# How to Activate an Audience to a Destination


{{< customreadfile "/includes/lookout/beta-callout.md" >}}

An audience is only useful once it reaches the tools your team runs campaigns in. Activating one creates a **sync**: a connection that keeps the audience current in a destination as people join and leave it.

## Before you start

- The audience is **saved** and its size is current. **Activate** stays out of reach otherwise, and the button says which one is missing.
- Your Lookout workspace is [linked to a RudderStack workspace]({{< ref "lookout/integrations/rudderstack.md" >}}). Activating creates a source and a destination there, which the link is set up to do.
- The destination platform already has an account connected in RudderStack.

## Create the sync

Select **Activate** on the audience and work through the four steps.

### Select destination type

Pick the platform the audience is going to:

| Destination | Platform |
|---|---|
| Braze Audience | Braze |
| Facebook Custom Audience | Meta Ads |
| Google Ads Remarketing List | Google Ads |
| Iterable Audience | Iterable |
| LinkedIn Audience | LinkedIn Ads |
| TikTok Audience | TikTok Ads |

{{< image src="images/lookout/activation-destinations.webp" alt="Choose destinations to activate the audience on" >}}

### Select account

Choose which of your connected accounts for that platform to send through. Only accounts that suit the destination you picked are offered. 

{{< tip >}}
If you see **No accounts for this destination**, that platform has no connected account in your RudderStack workspace yet. Configure a valid account for that destination in RudderStack and try again.
{{< /tip >}}

### Configure sync

Choose the ad account, then the audience on the destination side. For Braze, give an **Audience attribute name** instead, and membership is stored on that custom attribute.

Then **Map identifiers**: say which column in your audience carries the email, phone number, or user ID the destination matches people on. Some platforms ask for one more choice here, such as whether the LinkedIn audience describes people or companies.

{{< image src="images/lookout/configure-destination.webp" >}}

### Sync schedule

Decide how the audience refreshes:

- **Run syncs automatically**: Choose how often the audience refreshes
- **Run syncs manually**: Nothing runs until you start it

{{< info >}}
Every destination syncs in **mirror** mode.

Membership is kept in step continuously, so someone who leaves the audience is removed on the destination side at the next run — or, in Braze, has the attribute set to false.
{{< /info >}}

Select **Enable sync** to finish.

{{< image src="images/lookout/configure-syncs.webp" >}}

## Watch it run

The **Activations** setting in the left sidebar lists every sync in the workspace, so you can see what is failing without opening each audience. Rows show the activation, its schedule, its last run, and when it was last updated.

Click an audience to see more details on the latest run — how many records were **Added**, **Deleted**, and **Updated**, how many synced successfully, and anything that failed or was dropped. **Past runs** is the history.

A run reports one of four states:

| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Running... | In progress |
| Completed | Everything synced |
| Completed with failures | Finished, but some records did not make it |
| Failed | The run did not complete |

**Run sync** starts a run immediately, whatever the schedule says.

{{< image src="images/lookout/run-syncs.webp" >}}

{{< info >}}
Editing an audience definition doesn't refresh the destination straight away. The new definition is stored, and the destination catches up on the next run.
{{< /info >}}

## Change or remove a sync

Editing reopens the last two steps of the [audience activation process]({{< ref "lookout/audiences/activate-an-audience.md" >}}), so you can change the mapping or the schedule.

To stop shipping an audience, delete its activation. This removes the connection Lookout created, but **the audience already present in the destination is not deleted**. It stops updating and stays usable there, so remove it in the destination if you no longer want it used.

{{< info >}}
**Important considerations**

- The destination type and the accounts are fixed once a sync exists. To move an audience to a different account, delete the sync and create a new one.
- An audience that still has activations can't be deleted. Remove them first.
{{< /info >}}