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The audience list store holds the files you upload to an ad platform to build an audience: named account lists, customer match files, contact lists, and suppression lists. It works the way the creative drive does. The files live in one secure location; this page records where that is and what is in it. The difference is that these files usually contain company or personal data, so what gets written down here is deliberately limited to the metadata.
Never paste a list into a document, a brief, or this knowledge base. No company names, no email addresses, no domains, no row-level data of any kind. A brief links to the list by name; the file itself stays in the store, behind its own access control. Everything on this page is a description of a list, never its contents.
Fill in the link, rules, and rows below with your own. Examples use Doughnut Labs, a SaaS company that sells disruptive Doughnut Technology.

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Why lists are not customer profiles

These are two different things, and the customer profile library is explicit that a profile “describes a type of customer, not a single named person or account.” Both directions are legitimate. A profile can generate a list, which is what define a customer profile describes. A list can also arrive from sales, from an event, or from a data provider with no profile behind it, and that list still needs a home, an owner, and an expiry. This store is for the file either way.
A list that arrived without a profile behind it is worth writing a profile for eventually, because a profile is what lets you rebuild the list next quarter. It is not a precondition for launching. Record the selection criteria in the register below and move.

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Where it is

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Handling rules

Set these once with whoever owns data protection at your company, then follow them per list.
Deleting a list from this store does not delete it from the ad platform. An uploaded audience persists in the platform until it is removed there too. Whoever owns retention needs both steps on the same schedule, or the deletion is only half done.

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Upload templates

Build every list to the template for the platform before uploading it. A list assembled ad hoc matches at a lower rate and fails in ways that only show up after the file is in.

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The register

One row per list. Metadata only. Identity and provenance. Where the list came from and who chose what went in it. Size, match, and expiry. What the platform actually did with it, and when it stops being true.
The matched count and match rate are the baseline for next quarter’s refresh. A list that matched at 72% and now matches at 51% has decayed, and without the first number nobody can tell.

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Naming

Every file follows the file naming conventions, using the same four-part shape as a customer profile: LIST_q2-target-accounts_2026-04-01_v01.csv The as-of date is doing real work here. It is what the ad set / ad group / variant naming conventions date identifier refers to, and it is why an audience built in April is comparable to itself and not to the same list refreshed in October.
A refreshed list is a new version and a new upload, not an edit. Overwriting v01 with new rows means the audience changed underneath a running campaign with no record that it did.

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Before you upload

1

Check the row count against the platform floor

Every platform has a minimum, and a list below it cannot serve. LinkedIn needs at least 300 rows to upload and at least 300 matched companies to run, recommending 1,000. Check the template for your platform before promising a launch date.
2

Record the provenance while the supplier is still in the room

Who picked these accounts, on what criteria, as of when. This is the field that becomes unrecoverable fastest, because the person who knows moves on to the next quarter.
3

Upload and record the match rate before anything else is briefed

Matching takes time and can fail the campaign outright. Doing it first means a short list is a scheduling problem, not a write-off of finished creative.
4

Set the refresh date and the retention date

Both, at upload. A list with no refresh date ages silently; a list with no retention date is a data protection problem waiting to be found by somebody else.

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When a list changes mid-flight

Treat the audience the same way you treat attribution and bid strategy: decided at brief stage, left alone after launch. On account-based campaigns the audience is the campaign. Adding forty accounts in week three changes what the campaign is, and the results from before and after cannot be compared. Nothing in the platform flags this, and the spend line looks continuous.
Last modified on August 11, 2026