topic Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience in Ads

Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

DJames79 — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 18:01:21 GMT

Hi all,

I'm a bit lost on adding non-marketing contacts a google ads audience. We have our list of existing clients and don't want to send our ad campaigns to them. When I start creating the audience and select the list with clients in it tells me I need to make them all marketing contacts to do this. We have several thousand clients and as we aren't targetting them it seems odd we have to make them a marketing first to use them?

Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

karstenkoehler — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 18:10:54 GMT

Hi @DJames79,

It might seem odd but yes, marketing contact status (as a billing / credit type system, not relating to consent) is required for ad audiences, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/marketing-contacts#tools-that-only-work-with-marketing-contacts

I am not aware of ways to work around that.

Best regards

Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

DJames79 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 07:01:16 GMT

Thanks, @karstenkoehler. So, do I need to add these archived non-marketing contacts to our monthly pool (purchased marketing contacts) of marketing contacts so we can suppress their receipt of ads? This screenshot says they will become contacts that can be marketed to which I don't want. I don't understand how I add them but stop them being marketed too.

Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

DJames79 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:59:49 GMT

Would a Zapier integration work for solving this? Add new contacts to Google Ads

Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

karstenkoehler — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:01:45 GMT

@DJames79 potentially, yes, I haven't tested this 🙂

Re: Adding non marketing contacts to a Google Audience

Upvise — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:50:25 GMT

Hi James!

Totally get the confusion here, it does feel a bit backwards at first!

Here’s the deal:

HubSpot only syncs marketing contacts to ad audiences like Google Ads or Facebook.

Non-marketing contacts won’t be added, even if they’re on the list you’re using.

Why?

Because ad audiences are considered a form of marketing outreach, HubSpot treats them under the same “marketing contacts” rules (even if your intention is to exclude them from ads).

Workaround:

Since you’re using the list to exclude clients (not target them), here’s a tip:

1. Temporarily make the contacts “marketing”

2. Add them to the Google Ads audience (used as a suppression list)

3. Once synced, you can switch them back to non-marketing (HubSpot doesn’t remove them from the ad audience after that)

Just keep an eye on your monthly marketing contacts allowance, this workaround works best if you’re on a Marketing Professional or Enterprise plan with flexible contact tiering.

Alternatively, just download the list and manually upload is as audience. If you do this every second month or so, it should be fine.