Custom Audience

A Custom Audience is a group you build from your own data so your ads reach people who already know you.

You feed TikTok a source: a customer list you upload, people who visited your website through the TikTok pixel, people who used your app, or people who engaged with your videos and profile. TikTok matches that data to real accounts and lets you target them, or exclude them.

Say you export the emails of everyone who bought from you last quarter and upload the file. TikTok matches those emails to accounts, and now you can run ads only to past buyers, or leave them out so your new-customer budget stops paying to reach people who already own the thing.

You cannot use a Custom Audience the moment you upload it. TikTok needs at least 1,000 matched users before the audience is usable, and email matching is never perfect, so a list of 5,000 contacts often becomes a much smaller reachable pool.

It is the difference between shouting at a crowd and talking to people who already raised a hand.