How to Create an Instagram Engagement Custom Audience

An Instagram engagement audience collects people who followed or interacted with your Instagram account, so you can show them ads again. Meta builds it from a source, the events you tick and a look-back window, and it keeps itself current once it exists. This page covers the account requirement, the steps and how the retention window behaves.

Which Instagram accounts can you use?

Meta says you can make this audience from people who started following or engaged with your Instagram professional account. A professional account is either an Instagram for Business account or an Instagram creator account. Personal accounts can’t be used. Meta links to a guide for setting up an Instagram for Business account, and connecting Instagram to Meta ads covers the link to your ad account.

How do you create the audience?

1. From Meta Ads Manager, go to Audiences.
2. Open the Create audience dropdown and choose Custom audience.
3. Select Instagram account and click Next.
4. Choose the source you want from the dropdown menu.
5. Choose the events you want to include.
6. Enter the audience retention, a maximum of 365 days.
7. Choose to include more people or exclude people, if you need to.
8. Add an audience name and an optional description.
9. Select Create audience.

You return to the Audiences page, and when the audience has populated, Ready appears below Status. You can then pick it when you set up an ad set. Figures here are as checked on 2 Oct 2026.

How does the retention window work?

The number of days is dynamic. It sets how long a person who engaged with your content stays in the audience. Meta’s example is a 30-day window: Meta searches for everyone who engaged with your content in the past 30 days, adds anyone new who engages in that period, and removes anyone who hasn’t.

So someone who engaged 29 days ago is included, but if they don’t engage again the next day, they fall outside the window and leave. Meta says the audience is constantly refreshed, so you don’t need to edit it or build a new one unless you want to change the time period or the type of engagement.

How do include and exclude rules combine?

You can include or exclude engagement types. Meta says exclusionary rules override inclusionary ones, so someone who fits an exclusion rule and an inclusion rule is excluded from the audience. For exclusions at ad set level, see how audience exclusions work.

How is it different from a website audience?

Meta says engagement custom audiences use actions people take across Meta technologies, such as viewing videos or following a page. A website custom audience uses actions taken on your website, which Meta calls events.

What else should you know before you use it?

• You can use an engagement audience as the source for a lookalike audience.
• Targeting options are limited for audiences that include people under 18, or older in some countries.
• Meta says changes driven by evolving European privacy rules may affect campaigns that advertise to people in the European region.

FAQ

Can I build this audience from a personal Instagram account?

No. Meta says you can only use an Instagram professional account, either a business or a creator account, and that personal accounts can’t be used for this type of custom audience.

Why did the audience shrink after a few weeks?

The retention window is dynamic. Meta says it adds anyone who engages inside the period and removes anyone who hasn’t, so people drop out as their last engagement ages past your chosen number of days.

Do I need to refresh the audience?

No. Meta says the audience is constantly refreshed. You only change it if you want a different time period or a different type of engagement.