Facebook connection

Last update: 2023-09-14
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Overview

Activate profiles for your Facebook campaigns for audience targeting, personalization, and suppression based on hashed emails.

You can use this destination for audience targeting across Facebook’s family of apps that are supported by Custom Audiences, including Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. Selection of the app that you want to run campaign against is indicated at the placement level in Facebook Ads Manager.

Facebook destination in the Adobe Experience Platform UI

Use cases

To help you better understand how and when to use the Facebook destination, here are two sample use cases that Adobe Experience Platform customers can solve by using this feature.

Use case #1

An online retailer wants to reach existing customers through social platforms and show them personalized offers based on their previous orders. The online retailer can ingest email addresses from their own CRM to Adobe Experience Platform, build audiences from their own offline data, and send these audiences to the Facebook social platform, optimizing their advertising spending.

Use case #2

An airline has different customer tiers (Bronze, Silver, and Gold), and wants to provide each of the tiers with personalized offers via social platforms. However, not all customers use the airline’s mobile app, and some of them have not logged on to the company’s website. The only identifiers the company has about these customers are membership IDs and email addresses.

To target them across social media, they can onboard the customer data from their CRM into Adobe Experience Platform, using the email addresses as identifiers.

Next, they can use their offline data including associated membership IDs and customer tiers to build new audiences that they can target through the Facebook destination.

Supported identities

Facebook Custom Audiences supports the activation of identities described in the table below. Learn more about identities.

Target Identity Description Considerations
GAID Google Advertising ID Select the GAID target identity when your source identity is a GAID namespace.
IDFA Apple ID for Advertisers Select the IDFA target identity when your source identity is an IDFA namespace.
phone_sha256 Phone numbers hashed with the SHA256 algorithm Both plain text and SHA256 hashed phone numbers are supported by Adobe Experience Platform. Follow the instructions in the ID matching requirements section and use the appropriate namespaces for plain text and hashed phone numbers, respectively. When your source field contains unhashed attributes, check the Apply transformation option, to have Platform automatically hash the data on activation.
email_lc_sha256 Email addresses hashed with the SHA256 algorithm Both plain text and SHA256 hashed email addresses are supported by Adobe Experience Platform. Follow the instructions in the ID matching requirements section and use the appropriate namespaces for plain text and hashed email addresses, respectively. When your source field contains unhashed attributes, check the Apply transformation option, to have Platform automatically hash the data on activation.
extern_id Custom user IDs Select this target identity when your source identity is a custom namespace.

Supported audiences

This section describes which type of audiences you can export to this destination.

Audience origin Supported Description
Segmentation Service ✓ Audiences generated through the Experience Platform Segmentation Service.
Custom uploads ✓ Audiences imported into Experience Platform from CSV files.

Export type and frequency

Refer to the table below for information about the destination export type and frequency.

Item Type Notes
Export type Audience export You are exporting all members of an audience with the identifiers (name, phone number, or others) used in the Facebook destination.
Export frequency Streaming Streaming destinations are “always on” API-based connections. As soon as a profile is updated in Experience Platform based on audience evaluation, the connector sends the update downstream to the destination platform. Read more about streaming destinations.

Facebook account prerequisites

Before you can send your audiences to Facebook, make sure you meet the following requirements:

  • Your Facebook user account must have full access to the Facebook Business Account which owns the Ad account that you will be using.
  • Your Facebook user account must have the Manage campaigns permission enabled for the Ad account that you plan to use.
  • The Adobe Experience Cloud business account must be added as an advertising partner in your Facebook Ad Account. Use business ID=206617933627973. See Add Partners to Your Business Manager in the Facebook documentation for details.
    IMPORTANT

    When configuring the permissions for Adobe Experience Cloud, you must enable the Manage campaigns permission. The permission is required for the Adobe Experience Platform integration.

    * Read and sign the Facebook Custom Audiences Terms of Service. To do so, go to `https://business.facebook.com/ads/manage/customaudiences/tos/?act=[accountID]`, where `accountID` is your Facebook Ad Account ID.
    IMPORTANT

    When signing the Facebook Custom Audiences Terms of Service, make sure to use the same user account that you used to authenticate in the Facebook API.

ID matching requirements

Facebook requires that no personally identifiable information (PII) is sent in clear. Therefore, the audiences activated to Facebook can be keyed off hashed identifiers, such as email addresses or phone numbers.

Depending on the type of IDs that you ingest into Adobe Experience Platform, you must adhere to their corresponding requirements.

Phone number hashing requirements

There are two methods to activate phone numbers in Facebook:

  • Ingesting raw phone numbers: you can ingest raw phone numbers in the E.164 format into Platform. They automatically hashed upon activation. If you choose this option, make sure to always ingest your raw phone numbers into the Phone_E.164 namespace.
  • Ingesting hashed phone numbers: you can pre-hash your phone numbers before ingestion into Platform. If you choose this option, make sure to always ingest your hashed phone numbers into the Phone_SHA256 namespace.
NOTE

Phone numbers ingested into the Phone namespace cannot be activated in Facebook.

Email hashing requirements

You can hash email addresses before ingesting them into Adobe Experience Platform, or use email addresses in clear in Experience Platform, and have Platform hash them on activation.

To learn about ingesting email addresses in Experience Platform, see the batch ingestion overview and the streaming ingestion overview.

