Short answer
Upload a CSV or TXT file of emails, phone numbers (E.164), their SHA-256 hashes, or Google Advertising IDs. Lists of 25,000+ matched users can be used to include people or adjust bids; smaller lists can only exclude. Processing usually takes 20–30 minutes.
Steps
- Prepare a UTF-8 CSV with headers such as email, phone_number, email_sha256, phone_number_sha256, gaid
- Normalise: lowercase and trim emails; phone numbers with + and country code
- Hash with SHA-256 if you prefer (64-character hex); don't hash GAIDs
- Upload (max 500 MB per file) and wait for status Ready
- Add the audience to a campaign as inclusion or exclusion
Size rules
| Use | Minimum matched users |
|---|---|
| Exclusion | No minimum |
| Inclusion | 25,000 (OpenAI recommends 100,000) |
| Bid adjustment | 25,000 |
Good to know
- An audience can't be both included and excluded in one campaign
- Members can be added, removed or replaced without recreating the audience
- Uploaded files are deleted after processing, usually within 24 hours
Questions
Can B2B companies use this?
Mostly for exclusions: few B2B lists reach 25,000 matched users. Exclude customers, staff and open deals.
Facts checked against the sources below on 12 October 2026. Platforms change quickly: if something here no longer matches what you see, tell us and we will update it.
