with contact counts and build new audiences. Your audience updates weekly with new customers meeting the selection criteria.

Audience summary showing all audiences with contact counts — Audience summary with contact counts and build status

Effective audiences need a minimum of 1,000 contacts, but aim for 5,000+ as a realistic starting point due to variable match rates. If your recommended audience is too small, create another based on the next valuable dataset.

Step 5 - Build Lookalike Audiences in Meta

Once the audience has synced, create a lookalike audience to find new customers that “look like” your best customers.

Go to your Audiences

Open your Audiences (you can also create a Lookalike Audience during ad creation in Ads Manager).

Select Create audience > Lookalike Audience

Meta Audiences page with Create Lookalike Audience option — The Meta Audiences page with the Create Lookalike Audience option.

Choose the Mention Me Custom Audience

From Other Sources, select the Custom Audience you created.

Selecting Mention Me Custom Audience as lookalike source — Selecting the Mention Me Custom Audience as a lookalike source.

Choose the target country

Meta only creates lookalike audiences based on a single country. If your Custom Audience contains contacts from multiple countries, create a separate lookalike audience for each.

Choose your desired audience size

Keep the reach between 1-3% for best results.

Select Create Audience

It may take 6-24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be created.
Your audience refreshes every 3-7 days with new Audience Builder contacts.
You don’t need to wait for updates to use your Lookalike Audience.

Step 6 - Create an Ad Using Lookalike Audiences

Create a Meta Ad using your new lookalike audience.

Keep ad copy the same as previous campaigns to compare results.
Meta excludes contacts from your source audience but cannot identify your customers from other sources. Set up a Meta exclusion to avoid targeting existing customers.
Experiment with multiple audiences to find the best performers.
Compare performance against previous purchase and CRM-based audiences.

Re-Authorising Meta Authentication

There may be occasions where your Meta authentication needs to be re-authorised. You will see an error on the Audience Builder page:

“Your Meta authentication has expired and you need to re-authenticate the integration”

The Meta authentication expired error message.

Why Does This Happen?

Access token expired - Meta only allows Mention Me access for 60 days at a time. You must re-authorise to keep audiences syncing.
Password changed - Changing your Meta password requires re-authentication.
User access revoked - The user who set up the connection no longer has access to your Meta Business Manager account.

How to Re-Authorise

Mention Me sends email notifications 10 days and 5 days before expiry, and again when it has expired. Click the Re-Authorise link directly in the email.

Re-authorisation email notification with link — The re-authorisation email notification with link.

Manual Re-Authentication

Go to mention-me.com/login.

Go to Connections Hub > Audience Builder

Select the Re-Authenticate link

Find it under the Audience name or in the notification at the top of the page.

The Re-Authenticate link on the Audience Builder page.

View the authentication in edit mode

You will see the authentication that needs re-authorising.

Authentication edit mode for re-authorisation — The authentication edit mode for re-authorisation.

Leave the name as-is and click Save

Re-authorise via the Meta popup

A Meta/Facebook authentication popup will appear. Enter your login details to re-authorise.

Re-authorisations can take up to 1 hour to be reflected on the Audience Builder pages.

Getting Started

Onboarding

Referral

Influencer

A/B Testing

Reporting

Integrations

Security & Data