• by Colin Kirkland , 5 hours ago

To help marketers further specify their ad-targeting practices and save on ad spend, Meta is now introducing the ability to create exclusion-only audiences within customer lists in Ads Manager.

“An exclusion-only custom audience is a type of customer list custom audience that can only be used to exclude people from your ad audience,” Meta’s announcement explains. “Unlike a regular custom audience, an exclusion-only custom audience cannot be used to include people in your audience.”

Meta designed exclusion-only custom list capabilities for advertisers that may want to avoid serving ads to specific groups of people, including those who have opted out of their services or are already self-excluded.

Other consumer groups brands may want to block from seeing their ads may include users who “have a legal or regulatory obligation not to target” or people a brand wants a permanent guardrail against accident inclusion when setting up custom audiences.

“As an advertiser, you can use a regular custom audience to include and exclude people from your ad audience,” Meta’s announcement notes. “If you use an exclusion-only custom audience, however, you can only exclude people from your ad audience.”

Advertisers are not able to use an exclusion-only custom audience to include people in their ad audience, and cannot change an exclusion-only custom audience to a regular custom audience after it has been created.