> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.instantcampaign.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Advertising in journeys

> Add or remove contacts from ad audiences as they move through a journey, and run an ad campaign that is shown only to people a journey sends to it.

Two journey steps connect your automations to paid advertising:

* **Sync to Ad Audience** adds a contact to, or removes them from, a Google Ads or Meta audience at that point in the journey.
* **Advertising campaign** adds the contact to the audience of an ad campaign made for the journey, so they start seeing that ad.

Both are in the journey builder's step palette with the other actions. For building journeys in general, see [Automations](/guides/audience-and-campaigns/automations).

<Note>
  Only contacts with the **Active** status and an email address are sent to the ad platform. Contacts are matched by their hashed email, as for [synced audiences](/guides/ads/audiences).
</Note>

## Sync to Ad Audience

Use this step to retarget people at a particular moment, for example after they abandon a cart, or to stop showing them ads once they buy.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create the audience">
    Under **Advertising → Audiences**, create an audience. A **Standalone** audience is filled only by journeys, which is usually what you want here. See [Sync audiences](/guides/ads/audiences#create-an-audience).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add the step">
    In the journey, add **Sync to Ad Audience**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure it">
    Pick the **Ad audience** (each is labelled Google Ads or Meta Ads) and the **Operation**: **Add to audience** or **Remove from audience**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

If no audiences exist yet, the step says "No ad audiences set up yet." and links to Integrations.

## Advertising campaign

This step works like an advertising activity in a customer journey: the journey decides who sees the ad.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create a campaign for this journey">
    In the step's settings, click **Create an ad campaign for this journey**. The campaign editor opens in a new tab with the note: "This campaign is driven by a journey: a journey-managed audience will be created for it and filled by the journey's Advertising campaign step."
  </Step>

  <Step title="Build and publish the campaign">
    Complete the five steps as usual. See [Create an ad campaign](/guides/ads/create-campaign). When you save, an audience named after the campaign with "(journey)" at the end is created in your ad account and added to the campaign's **Include audiences**. Publish the campaign, then **Resume** it when you're ready for it to deliver.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Select it in the step">
    Back in the journey, choose the campaign under **Advertising campaign**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Each contact who reaches the step joins the campaign's audience and starts seeing the ad. Contacts aren't removed from the audience by this step. To take people out later, for example after a purchase, add a **Sync to Ad Audience** step with **Remove from audience** for the same audience.

<Warning>
  Only campaigns created from a journey have an audience this step can fill. If you pick a campaign made directly under **Ad campaigns**, the step warns "This campaign was not created from a journey, so it has no audience this step can add contacts to." Contacts are skipped at that step.
</Warning>

<Tip>
  On Google Ads, the journey audience is a Customer Match list. Google only lets accounts that meet its requirements target Customer Match lists, and a list shows no size until at least 100 members have matched. For small journeys, Meta is usually the better fit.
</Tip>

## When a step is skipped

When a prerequisite is missing, the ad step is skipped instead of failing. The contact moves on to the next step, and the skip is recorded with a reason, when:

* the ad platform has been disconnected, no ad account is selected, or the connection has expired
* on Meta, the Custom Audience Terms haven't been accepted
* the workspace's plan no longer includes ad audience sync
* the contact being added isn't **Active** or has no email address (this check applies only when adding, not when removing)
* the audience is a lookalike audience
* the selected campaign no longer exists, or has no journey audience

Any other error from the ad platform fails the step.

## Let AI draft it

When you describe a journey to the AI journey builder, for example "run a Facebook ad to people who…", it can propose an **Advertising campaign** step. The campaign is left empty for you to choose or create.