[FAQ]

Hey everyone,

I have a website that’s getting a decent amount of traffic, and I want to run some retargeting ads on Facebook to bring those visitors back and hopefully convert them. I’m a bit lost in the Facebook Ads Manager interface, though.

What’s the best and most straightforward way to create an audience of my past website visitors in 2025? What are the prerequisites, like do I need the Meta Pixel installed first? And what are the actual steps inside Ads Manager to build this audience? I’ve heard you can target everyone or just people who visited specific pages, and I’d love to know how.

Any guidance on this would be a huge help. Thanks!

[Jeff Bullas]

Creating a retargeting audience from your website visitors is a highly effective strategy in Facebook Ads. The entire process is managed within the “Audiences” section of your Ads Manager, but it relies on one crucial prerequisite.

Before you can create this type of audience, you must have the Meta Pixel installed correctly on your website. The Pixel is a piece of code that tracks your website visitors and the actions they take, such as viewing a page or adding an item to a cart. It then sends this data back to Facebook. Without the Pixel installed and active, Facebook has no way of knowing who has visited your site.

Once the Pixel is in place and collecting data, you can create your audience. First, navigate to the “Audiences” section of your Facebook Ads Manager or Meta Business Suite. This is typically found in the main menu, sometimes under the “All Tools” section.

Second, click on the “Create Audience” button and then select “Custom Audience” from the available options.

Third, you will be asked to choose the source for your custom audience. For this purpose, you will select “Website” as your source and click “Next.”

Fourth, you will then need to define the rules for your audience. This is where you specify exactly which website visitors you want to include. Some of the most common and effective options include:
An audience of all website visitors within a specific timeframe, such as the last 30, 90, or up to 180 days.
An audience of people who visited specific web pages. This is very useful for targeting people who have shown interest in a particular product or service category.
You can also create audiences based on specific events that your Pixel has tracked, such as “ViewContent,” “AddToCart,” or “Purchase.”

Fifth, you can further refine your audience by including or excluding people based on these rules. A very common and powerful practice for e-commerce is to create an audience of people who have added an item to their cart but did not complete the purchase. You would achieve this by creating an audience that includes people who triggered the “AddToCart” event but then excluding people from that audience who also triggered the “Purchase” event.

Sixth, you need to name your audience clearly, for example, “All Website Visitors – 30 Days” or “Viewed Product X – 14 Days.” After you create the audience, Facebook will begin to populate it with users who match your criteria. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.

A good starting point for most is to create a broad audience of “All website visitors” from the last 30 or 90 days. As your website traffic grows, you can then create more granular, high-intent audiences based on visits to key pages or specific actions taken on your site.

Cheers,

Jeff

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