Add Leads to Ad Network

[Emmanuelle_Biss]

Hello, 

I'd like to push a Marketo smartlist to an ad network. The setup is done and is working fine, but I had a few questions about how it works/runs after been creatde.  

First, there are two Push Types:

- Add Leads to audience

- Remove leads form audience. 

First, if an audience is already created on the ad Network, when I choose "Add Leads to audience", does it push just the new leads, or does it refresh the whole list to reflect what's in Marketo?

Second, if I created a Smart list in Marketo that links to the ad Network, does it automatically refresh it in the chosen Ad Network (Adwords, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) or do I need to push it on a regular basis to have the most up to date list? 

Thank you!

Emma 

[Phillip_Wild · Accepted solution]

Ah, wouldn't it be great if it kept it in sync automatically! Unfortunately, from my experience and everything I've read, that's not the case. Here's the relevant docs page for Facebook: Add Leads to a Custom Audience in Facebook - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation 

It's the same for Google.  You can either add specific leads to an audience, or remove them, but not "keep it in sync". Additionally, you can't have a scheduled push to the ad networks - you need to manually push them each time yourself. Frankly, this interface stinks compared to what SFMC can do. I love Marketo, but this functionality is a bit behind.

So. You have a few options:

1. Deal with it and have a daily / weekly / monthly process where you remove everyone from an audience, then add all the new people back in. Note that you must have everyone you want to remove in the list. You can't simply "clear it" from Marketo. You need to say "Remove Person A, B and C from the custom audience in Facebook" via AdBridge. If Person D is in the audience in Facebook, but you don't specifically remove them, they remain. Best to use static lists for this purpose so you always know who is in the audience.

2. Create a custom API link. We have done this with Google and it wasn't exactly simple, but now we can run a weekly process that looks into a folder in Marketo, grabs all the static lists, grabs their members, removes all members of the corresponding lists in Google Ad Manager, and then populates with the new members. We have tried with Facebook but have failed so far.

3. Investigate a Customer Data Platform (CDP). The best option if budget and resourcing allows it. These programs will do the identity management for you and will ensure that all audiences in Facebook / Google / Marketo / Salesforce and whatever else are all kept in sync without you having to delve into complicated integrations in-house. 

One caveat - all of the above is based on my experience with Facebook and Google. I can't speak for LinkedIn, but I would guess it's similar functionality.

Good luck!

[Emmanuelle_Biss]

Hi Phillip, 

Thanks for your reply... even though I was hoping for a different answer  It's unfortunate that it only adds the newer people but does not reflect the actual list that is set in Marketo. I had some specific filters which I tweaked later on, and thought that it would refresh the whole list rather than just add the new contacts. I guess I'll have to find a way to "clean" these lists and reupload them. 

As for the manually pushing them I will have to set a reminder... it would have been nice to have it automatically. 

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my question. That's very helpful and appreciated!

[Phillip_Wild]

No problem at all Emmanuelle. Glad it helped!

For further background - I'm guessing the reason this is not quite so simple on the Marketo side is that in order to "keep the lists in sync", there would need to be an integration BACK into Marketo from Facebook / Google as well as the other way around. What if someone in Facebook removed everyone in the list via their UI? There would need to be many API calls into Marketo to remove everyone from the corresponding list(s). That's a whole lot of work for Facebook, and they seem to have bigger problems at the moment! That's my guess as to the reason, anyway.

Having said that, Salesforce seems to have it done...so it's certainly not impossible (https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_ads_advertising_audiences.htm&type=5).