Digital Matching — Turn a Property List Into an Ad Audience

What is Digital Matching?

Digital Matching is the Ava Data feature that converts a contact list into platform-formatted advertising audience files. You upload a CSV, choose the destinations you want, and download a package containing one ready-to-upload file per platform. The supported destinations are Facebook and Instagram (a Custom Audience file for Meta Ads Manager), Google Ads (a Customer Match file), LinkedIn (a contact-list file for Campaign Manager), TikTok (a customer-file audience), and a generic hashed-email file for other compatible platforms.

The input CSV needs either an email or a phone column, or a name plus address, city, state and ZIP columns. Ava Data resolves each row against the same identity graph behind Standard Search and Deep Search — the graph that refreshes every 24 hours — and appends the verified identifiers it holds for that person. Ad platforms match on identifiers, not on names, which is why a row that carries only a name and a mailing address is worth nothing to them until this step has run.

Related pages: List Builder quick-lists · List Stacking · Bulk Skip Tracing · CRM Enrichment · API reference

Why can't a property-owner list be uploaded to an ad platform as-is?

A property-owner list cannot be uploaded to an ad platform as-is because county records do not contain the fields ad platforms match on. A county recorder or assessor pull returns an owner name, a parcel, a situs address and a mailing address. Meta, Google Ads, LinkedIn and TikTok build customer-list audiences from hashed emails and phone numbers. Those two sets barely overlap, so the file that is perfectly good for direct mail is close to empty as an audience file.

There is a second constraint that catches people out even when they do have identifiers. The major platforms enforce a minimum matched-audience size before a customer list can be targeted at all — a list that resolves to too few people is accepted and then simply cannot be used. That makes the number of contacts you can put into the file the thing that decides whether the campaign runs, which is exactly what the trace-then-match step changes.

This is the same failure mode as the mailing address that no longer reaches an absentee owner: the public record answers who owns the property, not how to reach the person. Skip tracing closes that gap for the phone; Digital Matching closes it for the ad platforms.

Which ad platforms does Digital Matching support?

Digital Matching supports five output destinations, selected per job. Every selected platform is included in the same per-match price — choosing four destinations instead of one does not multiply the credit cost.

Each platform expects its own column names and its own hashing conventions, and getting either wrong is the usual reason an upload is rejected. Digital Matching writes each file in the shape its destination expects, so the same source list produces four correctly formatted files rather than one file you reformat four times by hand.

What does a Digital Matching job return?

A completed Digital Matching job returns a ZIP package by default. The package contains one ready-to-upload CSV per selected platform, a master data file holding the matched records, and written upload instructions. If you only want one destination, request a single platform's CSV instead of the ZIP — the download endpoint takes a platform query parameter for exactly that.

The job's status record reports numRecords, numMatches, creditsCharged and platformCounts — matched contacts broken out per platform, populated when the job completes. Those four fields are the audit trail for what you were billed and what you actually received, and they are readable from the dashboard and the API alike.

How much does Digital Matching cost?

Digital Matching costs 2 credits per matched contact — 4¢ at Ava Data's 1 credit = 2¢ rate — with every selected platform included in that single per-match charge. Credits are reserved when the job starts and only matched contacts are charged; rows that resolve to nothing cost nothing. The $9/month plan includes 100 credits, which is enough to run a small sphere or farm list end to end before committing a county pull to it.

Worked end to end, a records-sourced campaign has two data costs rather than one:

• The trace. 1 credit (2¢) per matched phone, or 2 credits (4¢) for phone plus email through Bulk Skip Tracing. Email is the identifier that carries the most weight on a customer-list upload, so a campaign headed for the ad platforms is usually a phone-plus-email trace rather than a phone-only one.
• The match. 2 credits (4¢) per matched contact through Digital Matching, all selected platforms included.

A stacked list of 900 owners therefore costs at most 900 × 4¢ = $36 to trace for phone and email, and at most a further 900 × 4¢ = $36 to turn into audience files — both figures being ceilings, since neither step charges for a record it cannot match. Compare that to the same 900 owners run only as direct mail, where every piece is paid for whether or not anyone at that address is still the owner.

How to build an ad audience from a property list

The workflow is the same list-stack, trace, then match sequence Ava Data is built around, with Digital Matching as the last step:

• Step 1 — Pull the list. Use List Builder to pull the segment you want by state, county, city or ZIP — absentee owners, high-equity owners, expired listings, or any of the other quick-lists. 1 credit per record pulled.
• Step 2 — Stack before you spend. List Stacking keeps the owners appearing on more than one source list, which is what stops you paying to trace and match tens of thousands of records you were never going to work.
• Step 3 — Trace for phone and email. Run the survivors through Bulk Skip Tracing at 2 credits per match to append both identifier types.
• Step 4 — Match to the platforms. Upload the traced file to Digital Matching, select your destinations, and let the job run. Poll its status if you are working through the API.
• Step 5 — Download and upload. Take the ZIP, or one platform's CSV, and load it into Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads Audience Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager or TikTok Ads Manager yourself. Ava Data prepares the file; you own the ad account and the campaign.

