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By the end of this lesson, you'll have Audiences feeding Ads and your LinkedIn and Meta ad accounts connected inside Clay, ready to sync a real audience to a live ad platform.

📊 Audiences Comes First

Ads runs on Audiences, so your data has to be in there before any of this is going to work. If your Audiences aren't set up yet, do that first: it's how you get the most value out of Ads.

Here's the 90 second refresher:

From Settings, open Audiences and add a source. This connects that source to your Audiences. Using HubSpot as the example:

1. Pick your source and click Connect - Clay hands you off to authorize, then brings you back.
2. Choose the objects to connect - HubSpot exposes three.
3. Turn on import sync - This is the important one. It continuously imports company data from HubSpot into Clay Audiences.
4. Map your company fields - Select Auto-map to map the most common fields from your Clay data to your HubSpot data automatically, or map them manually: company name, domain, headquarters, and so on. Add more mapping fields here if you need them.
5. Click Save and review.

Audiences runs on the SEA framework: Segment, Enrich, Act. Ads is the Act step. You set up Audiences, you segment your list, you enrich that list, and then finally you act on it.

For a full refresher, see the Audiences course in Clay University.

🔧 Where Ad Accounts Get Connected

Connecting your ad accounts happens right inside the ad sync builder, at the moment you pick your destinations. So the fastest way in is from a People audience.

1. Open a People audience and set your filters to narrow down exactly who you're targeting. In this example, we're filtering on people who are in New York whose title contains "product."
2. Click Send, then Export, then Sync to ad platforms.

That brings you to the ad setup, where destinations get added and accounts get connected.

🔗 Connecting LinkedIn and Meta

Most platforms work basically the same way, so the LinkedIn flow below is the one to learn.

LinkedIn

1. Click to add a destination and choose your ad provider. Here, LinkedIn.
2. Select your authorization token, then Add an account.
3. Sign in with LinkedIn - An authorization window opens on LinkedIn's side.
4. Name the connection - Name it something you'll recognize later
5. Set it as default if you'd like, and control the access settings.
6. Click Save, then select your account.

From there you can pull whichever ads account that authorization makes available, and click Done.

Meta

Meta follows the same path: add your account, sign in with Meta, approve on Meta's side, then pick the account. Once you save, you'll see that the account was successfully updated.

Meta takes a moment to appear. After it syncs, go back into your destinations, choose Meta Ads, and select the correct ad account. Meta Ads is now added alongside LinkedIn.

⏳ The Meta Token Gotcha

Meta access tokens expire every 60 days, and when one does, any recurring syncs you've set up stop working. There are two fixes:

• Re-authenticate in Clay: When the 60 days is up and the token expires, you just run through the connection flow again.
• Set up a System Token on Meta's side: This one doesn't expire, but it does require elevated permissions on the Meta Ads platform.

🔑 Access Requirements

This is worth keeping in mind, and it will hopefully save you a support ticket later on.

Ideally, if you're the one syncing ads, the most reliable way to make sure the syncs work is to be an admin on the ad platform. If your account isn't an admin, it's going to require specific permissions for audience uploads and reporting.

🚀 What's Next

You've now got Audiences feeding Ads, your LinkedIn and Meta accounts connected from inside the sync builder, and you know why a Meta sync can go quiet 60 days from now.

Next we'll actually build: a real audience, synced live to the ad platform, and you'll see how fast building can really be.

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