X Custom Audiences Connector Setup Guide | Server-Side Connectors

API Information

This connector uses the following vendor API:

API Name: X Ads API
API Version: v12
API Endpoint: https://ads-api.x.com/
Documentation: X Custom Audiences API

Batch Limits

This connector uses batched requests to support high-volume data transfers to the vendor. For more information, see Batched Actions. Requests are queued until one of the following thresholds is met or the profile is published:

Max number of requests: 1000
Max time since oldest request: 60 minutes
Max size of requests: 2 MB

Prerequisites

Sign up for a developer account. Both Essential and Elevateddeveloper access can access the Ads API. Please see the access levels to determine what access is required.
Create a developer app and secure your token
Request access to the Ads API. Make sure to include the correct App ID in the application. The App ID can be found in the Developer Portal under Projects & Apps. For example: 16489123

If you are already building on the X Developer Platform and have a developer account, skip to step 3.

How it works

X Custom Audiences gives you control over who sees your X Ads. X Ads gives you powerful context to connect your message to what’s most meaningful to your customers in real time. Engaging with real-time Tweets can influence conversations in a way that can help build your business.

Audiences is a tool in your X Ads account that allows you to review and manage your audiences. You can access it by navigating to Tools > Audiences.

From there, you can use Custom Audiences in campaign targeting to directly reach the users you care about. Tealium provides the ability to create an X Custom Audience through the user interface within AudienceStream and leverage your audience data to populate the Audience lists. Additionally, Audience lists can be created in your X Ads account and populated into AudienceStream to add or remove users. Examples of audiences that you can re-target include: previous customers, web visitors who haven’t yet converted, and/or high-value customers.

Tealium provides a list of hashed identifiers that can be sent to X to add or remove a user from the custom audience list, and X performs a match and produces segments that are made available against media buying on X. Your lists are matched with @handles on X so that you can directly target them in your campaigns, making your marketing highly relevant.

Considerations

All user identifiers except “Partner User ID” must be hashed using SHA256 hashing methods and normalized.
If the “User Identifier is already hashed” checkbox is unchecked, the connector action normalizes and hashes the mapped value.
When you create a Custom Audience, there’s an initial processing period where the users on the Custom Audience are “matched” by the X systems to their X @handle. This will then enable ad serving with the Promoted Ads to their account.
- It’s possible that not all of the users on your Custom Audience are active X users, which is why you might see a final Custom Audience size that is smaller than the connector actions firing volume.
- All Custom Audiences appear in AudienceStream, but only those in Ready serving status will properly target users in your campaign. This is viewable within your X Ads account > Audiences section.
An audience can only be targeted if it matches at least 100 users active within the past 90 days on X-owned and -operated clients.
Generally speaking, audience changes are processed in batches that run every 6-8 hours. While an audience change is processing the existing audience to be updated is unaffected.
Audience lists created through AudienceStream are added as the “List” Type within the Ads Campaign manager.
It is recommended to not use X data to derive or infer potentially sensitive characteristics about X users. A listing of these characteristics can be found at More About Restricted uses of the X APIs.

Configure Settings

Go to the Connector Marketplace and add a new connector. Read the Connector Overview article for general instructions on how to add a connector.

After adding the connector, configure the following settings:

Ad Account ID
- Required.
- Provide your X Ad Account ID.
- Your Account ID can be located in your account’s URL when logged in.
- Example: If the URL is https://ads.x.com/accounts/1234abcd/, the account ID is 1234abcd.

Create a Custom Audience Overview

The Create Custom Audience overlay appears within the Configuration screen of the X Custom Audiences connector. The Name field is the only required value for creation of an Audience List.

The list_type parameter was previously used to identify the user identifier type of the Audience (for instance: email, X User ID, Partner User ID, et cetera). However, audiences now have the ability to accept multiple user identifiers for the same audience, and this field is no longer required.

Actions

Action Name	AudienceStream	EventStream
Add User To Custom Audience	✓	✓
Add User to Custom Audience (multiple identifiers)	✓	✓
Remove User From Custom Audience	✓	✓
Remove User from Custom Audience (multiple identifiers)	✓	✓
Add User to Do Not Reach List	✓	✓
Remove User from Do Not Reach List	✓	✓

Enter a name for the action and select the action type from the drop-down menu.

The following section describes how to set up parameters and options for each action.

Action - Add User To Custom Audience

User identifiers

You must provide at least one of the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
Email	String	Provide a plain text email address that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed email address is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Phone Number	String	Provide a plain text phone number that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed phone number is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Device ID	String	Provide the device ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. This value should be an iOS Advertising Identifier, Google Advertising ID, or when not available - Android ID. If an unhashed device ID is mapped, please select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Twitter Handle	String	Provide an X handle that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed X handle is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Twitter ID	String	Provide an X ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. The X ID is a unique value that every account on X has. No two people have the same ID. Although an account can change its @handle, it can never change its X ID. If an unhashed X ID is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Partner User ID	String	Provide the partner user ID. If an unhashed Partner User ID is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
User Identifier Hashing	Boolean	If the user identifier is already hashed, select this checkbox. Otherwise, the connector will normalize and hash the mapped value.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Custom Audience	Required. Select audience from list. This value is retrieved from the X Ads account. You can create a custom audience on the Configuration screen. For more information, see X: Custom Audiences.
Effective At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should take effect. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to the current date and time. A milliseconds (MS) since epoch timestamp may be provided, and will be formatted correctly.
Expired At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should expire. The specified time must be later than the value of Effective At. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to your configured default expiration period, which is typically 30 days or 720 hours from the value of Effective At.

