fbRads

Caution

fbRads was started in 2015, even before the Facebook Marketing API was generally available, and has been actively maintained and used since then at many companies as the only third-party SDK (as per the Facebook Business SDK dev portal) -- up to my knowledge, serving dozens of Business Managers, hundreds of Ad Accounts, and managing ads spending over $100M over the past years.

After changing roles in 2022, I did not use Facebook Ads Manager for a few years, and assisted others maintaining the package with minor version updates. In early 2024, when trying to create a new Business Manager for an open-source community, I've learned that my account was restricted back in Aug 2023 and I cannot create/edit BMs and Ad Accounts anymore -- without further explanation. After being in touch with Meta Support for a month and many-many pointless emails, I was informed that the decision is final and I cannot do anything about it.

As per above, it's time for me to officially step down as the maintainer of the package, and move on, as I cannot even test the package functions anymore. So thus I am archiving the repo. If you want to take over maintenance, please fork the repo, and get in touch if I can help with the transition process.

This R package includes wrapper functions around the Facebook Marketing API to create, read, update and delete custom audiences, images, campaigns, adsets, ads and related content.

For more details, see the slides presented at useR! 2015, the Los Angeles R Users Group and at a Domino Webinar.

Creating a Facebook App & connect with OAuth token

To be able to use this package, you will have to create a Facebook App and authorize it to manage your Facebook ads. Basic steps to create an app with Development access level letting you manage up to 5 Facebook ad accounts:

1. Click on "Add a New App" at https://developers.facebook.com/apps

2. Fill in a unique Display Name (eg "app_testing_foobar_42"), and provide your e-mail address. Click on "Create App ID" & pass the captcha test.

3. Select the "Implement Marketing API" scenario that will automatically add the "Marketing API" to the "Products" section of the sidebar, or click on the "+" butting in the "Products" section of the sidebar

4. Optionally associate your app with a Business Manager in the "Settings" screen of the "Marketing API"

5. In the sidebar, select "Tools" from the "Marketing API" and generate a token

6. Store your token in a secure place, and you are all set to start using fbRads, eg list all the Ad Account ids you can access:

   accounts <- fbad_get_my_ad_accounts(token)

7. Pick an Ad Account id from the returned list and initialize fbRads to use that Ad Account by default:

   account <- sample(accounts$account_id, 1)
   fbad_init(accountid = account, token = token)

8. Then list all your ads along with the ad name and status on that Ad Account:

   fbad_list_ad(fields = c('name', 'effective_status'))

9. Or eg filter for the active ads:

   fbad_list_ad(statuses = 'ACTIVE', fields = 'name')

Development version

The package is actively maintained, but not frequently pushed to CRAN, so to use the most recent version, install from GitHub. The master branch is supposed to include a relatively stable version at all the time:

devtools::install_github('daroczig/fbRads')

Using the package

This package makes your life more convenient when it comes to interacting with the Facebook Marketing API, but unfortunately, it cannot save you the time to get familiar with the actual API endpoints. To be able to interact with Facebook, you have to learn about how the API works etc -- see the documentation at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-apis

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This package was originally developed at CARD.com, then maintained at System1. If you are interested in taking over the maintenance of this R package, please open a GH ticket.