Facebook customer list audiences: upload a CSV or Excel file and build a value-based lookalike

Quick answer

To upload a Facebook customer list, save the spreadsheet as CSV or TXT with email, phone with country code and name in separate columns, then create a Customer list custom audience in Ads Manager. In Ads Editor, the same list goes in as XLSX, CSV or TXT, is hashed on the server and becomes a lookalike in one click.

What is a customer list audience, and what is it for?

It is a custom audience that Meta builds by matching your file against Facebook and Instagram accounts. People who match join the audience; people who do not are left out. You never see who matched, only the audience size.

• Retargeting your base. Repeat-purchase, launch or upgrade offers for people who already bought.
• Exclusion. Keep buyers out of prospecting so you stop paying to reach existing customers.
• Lookalike seed. A buyers list is the closest-to-revenue source you have in the account.
• Value-based lookalike. With a value per customer, Meta looks for people like your best customers, not your average one.

How should a Facebook customer list be formatted?

Meta only matches what is written the way it expects. Put each identifier in its own column and in the format below. The email, phone, hashing and batch rules come from Meta's Custom Audiences API documentation, checked October 17, 2026.

How do you upload a customer list in Meta Ads Manager?

1. Open Audiences in Ads Manager, click Create audience, then Custom audience.
2. Pick Customer list as the source. The first time in each ad account, Meta asks you to accept the custom audience terms.
3. Say whether the list has a customer value column. If it does, it becomes a value-based audience.
4. Upload the CSV or TXT file, or paste the data.
5. Check how each column was mapped and fix anything Meta did not recognize.
6. Import, name the audience and wait for matching: the size can take hours to show.

Button names change between Ads Manager versions, but the path stays the same: Audiences, Create audience, Custom audience, Customer list. What does not scale is everything around it: exporting CSVs from each client's spreadsheet, repeating it account by account, and rebuilding stale lists.

How do you upload a customer list in Ads Editor?

Since October 13, 2026, the Meta tab of the Audiences screen has a Customer list (file) section. It does what Ads Manager does, with three differences: it takes Excel files directly, recognizes columns by their headers, and works in any connected account without switching Business Managers.

1. Pick the ad account and open Customer list (file) on the Meta tab of the Audiences screen.
2. Name the audience or tick Use the file name. The label is optional and uses Meta's native labels (15 of them, such as Qualified leads, High value customers, Recent purchasers and Cart abandoners), which organize the audience in Audience Manager.
3. Answer whether there is a value column. Choose Yes when the file has spend or LTV and map that column as customer value. Meta asks you to accept the value terms once, and the screen links to them when they are missing.
4. Set the country code for phones without one. Brazil (+55) adds 55 to 10 or 11 digit numbers; for any other market, choose Do not add country code and include the code in the file.
5. Upload the file: XLSX, CSV or TXT, up to 10 MB and 100,000 rows. In a workbook with several tabs, the first tab whose headers the screen recognizes is used.
6. Confirm the columns. Each column shows a sample value and a suggested field based on its header (email, phone, name, city, ZIP, value). At least one of email, phone, external ID or mobile advertiser ID must be mapped.
7. Click Create list audience. When it finishes, Use in Lookalike sends the list to lookalike creation, and Open in Meta opens it in Ads Manager.

It also works from an AI chat: the Ads Editor MCP has a tool that creates a customer list audience from a file address (file_url). Setup is in Meta Ads MCP for Claude and ChatGPT.

Ads Manager, the API or Ads Editor: which should you use?

To create dozens of engagement, video and website audiences in one go, see bulk create Facebook custom audiences.

How do you build a value-based lookalike from the list?

A value-based lookalike starts from a list with a customer value column. Meta's documentation says the value can be any non-negative integer or decimal, and that the audience needs at least 100 matched people before it can seed a lookalike. It also warns that a value-based audience cannot be replaced with a regular one, or the other way around, so decide before you upload.

1. Upload the list with the value column mapped as customer value.
2. Wait until the audience shows a size in Audience Manager.
3. In Ads Editor, click Use in Lookalike: the list becomes the source in the Lookalike section, where you tick the percentages (1%, 2%, 3%, 5% and 10%) and the country.
4. Each source and percentage pair becomes its own audience.

It pays off when customer value varies: different tickets, repeat purchases, plans. If everyone pays the same, the column tells Meta nothing and a regular buyers lookalike does the same job.

Which mistakes kill the match rate?

• Phones without the country code. 5551234567 and 15551234567 are different numbers to Meta.
• First and last name in one column. Split them before uploading.
• Emails with spaces or capitals in an API upload that skipped normalization.
• Text in the value column. "$1,200.00" is not a number; send 1200.
• Stale lists. A two-year-old base is full of abandoned emails and changed numbers. Refresh the list instead of creating another with the same name.

Can you upload a customer list to Google Ads too?

Yes, in Google Ads itself, where the feature is called Customer Match. Ads Editor does not support it yet: on Google, the audiences it creates are website remarketing, custom segments and combined lists. Teams that run both platforms upload the Google list in Google Ads and the Meta list in Ads Editor.