Teams that already run direct mail usually run this alongside it rather than instead of it, so the same owner sees the postcard and the ad. Teams working a CRM start at step 3 instead, since the contacts are already theirs — see CRM enrichment and the Follow Up Boss integration.

For developers: the Digital Matching API

Digital Matching is exposed as three REST endpoints — upload, status, download — under the same bearer-token auth as the rest of the Ava Data API, rate limited to 60 requests per minute per key. API access is enabled per account. The full reference is at /docs/ and the machine-readable spec at /openapi.json.

curl -X POST https://app.avadata.ai/api/v1/audience/upload \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_api_key_here" \
  -F "file=@owners-traced.csv" \
  -F 'platforms=["facebook","google"]'

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "jobId": "abc123-def456",
    "lookupId": "xyz789",
    "platforms": ["facebook", "google"],
    "creditsPerMatch": 2,
    "status": "processing"
  }
}

Poll the job until it reports completed, then download the package:

curl https://app.avadata.ai/api/v1/audience/abc123-def456/status \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_api_key_here"

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "jobId": "abc123-def456",
    "status": "processing",
    "progress": 65,
    "platforms": ["facebook", "google"]
  }
}

The download endpoint returns a ZIP by default, or a single platform's CSV when you pass ?platform=:

curl -o audiences.zip https://app.avadata.ai/api/v1/audience/abc123-def456/download \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_api_key_here"

# or one platform only
curl -o facebook.csv "https://app.avadata.ai/api/v1/audience/abc123-def456/download?platform=facebook" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_api_key_here"

The status values are uploading, queued, processing, completed and failed; the download endpoint requires the job to be completed. Because the job runs asynchronously, a large file does not hold a connection open — the same pattern as a bulk skip trace.

Who uses Digital Matching?

• Real-estate investors and wholesalers layering ads over a mail or call campaign, so a motivated-seller list is worked on more than one channel before it goes cold.
• Realtors and teams putting a farm area, a sphere-of-influence list or an expired-listing pull in front of the same households they already mail.
• Lead-generation and marketing teams who hold a CSV of prospects and need it formatted for several ad platforms without hashing and re-mapping every column by hand.
• Developers and ops teams wiring audience refreshes into a scheduled job through the API, so a list rebuilt each month reaches the ad platforms without anyone opening a spreadsheet.

What Digital Matching does not do

Digital Matching prepares audience files. It does not launch, manage, optimise or report on advertising campaigns — those happen in your own ad accounts, under your own billing, subject to each platform's own policies. Ava Data does not promise that a given file will be accepted by a platform, and it does not predict how many contacts a file will resolve to on the platform's side, because that matching happens inside Meta, Google, LinkedIn or TikTok and is not something a data provider can see or guarantee.

One platform rule is worth knowing before you plan the campaign rather than after: Meta requires ads that relate to housing to be declared as a special ad category, and that declaration restricts some targeting and audience-expansion options. Whether a given campaign falls into it is a call made in your own ad account against the platform's current policy, which is another reason the campaign side of this stays with you.

By uploading a list you are confirming you have the right to use it for advertising and that you will follow each platform's customer-list policies. Ava Data is not a consumer reporting agency, and its data may be used to reach people — never to decide anyone's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, or housing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Digital Matching in Ava Data?

Digital Matching is the Ava Data feature that turns a contact or property-owner list into ready-to-upload advertising audience files. You upload a CSV and select destinations — Facebook and Instagram, Google Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok, or a generic hashed-email file — and download a ZIP containing one correctly formatted file per platform, a master data file, and upload instructions.

How much does Digital Matching cost?

Digital Matching costs 2 credits per matched contact, which is 4¢ at Ava Data's 1 credit = 2¢ rate. Every platform you select is included in that single charge rather than billed separately. Credits are reserved when the job starts and only matched contacts are charged. The $9/month plan includes 100 credits.

What columns does the CSV need?

The file needs a header row and at least one data row, plus either an email or a phone column, or a name together with address, city, state and ZIP columns. A county-sourced owner list normally carries the second set, which is why most real-estate workflows run a skip trace first to add phone and email before the match.

Does Ava Data run the ad campaign for me?

No. Ava Data prepares the audience files and hands them to you; the upload, the targeting, the budget and the creative all stay in your own ad accounts. That boundary is deliberate — it keeps your ad spend, your platform relationships and your campaign data under your control.

Can I run Digital Matching through the API?

Yes. Three endpoints cover the whole job: POST /api/v1/audience/upload with the CSV and a platforms array, GET /api/v1/audience/{jobId}/status to poll progress, and GET /api/v1/audience/{jobId}/download for the ZIP or a single platform's CSV. Authentication is a bearer token, the rate limit is 60 requests per minute per key, and API access is enabled per account.