Do Not Reach Lists

Do Not Reach Lists (DNRL) serve as an alternative to exclusion Custom Audiences and work as an overarching audience management tool - allowing advertisers to seamlessly exclude a single group of people from all campaigns within their ads account. 

With this ability, you are able to exert more control over your intended audience - ensuring that your ads reach people that are likely to be receptive to your brand’s message.

 

How it works

As an advertiser, there may be certain people who should not be reached with any of your X Ads campaigns. In order to efficiently exclude these people, we recommend creating a Do Not Reach List by uploading a list of their user identifiers and allowing that list to be matched against all active X users.

Once a DNRL is created and the status reads as “Ready”, all campaigns that run within the corresponding ads account will automatically exclude people who have matched in the DNRL — preventing them from receiving ads from your account. 

The DNRL will be automatically and universally applied to all campaigns running from that ads account. This means that you do not need to add the DNRL to any campaigns nor can you pick and choose which campaigns exclude the DNRL.

Each ads account will be granted the ability to maintain just one Do Not Reach List, but the DNRL can be edited, deleted, and recreated at any time. 

 

Create your DNRL

Once you’ve identified the people that you would like to exclude from your campaigns, take the following steps to create your Do Not Reach List.

1. Create your List file in an accepted format. Supported file formats are .csv, .tsv, and .xt.

2. Add your user identifiers. Supported identifiers include email address and phone numbers. The identifiers on your list can be separated by lines or commas.

  • Email Format: Text can be any case, remove all spaces (e.g. support@x.com)
  • Phone Number Format: Please use e.164 format, remove all spaces (e.g. +16175551212)

3. Prepare for upload. Navigate to your “Audiences” manager page under the drop-down “Tools” menu on ads.x.com. On this page, click "Create audience" then select “Do not reach list” from the “Choose an audience type” pop-up module.

4. Add your list. Set an audience description (optional) then drag and drop or browse and upload your file via the noted section. Press “Next” when your file appears in the upload box. 

5. Review & define your data. Once your file has completed an initial upload, you will be asked to review the data and define the type of identifier that is being used for matching. If you are using multiple identifiers, you will be asked to specify the identifier type for each column. For any extraneous columns, select the “Do not upload data” option.

6. Wait for upload. Don’t close or minimize the browser window while the file is uploading, and only upload one file at a time. For larger files, make sure that you have a reliable and fast internet connection. If files are over 4GB, we recommend segmenting the list into multiple, smaller uploads to avoid exceeding your brower’s upload limits.

After you've uploaded your list, you'll see your “Do Not Reach List” appear in your Audiences tab as "Processing". Once your DNRL has matched at least 100 people, the status will change to "Ready" and you will see the “X size” update to reflect the number of people who have been matched.

At this point, your DNRL will begin automatically excluding matched users from all campaigns, but it may not be done processing. Lists can take up to 48 hours to finish the matching processing and the “X size” will continue to update until the processing is complete. 

Audience showing as too small? Find out why in our FAQ below.

 

Use your DNRL

Once your Do Not Reach List is marked as “Ready” in the status column, all campaigns that run within your ads account will automatically exclude people who have matched in the DNRL. This will prevent them from receiving ads from your account.

There is no action needed to enable the DNRL or apply it to any campaigns as it will be both automatically and universally applied. 

Please note that your DNRL will not be applied if the status is showing as “Processing” or “Audience too small”. 

  • If “Processing”, we recommend giving it a bit more time and checking back later as Lists can take up to 48 hours to finish the matching processing.

  • To respect user privacy, we require that Do Not Reach Lists reach a minimum of 100 matched X users before becoming active. If a DNRL falls short of this requirement, the status will read “Audience too small”. In order to reach the minimum threshold, you will need to add more people to your DNRL and reupload.

 

Edit your DNRL

Each ads account will be granted the ability to maintain just one Do Not Reach List, but the DNRL can be edited, deleted, and recreated. 

In the Audiences table, click on the three vertical dots next to your DNRL to view your options: “Edit”, “Add People”, and “Delete”.

  • Edit — view the details of your DNRL.

  • Add people — expand your DNRL by adding more people via the process outlined above. Uploading new user identifiers to an existing DNRL is an additive process and does not replace or remove the existing users who have been matched.
  • Delete — remove the entire DNRL from your ads account and any active campaigns. Deleted DNRLs cannot be restored, but you can upload a new one at any time.
 

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