Setup Guide

RudderStack lets you send your customer events for creating custom audiences by leveraging the Facebook Marketing API.

Find the open source transformer code for this destination in the GitHub repository.

The user information in your events may include email, phone number, gender, etc. See the Facebook documentation for more information on the supported fields.

Getting started

In your RudderStack dashboard, go to Directory > Destinations > Cloud Destinations and search for Facebook Custom Audience.

Connection settings

To add Facebook Custom Audience as a destination in RudderStack, you will need to configure the following settings:

• Access Token: Enter the access token of your business application set up for accessing the Facebook Marketing API.
• Ad Account ID: Enter your Ad Account ID.

Configuration settings

This section lists the advanced configuration settings to receive the data correctly to Facebook custom audience:

• App Secret: Enter your app secret from the basic app settings page of your Facebook Developer account.
• Audience Batch Size: Specify the data size you want RudderStack to send to Facebook in a single event. For example, if you want to send a total 1000 user records to Facebook and set the batch size to 50, then RudderStack will send 20 events to Facebook with 50 user records in each event.
• Schema Fields Choose your schema fields (at least one) from the available options. This is a mandatory field. RudderStack expects the user events to consist of every schema field that has been chosen in the dashboard.

RudderStack ignores any user information which does not adhere to the schema fields specified in the dashboard settings.

• Enable Hashing: Enabled by default, this option lets RudderStack hash encode the user data irrespective of the schema type chosen in the RudderStack dashboard. Facebook expects the user data to be hash encoded using SHA256.
• Is The Data Raw: As RudderStack does not support combinational schema fields, this field is ignored if not enabled.

It is highly recommended not to exceed the batch size of 100.

• Disable Formatting: Enable this option to not format the user data before sending it to Custom Audience. Facebook has fixed data formats for all the allowed schema fields. See the Explicit formatting feature section for more information.
• Type: Specify the type of the custom audience.
• Sub Type: Specify the sub-type of the custom audience.
• Consent management provider: Configure the consent management settings for the specified source by choosing the consent management provider from the dropdown. If you choose Custom, make sure to pass the custom consent data to SDK.

record event structure

The Facebook Custom Audience destination supports only record events.

A sample record event that RudderStack sends to Facebook is shown:

{
  action: 'insert',
  context: {
    destinationFields: 'EMAIL, FI',
    externalId: [{
      type: 'FB_CUSTOM_AUDIENCE-23848494844100489',
      identifierType: 'EMAIL',
    }, 
    ],
    mappedToDestination: 'true',
    sources: {
      job_run_id: '<job_run_id>',
      task_run_id: 'cgiiurt8um7k7n5dq48g',
      job_id: '<job_id>',
      version: '895/merge',
    },
  },
  recordId: '2',
  rudderId: '2',
  fields: {
    EMAIL: 'alex@example.com',
    FI: 'ghui',
  },
  type: 'record',
}

Schema fields mapping

The following table details the mapping of the schema fields specified in the RudderStack dashboard and the Facebook Marketing API.

RudderStack modifies the schema names visible in the dashboard to ensure better readability. However, during the event call, the field names must be exactly the same as the schema names specified by Facebook Marketing API, as mentioned in the table above.

Explicit formatting feature

If your turn on the Disable Formatting option in the RudderStack dashboard, RudderStack will not format the user data in the format prescribed by the Facebook Marketing API. Otherwise, RudderStack formats the schema fields input by the user as shown in the table below:

The following code snippet shows a record event with the schema fields (EMAIL and FIRST NAME) specified in the RudderStack dashboard:

{
  "type": "audiencelist",
  "properties": {
    "listData": {
      "add": [{
          "EMAIL": "name1@abc.com",
          "FN": "name1"
        },
        {
          "EMAIL": "name2@abc.com",
          "FN": "name2"
        },
        {
          "EMAIL": "name3@abc.com",
          "FN": "name3"
        }
      ],
      "remove": [{
          "EMAIL": "name4@abc.com",
          "FN": "name4"
        },
        {
          "EMAIL": "name5@abc.com",
          "FN": "name5"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

FAQ

What are the prerequisites for creating an audience list?

Before creating a new audience list, make sure that:

• You are an admin system user. To check, go to Users > System users in your Facebook business account.

• The ad account under which the audience list is created should be added as an asset for the system user, with manage permissions.
• The app for which you are creating the access token should be added as an asset of the system user with full control.

How do I add an app as a system user asset with manage permissions?

1. Log in to your Facebook Business Manager account.
2. Click Business settings.

3. Under Users, click System users.

4. Choose the system user from the opened list.
5. Click Add Assets for the above user.

6. Under Select asset type, click Apps and choose your app from the Select assets tab.

7. In the right-most App tab, enable the Manage app setting. Then, click Save Changes.

How do I create a new audience list?

1. Log in to your Facebook business account.
2. Click All tools in the left panel.

3. Hover over Create Audience and select Custom Audience.

4. Select Customer List and click Next.

5. Prepare your customer list by selecting and mapping the identifiers. Make sure you have enough identifiers before uploading the list.

6. Upload the CSV file you want to use for your new custom audience. Under the Does your list include a column for customer value? setting, make sure to select No, continue with a customer list that doesn’t include customer value.

You can also download the file template CSV and upload it.

7. Finally, click Import and create to create the audience.

The custom audience you create should have edit permissions. Otherwise, RudderStack will not be able to add or remove users from the list.

How do I check if the custom audience has edit permissions?

To check if the audience has edit permissions enabled, go to the Audiences tab, select your custom audience, and check the Actions dropdown. You should see the Edit option as seen below:

How do I obtain the Ad Account ID?

Go to your Facebook Ads Manager account where you can find the Ad Account ID in the account’s drop-down menu:

You can click on See More Ad Accounts if the required Ad account is not visible.

Where can I find the user Access Token for the application?

To generate the user access token for your application, you must first add it as a system user asset with manage permissions.

Follow these steps to generate a user access token required to use the Facebook Marketing API:

1. Under the system user, click the Generate New Token button and select the app from the dropdown.

2. Choose the Token expiration time.

3. Under Available permissions, select ads_read and ads_management.

4. Click the Generate Token button and copy the token credentials.

Should I use sessionIdAdd or sessionIdDelete before adding or removing users in Custom Audience?

sessionIdAdd and sessionIdDelete helps you track and use a particular session ID while adding or removing users. This is useful when you are sending data in chunks. If you do not include these fields, Facebook creates a session ID itself.

See the Facebook documentation for more information.

Questions? Contact us by email or on Slack