How to Sync Audiences to Custom Audience Private Beta
4 minute read
This guide walks you through the process of syncing a saved audience to your Custom Audience destination.
To set up the Custom Audience destination in RudderStack, see Custom Audience Setup Guide.
Prerequisites
On your audience platform
- A target audience list created on your platform — note its Audience ID
In RudderStack
- Set up an Audience
- Set up a Custom Audience destination
Add sync
- Open the audience’s Syncs tab and click Add sync.
- Select Custom Audience, then select the required Custom Audience destination.
- Configure the following settings to specify the target audience and map your warehouse data:
Specify target audience
Create the audience on your platform before entering these values. RudderStack does not create audiences at the destination for this integration.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Audience name | Specify the name of the audience to sync data to |
| Audience ID | Specify the ID of the list on your platform |
Sync mode
RudderStack supports only Mirror mode for this integration.
On the first run, the full membership is sent to the platform. Later runs send only inserts, updates, and deletes.
Map identifiers
Map warehouse columns to each template field defined in the Custom Audience destination.
You can map two types of fields:
- Warehouse fields: Dropdown of warehouse columns
- Static fields: Specify literal values for fields configured as Static in the destination settings
Required destination fields appear with an asterisk (*) during mapping.
Advanced settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Automatically hash PII data | When set to Yes, RudderStack applies each field’s configured hash algorithm to unhashed warehouse data. When set to No, data is treated as already hashed and hashing is skipped — even if a field has a hash type configured. See Data hashing for more information. |
Sync settings
Two options are available to schedule your audience syncs:
- Run syncs automatically based on a specified frequency (every 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, or 24 hours) and a specific time (in UTC).
- Run syncs manually — trigger a sync from the sync details page. You will need to run the sync each time.
Sync observability settings
| Setting | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retain sync logs | This setting is toggled on by default and instructs RudderStack to store the sync logs in your warehouse. You can also configure the below settings:
| ||||||
| Retry failed records | This setting is toggled on by default and causes RudderStack to continually retry sending the failed records. |
Storing sync logs and snapshot tables may incur additional warehouse costs.
Enable sync
Once the setup is complete, enable the sync.
Data hashing
The Automatically hash PII data setting lets you hash your user data before sending it to your API.
- Configure the setting to Yes if your incoming data is not pre-hashed
- Configure this setting to No if your data is already hashed
Incorrect configuration of the Automatically hash PII data setting will result in failures.
- If the Automatically hash PII data setting is configured to Yes and your data is pre-hashed, the event will fail.
- If the Automatically hash PII data setting is configured to No and your data is not pre-hashed, the event will fail.
Such events are rejected with a clear error message, for example:
Hashing is disabled but the value for field EMAIL appears to be unhashed. Either enable hashing or send pre-hashed data.You will also see errors in the Events tab for cases that were previously marked as successful but resulted in no matches, helping you identify and fix data quality or configuration issues.
Troubleshooting
| Issue | Resolution |
|---|---|
400 errors for all records | Required fields are unmapped or the warehouse values are empty |
| Wrong audience on API side | Verify the Audience ID and $$.connection.audienceId while configuring the template |
| Double-hashed identifiers | Automatically hash PII data setting is set to Yes while your incoming warehouse data is pre-hashed — set this setting to No |
| Sync fails after destination edit | Update sync mappings if destination field names or required flags have changed. See Template fields for more information |