Action - Add User To Custom Audience (multiple identifiers)

User identifiers

You must provide at least one of the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
Email (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide a plain text email address and the connector whitespace trims, lowercases, and hashes this value using SHA256 hash.
Email (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an email address that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Phone Number (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide a plain text phone number and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Phone Number (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide a phone number that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, SHA256 hashed, and in E164 format.
Device ID (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide the device ID and the connector whitespaces trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Device ID (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide a device ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Twitter Handle (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide an X handle and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Twitter Handle (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an X handle that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Twitter ID (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide an X ID and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Twitter ID (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an X ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Partner User ID	String	Provide the partner user ID.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Custom Audience	Required. Select audience from list. This value is retrieved from the X Ads account. You can create a custom audience on the Configuration screen. For more information, see X: Custom Audiences.
Effective At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should take effect. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to the current date and time. A milliseconds (MS) since epoch timestamp may be provided, and will be formatted correctly.
Expired At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should expire. The specified time must be later than the value of Effective At. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to your configured default expiration period, which is typically 30 days or 720 hours from the value of Effective At.

Action - Remove User From Custom Audience

User identifiers

You must provide at least one of the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
Email	String	Provide a plain text email address that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed email address is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Phone Number	String	Provide a plain text phone number that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed phone number is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Device ID	String	Provide the device ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. This value should be an iOS Advertising Identifier, Google Advertising ID, or when not available - Android ID. If an unhashed device ID is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Twitter Handle	String	Provide an X handle that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. If an unhashed X handle is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Twitter ID	String	Provide an X ID that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed. The X ID is a unique value that every account on X has. No two people have the same ID. Although an account can change its @handle, it can never change its X ID. If an unhashed X ID is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
Partner User ID	String	Provide the partner user ID. If an unhashed Partner User ID is mapped, select the User Identifier Hashing checkbox.
User Identifier Hashing	Boolean	If the user identifier is already hashed, select this checkbox. Otherwise, the connector will normalize and hash the mapped value.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Custom Audience	Required. Select audience from list. This value is retrieved from the X Ads account. You can create a custom audience on the Configuration screen. For more information, see X: Custom Audiences.
Effective At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should take effect. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to the current date and time. A milliseconds (MS) since epoch timestamp may be provided, and will be formatted correctly.
Expired At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should expire. The specified time must be later than the value of Effective At. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to your configured default expiration period, which is typically 30 days or 720 hours from the value of Effective At.

Remove User from Custom Audience (multiple identifiers)

User identifiers

You must provide at least one of the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
Email (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide a plain text email address and the connector whitespace trims, lowercases, and hashes this value using SHA256 hash.
Email (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an email address that has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Phone Number (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide a plain text phone number and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Phone Number (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide a phone number which has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, SHA256 hashed, and in E164 format.
Device ID (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide the device ID and the connector whitespaces trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
Device ID (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide a device ID which has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
X Handle (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide an X handle and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
X Handle (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an X handle which has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
X ID (apply SHA256 hash)	String	Provide an X ID and the connector will whitespace trim, lowercase, and hash this value using SHA256 hash.
X ID (already SHA256 hashed)	String	Provide an X ID which has been already whitespace trimmed, lowercased, and SHA256 hashed.
Partner User ID	String	Provide the partner user ID.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Custom Audience	Required. Select audience from list. This value is retrieved from the X Ads account. You can create a custom audience on the Configuration screen. For more information, see Custom Audiences.
Effective At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should take effect. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to the current date and time. A milliseconds (ms) since epoch timestamp may be provided, and will be formatted correctly.
Expired At	Membership option. The UTC time at which the custom audience associations should expire. The specified time must be later than the value of Effective At. Expressed in ISO 8601 format. Defaults to your configured default expiration period, which is typically 30 days or 720 hours from the value of Effective At.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Do Not Reach List	Required. Select the Do Not Reach list from the drop-down list. Each X account can have at most one Do Not Reach List. The `DNRL` must be created in the X `UI`. For more information, see X: Do Not Reach Lists.

User Identifier

Parameter	Description
Email (apply SHA256 hash)	String
Email (already SHA256 hashed)	String

Remove User from Do Not Reach List

Parameters

Parameter	Description
Do Not Reach List	Required. Select the Do Not Reach list from the drop-down list. Each X account can have at most one Do Not Reach List. The `DNRL` must be created in the X `UI`. For more information, see X: Do Not Reach Lists.

User Identifier

Parameter	Description
Email (apply SHA256 hash)	String
Email (already SHA256 hashed)	String