Targeting your people in Google Ads and Meta with audiences

An audience is a group of the people already in Gorilla Dash that you want your advertising to reach. Gorilla Dash uploads their email addresses and mobile numbers to Google Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) or both, where each platform matches them to its own accounts. You can then show an ad only to those people, leave them out of a campaign aimed at new customers, or ask the platform to find people similar to them.

Audiences are built from tribes. A tribe is one location, branch or business unit inside your organisation, so an audience such as "Sydney CRM" is simply the people who belong to the Sydney tribe. You can narrow it further with contact categories, for example only the people marked VIP.

AUDIENCES AND CONNECTIONS ARE SEPARATE

A connection holds the login to your Google Ads and Meta accounts. An audience says who to upload. One connection can feed as many audiences as you like, so you sign in to Google once and then create an audience for each tribe or group you want to advertise to.

Before you start

You need an organisation-level connection to upload to; tribe-level connections are not available for audiences. Select Campaigns & Audiences in the left-hand menu, then Connections. If a connection already exists for your ad account, you can use it; otherwise select Create and set one up.

For Google Ads, the connection needs Google turned on, the Customer ID of the ad account (the ten-digit number shown at the top of Google Ads) and the Connect button pressed so Gorilla Dash can sign in. Leave Manager Account ID empty unless the ad account really sits under that manager account. A connection signed in before October 2026 needs one more sign-in, because Google now asks a separate permission for audience uploads: open the connection, choose Reconnect next to Google Ads Authorization and sign in with the same Google account. Google also needs to know that the ad account accepts its Customer Match terms: tick "This Google Ads account accepts Google's Customer Match terms" on the connection and save. Gorilla Dash records who ticked it and when.
For Meta, the connection needs Meta turned on, an access token that is allowed to manage ads, and the Ad Account ID. You will find the Ad Account ID in Meta Ads Manager, in the account menu at the top left. It looks like act_1234567890; either that form or the number on its own is fine.

Google only lets accounts with a good history of following its advertising policies use customer lists. If your account has not been approved for Customer Match, the first upload will fail with a message from Google saying so, and the fix is on the Google side rather than in Gorilla Dash.

Creating an audience

Select Campaigns & Audiences in the left-hand menu. The Audiences page opens.
Select Create.
Give it an Audience Name. The same name appears on the customer list in Google Ads and Meta, so choose one you will recognise there, such as "Sydney CRM".
Choose the Ad Connection to upload through.
Under Tribes, choose the tribe or tribes to include. Leaving Tribes empty includes people from every tribe in your organisation.
If you only want some of those people, choose one or more Contact Categories. A person needs to be in at least one of them to be included.
Once you have chosen at least one tribe, check the count shown underneath. It tells you how many people match today, before anything is uploaded. An audience covering every tribe shows its count on the audience page after the first upload instead.
Under Where it goes, tick Google Ads Customer Match, Meta Custom Audience or both.
Leave Refresh the audience every day switched on unless you have a reason not to.
Select Save.

Saving queues the first upload straight away and opens the audience. The status reads Queued, then Syncing, then Synced once the people have been sent. A large audience can take several minutes to send. While it runs, the Uploads card shows which step the sync has reached and a progress bar: counting the people, uploading them (for example "Uploading to Google Ads: 10,000 of 20,333 people"), waiting for Google to accept the upload, and removing people who have left the audience. The page refreshes itself every few seconds, and the result of the previous sync is shown greyed out under Previous sync until the new one finishes.

Who is uploaded

A person is included when they belong to one of the chosen tribes, have an email address or a mobile number with SMS enabled, and have not unsubscribed from marketing. Someone who unsubscribed from your emails is left out of every audience as well. Mobile numbers are only uploaded when SMS is enabled for that person; otherwise only their eligible email address is sent. Each person counts against their own tribe only: a person who was once linked to a second tribe is not included in that tribe's audience.

Email addresses and mobile numbers are scrambled (hashed) before they leave Gorilla Dash, which is the form Google and Meta require. The platforms can match a hashed address to an account they already know, but they cannot read it back.

