Positioned as a tool dealers can use to leverage their presence on Facebook, Outsell — a digital marketing software-as-a-service company — on Thursday rolled out what it called a new custom audiences targeting service.

The company explained the tool can allow Outsell’s customers with offline data to upload, match and create precisely tuned ad audiences on Facebook to forge stronger connections with people they already know.

Previously, Outsell indicated Facebook only allowed advertisers to target users based on broad, interest-based criteria contained in their profiles. Outsell’s new custom audiences feature now allows companies to instead target ads to Facebook users by matching email, phone numbers or user IDs that users have previously provided to the advertiser.

For example, officials explained a dealer may have a list of customer email addresses. Outsell’s custom audiences is designed to match the email addresses to Facebook users and create a custom targeted audience who would then see the dealer’s advertisements on their Facebook pages.

The company said the files are hashed before being sent to Facebook so that no personal information about individuals is shared with any third party.

In effect, the company declared that custom audiences integration can provide Outsell’s dealer and automaker clients with an opportunity to engage with existing customers and leads via a new, powerful channel that complements email marketing and helps advertisers build a more holistic view of a customer's wants and needs.

Outsell believes dealers and OEMs can even take advantage of predictive models built within the company’s platform to target ads according to buying stage or segment.

“Combining the power of our behavioral and transactional data warehouse with the intimacy and immediacy of Facebook will be tremendously powerful for our automotive industry customers,” said Mike Wethington, chief executive officer of Outsell.

“This is a logical extension of our easy-to-use digital engagement platform as it leverages the predictive models built by Outsell for the Facebook channel,” Wethington continued.

“Never before have automotive marketers been able to target social media ads with this type of precision,” he went on to say. “We’re really excited about the potential for this technology, and proud to be among the first to offer it in the automotive space."

Outsell’s custom audiences integration is already in pilot with dealers from two automakers. The company noted the program will be opened to additional agencies and manufacturers later this year.