Facebook exposes a Marketing API that allows you to programmatically add Facebook Ads tools and features to your own apps, websites and digital services. There are many varied uses for this and reasons for doing so, which will be covered in this article.
How do I use the Facebook Ads API?
APIs are built by and for developers. You will need to register for access to Facebook’s Marketing API and then have software developers integrate your desired functionality into your tools.
Why use Facebook Ads API?
An API allows developers to interact with Facebook Ads using code. The list of possible use cases for this data is limitless, but some of the most popular uses are to create your own internal ad insights tools or pull them through into other analysis tools and platforms you already use. Or you can use it to programmatically manage your ads and audience through tools you develop or use outside of Facebook.
How to interact with Facebook Ads API
An API is a service that is exposed by Facebook. This means that computers can connect to their servers to send and retrieve data for use in your own products and services. At its root, Facebook supports cURL. This is a basic method of communicating between two computers and means that virtually whatever language your own system is built in, you will be able to build tools using the Facebook Ads API.
APIs commonly include SDKs written in a variety of popular languages. An SDK can be considered a package of pre-built commands to interact with Facebook Ads API that your developers can use. It cuts down on your own development time when using Facebook Ads API in your own software. Facebook has official SDKs in PHP, Node.js, Python, Java and Ruby. These cover all of the currently most popular developer languages for software, so if you need to hire developers to write tools using the Facebook Ads API, it should be relatively simple to find a suitable candidate. You can interact using a mix of languages.
Considerations when using Facebook Ads API
When you use and analyse customer data, you must be sure to abide by GDPR regulations. This means that you should have a privacy policy stating how you use customer data and have some means of identifying individual customers to retrieve or delete their data on request.
