Audience labels
- Also called Audience label
- Updated October 24, 2026
Audience labels are preset tags Meta lets you attach to a custom audience to say who is in it: qualified leads, trial users, high-value customers, people at risk of churning. A label on its own only organizes your audiences. Paired with value rules, it tells Meta to bid more or less for that group, inside a single campaign.
What are audience labels on Meta?
Meta's About audience labels for custom audiences page:
When you create or edit a customer list custom audience, website custom audience or mobile app custom audience, you can choose an Audience label that describes this audience.
Meta adds that labels "may be used to find audiences for your ads more effectively, such as by using value rules", and that "Adding labels to your audiences may be necessary to get the most out of features we launch in the future." The customer list setup step puts the label next to the audience's name and description.
Which audience labels can you choose?
Ten, in two groups, with Meta's descriptions:
| Group | Label | Meta's description |
|---|---|---|
| Engaged audiences | Qualified leads | "Leads that meet your qualification criteria" |
| Engaged audiences | Disqualified leads | "Leads that don't meet your qualification criteria" |
| Engaged audiences | App users | "People currently using your app" |
| Engaged audiences | Trial users | "People who started a trial of your product" |
| Engaged audiences | Other engaged users | "People who showed interest but are not yet customers" |
| Customers | High value | "Customers you consider valuable to your business" |
| Customers | Low value | "Customers that are of low or negative value to your business" |
| Customers | At risk | "Customers showing signs of disengaging or churning" |
| Customers | Disengaged | "Customers who have not made a purchase recently or stopped subscribing" |
| Customers | General customers | "Your existing customers" |
Meta's advice: "Only choose an audience label if these definitions fit your needs." Some accounts also see "Other 1, Other 2, Other 3", which Meta calls "flexible labels for audiences that don't fit these categories."
How do audience labels work with value rules?
Meta's About audience labels in value rules page says the pairing lets you "signal the relative value of different audiences to Meta's ad delivery system without splitting your campaign into multiple ad sets." You set "a bid adjustment for each label", for example "+50% or -30%". It compares the two uses:
| Labels on their own | Labels in value rules | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | "Organize and categorize your audiences" | "Adjust bids based on audience value" |
| Effect on delivery | "No direct effect on bidding" | "Directly adjusts bid amounts" |
| Setup location | "Audience Manager" | "Advertising settings or your ad set" |
The rule needs a campaign with a goal such as "Maximize the number of conversions or Maximize the value of conversions". And: "You can't use exclusion-only custom audiences to apply value rules."
Meta's pages don't fully agree here. The About value rules page lists the criteria as "age, gender, location, OS, device platform and select placements and conversion locations". That list names no custom audience or audience label.
What it means for your ads
- Label audiences when you build them. It is one field in the setup, and Meta says later features may depend on it.
- Replace split ad sets with one ad set and a rule. Meta's advice: "Consolidate instead of splitting." That also keeps your creative in one ad set instead of spread thin across several.
- Start small. Meta suggests "smaller bid adjustments (±20-30%)", raised over time.
- Bid down rather than exclude. Meta: "Instead of excluding audiences entirely, consider including them with a reduced bid."
Common mistakes
- Expecting a label to change delivery by itself. Without a value rule it has "No direct effect on bidding."
- Labeling segments that aren't really different. Meta says labels work best "when your segments have meaningfully different lifetime values."
Sources
- About audience labels for custom audiences — Meta Business Help Center (accessed October 24, 2026)
- About audience labels in value rules — Meta Business Help Center (accessed October 24, 2026)
- How to create a customer list custom audience in Ads Manager — Meta Business Help Center (accessed October 24, 2026)
- About value rules in Meta Ads Manager — Meta Business Help Center (accessed October 24, 2026)
Meta revises these pages without notice, so check the source before acting on any of it.
Terrads makes a batch of different ads in one go, so the audiences a value rule bids up get several angles instead of the same ad again.