Customer value

Customer value is an optional column in a customer list you upload to Meta. You give each customer a number for whatever makes them valuable to you, such as order value, items ordered, membership or lifetime value. The list becomes a customer value custom audience, which you can target, exclude, or use as the source of a value-based lookalike audience.

How does Meta define customer value?

Meta's About the customer value column page:

Customer value is a number value you assign customers to quantify the customer qualities you consider most desirable. You choose what you value.

The question comes up when you build a custom audience from a customer list: "you will be asked if your customer list includes a column for customer value."

What can go in the customer value column?

Numbers only. Meta: "The customer value column must list decimal or whole numbers." Its examples:

Meta's About customer lifetime value page says not to use one factor alone, such as purchase frequency or order size, as the lifetime value. "You should combine each relevant estimation into a formula appropriate for your business goals and use the result it produces."

What can you do with a customer value audience?

Meta lists three uses:

• "Deliver ads to existing valuable customers."
• "Exclude valuable customers."
• Create a value-based lookalike audience "to find people similar to valuable customers."

The lookalike is the main reason to add the column. The lifetime value page says a value-based lookalike is "made up of the people most similar to your highest value customers", while "A regular lookalike audience (one that does not take customer lifetime value into account) can only find people similar to all your customers."

How do you add a customer value column?

Meta's Create a customer value custom audience page starts at Audiences, then "Create audience > Custom audience > Customer list". You answer the Customer value prompt, add the list, select "Yes, customer value is included in my customer list" and choose the column. Contact details are hashed before matching, and the value is not: Meta says all contact information "except for any additional values you choose to provide is hashed". How much of the list matches is your match score.

Customer value or maximize value of conversions?

It depends on how fast you can tell a good customer from a weak one. The lifetime value page: "if you need more than a week to be able to predict the lifetime value of your customers, you should create a value-based lookalike audience instead of using the maximize value of conversions performance goal." Maximize value of conversions "uses up to 7 days to predict value", while value-based lookalikes "can look back on up to 60 days in the past." If you can predict value within 7 days, Meta suggests trying both together.

What it means for your ads

• Pick one definition of value and keep it across uploads. A column that means order size in one file and membership in the next gives the lookalike mixed signals.
• Prefer a number that ranks everyone. A 0 or 1 membership column only splits people in two, while order value or lifetime value orders the whole list.
• If you don't track value at all, Meta says you can still use custom and lookalike audiences, "However, you won't be able to use value-based lookalike audiences."
• If you can predict value per customer early, compare this with sending predicted lifetime value on the conversion itself.

Sources

• About the customer value column — Meta Business Help Center (accessed November 11, 2026)
• About customer lifetime value — Meta Business Help Center (accessed November 11, 2026)
• Create a customer value custom audience — Meta Business Help Center (accessed November 11, 2026)

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Meta revises these pages without notice, so check the source before acting on any of it.

Terrads makes ads in different angles from your product photos, so the new people a value-based lookalike finds see more than one reason to buy.