ONLY UPLOAD PEOPLE WHO AGREED TO HEAR FROM YOU

Google and Meta both require that the people on a customer list gave you permission to use their details for marketing. Gorilla Dash does not accept Customer Match terms on your behalf; accept them in Google Ads if required. Gorilla Dash does not record advertising consent and does not declare it granted to Google. Google will not process EEA contacts without the required consent, which can reduce the matched audience. Gorilla Dash already leaves out anyone who unsubscribed, but it cannot know how a person first came into your CRM. If a tribe holds people who never agreed to marketing, narrow the audience with a contact category that only consenting people carry.

Using the audience in your ads

After an upload, Google and Meta match the people to their accounts in the background. This can take up to 48 hours, and until it finishes the list may show as too small to use. Small lists are a common surprise: Google needs roughly a thousand matched people before it will show ads to a list on Search, and Meta needs about a hundred, so a single small tribe may need to be combined with others.

In Google Ads, the list appears under Tools, then Shared library, then Audience manager, with "Gorilla Dash:" at the start of its name. Add it to a campaign or ad group under Audiences.
In Meta Ads Manager, it appears under Audiences with the name you gave it. Choose it in the Audience section of an ad set.

Keeping it up to date

With Refresh the audience every day switched on, Gorilla Dash uploads the audience again once a day. Each upload replaces the whole list, so new people in the tribe are added and people who have left or unsubscribed are removed. If Google is still processing an upload when the sync finishes, the people who left remain until Google finishes processing. Later syncs check that same upload and complete its removal before uploading a new snapshot. If it is still unresolved after seven days, the next sync starts a fresh upload and only removes earlier members once that replacement succeeds. If daily refresh is off, select Sync Now again later to finish; the audience page shows when processing is still pending. To send changes straight away, open the audience and select Sync Now. Check the destinations, connection and last recorded audience size in the confirmation, then select Sync Now to upload or Cancel to leave the lists unchanged. The upload cannot be undone in Gorilla Dash.

One exception: Meta will not accept an empty list. If nobody is left in an audience, the Meta upload is shown as failed and Meta keeps the previous list until you clear it in Meta Ads Manager.

If the list has been deleted in Google Ads or Meta, the next upload creates a new one and the audience page tells you so. Any campaign or ad set that used the old list needs the new one chosen in its place.

Changing the tribes, categories, connection or destinations of an audience and saving it also starts an upload. If you move an audience to a different connection, Gorilla Dash creates new lists in that connection's accounts; the lists in the old accounts stay where they were and are no longer refreshed. Before saving a connection change, check the new connection named in the confirmation and the warning about the old lists, then select Save to continue or Cancel to keep editing. Enabling Google Ads or Meta on an existing audience also asks you to confirm the upload before saving. These uploads cannot be undone in Gorilla Dash; remove unwanted lists manually in Google Ads or Meta.

When an upload fails

Open the audience. The Uploads section lists Google and Meta separately with the reason each one failed, because one can fail while the other succeeds. The messages you are most likely to see are these:

Google Ads is not connected means the connection has no Customer ID or has not been signed in. Open the connection, check the Customer ID and press Connect.
A permission error from Google usually means Manager Account ID is filled in when it should be empty, or the account has not been approved for Customer Match.
Signed in to Google before audience uploads needed extra permission means the connection needs one more sign-in. Open it, choose Reconnect next to Google Ads Authorization and sign in again.
The Data Manager API is not switched on is a one-off setting in the Google Cloud project behind the sign-in. Normally that is Gorilla Dash's, so contact Gorilla Dash support and quote the message; if your connection uses your own Google Cloud client, switch the Data Manager API on in your project.
No Meta Ad Account ID means the connection needs the Ad Account ID added.
Missing ads_management permission from Meta means the access token can send conversions but cannot manage audiences. Create a token that includes the ads_management permission and save it on the connection.

After fixing the cause, select Sync Now on the audience to try again.

Deleting an audience

Open the audience, select the edit button, then Delete. Gorilla Dash stops refreshing it, but the customer lists already in Google Ads and Meta are kept so that no running campaign suddenly loses its audience. Remove them in Google Ads or Meta if you no longer need them. Deleting an audience cannot be undone.