If you select to hash the email addresses yourself, make sure to comply with the following requirements:

  • Trim all leading and trailing spaces from the email string; example: johndoe@example.com, not <space>johndoe@example.com<space>;
  • When hashing the email strings, make sure to hash the lowercase string;
    • Example: example@email.com, not EXAMPLE@EMAIL.COM;
  • Ensure that the hashed string is all lowercase
    • Example: 55e79200c1635b37ad31a378c39feb12f120f116625093a19bc32fff15041149, not 55E79200C1635B37AD31A378C39FEB12F120F116625093A19bC32FFF15041149;
  • Do not salt the string.
NOTE

Data from unhashed namespaces is automatically hashed by Platform upon activation.
Attribute source data is not automatically hashed. When your source field contains unhashed attributes, check the Apply transformation option, to have Platform automatically hash the data on activation.
The Apply transformation option is only displayed when you select attributes as source fields. It is not displayed when you choose namespaces.

Identity mapping transformation

Using custom namespaces

Before you can use the Extern_ID namespace to send data to Facebook, make sure you synchronize your own identifiers using Facebook Pixel. See the Facebook official documentation for detailed information.

Connect to the destination

IMPORTANT

To connect to the destination, you need the Manage Destinations access control permission. Read the access control overview or contact your product administrator to obtain the required permissions.

To connect to this destination, follow the steps described in the destination configuration tutorial. In the configure destination workflow, fill in the fields listed in the two sections below.

The video below also demonstrates the steps to configure a Facebook destination and activate audiences.

 Transcript

Hey everybody. This is Doug. In this video, I want to walk you through the configuration of a social destination in the platform. So here I am in the Destinations interface. And I’ve scrolled to the bottom where we have these social destinations. Now, at the time of this recording, you can see we have a Facebook destination. We have a LinkedIn destination. And actually, if we scroll up to the top. we also have Google Customer Match that is under the Advertising category. But it is configured the same as the social destinations down here. So, in this video, I’m just going to walk through one of them. I’m going to walk through the LinkedIn destination configuration. But you can just use that same example and use it for Facebook or Google Customer Match. Now, before I start clicking through, I will also say that it’s good to have some platform 101 type knowledge, so kind of knowing about the sources and profiles and segments and the schemas of your data that you’re bringing in and the identities that you’re using. These can all come into play as you configure this destination. So, let’s go ahead and select Activate or Configure if it’s the first time through. And again, assuming it’s the first time through, I’m going to select New Account. And I’m going to connect to a destination.

And this jumps me out and have me log in. So, I’ve got my information there, and I will sign in.

So, you can see that it says it’s connected to LinkedIn in this case. And then I’ll just hit Next.

And then I need to do this account authentication. So, this is going to be the name of the account destination here.

And then you’ll want to get your account ID, in this case from LinkedIn. Put it right there. And then choose a marketing action. And so this is where your data governance policies get enforced. So, I’m going to choose the marketing action. And let’s say that I just choose Cross site targeting. And if you have any data governance policies that don’t allow certain data to go to destinations that are using this marketing action, then that will take place here. And then I create the destination.

So, as you can see, that destination is created right there. Now, again, if you’re using one of the other destinations, you’ll still need to authenticate to your advertising account. Each platform will have its own rules. But your ad account just has to be eligible to be integrated with Adobe Experience Platform. And you’ll be able to find the partner-specific requirements in our documentation. So, once you’re authenticated, we’ll go up and click Next. I’ve got a few sample segments here. And so, let’s say that I want to market to my Luma customers with level Gold or Above. I’ll choose that segment. And as you can see, you can choose multiple segments. I’m going to leave it just as that one and click Next.

Now we come to the mapping, which is arguably, the most important part of this configuration, I guess, if there is a most important part. So, we’re going to click and add new mapping here. And what we’re mapping here is really identifiers. So, it’s a good idea to start with the target field. Now, as I click over here, this is going to give me a list of the available or of the supported identifiers for the partner that I have selected. So, in this case for LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is supporting email with sha256 as well as mobile IDs. So, you can see here. Again, Facebook or Google will have different options available for you here to choose. So, I’m going to select the email and Select. Now we go to the source field and decide where we’re going to get that ID that’s going to match up in LinkedIn. And you have a couple of options here. You have attributes or identity namespace you can select. So, I’m going to do both of them just so you can kind of see the difference. If I select identity namespace, then I can choose either this email here, where it’s already sha256 lowercase, or I can choose email here. And I will just choose this one and select that. And I’m actually going to add one more mapping and choose email again.

And in this source field, and remember that again, in this case the source is the platform, and the target is the destination. We often use the word source to denote places where you’re going to get data coming into the platform, like sources up here. But again, in this case, the source is the platform, because we’re sending data to the destination. So, the source field, in this case, if I use an attribute, I can go to personal email. And let’s say address and select that. And you can see on this one, it has an extra field over here, because, since it’s just an attribute, we don’t really know what format that’s going to be in. And so, we can decide, you know what, in order to get that to be compliant with sha256, we do need to apply the transformation. So, we can select that box. Now depending on the segments that you’ve selected, you might want to even add additional mappings. What if I add maybe another one, that is idfa.

And I can select that. And then I can choose identity namespace here and choose idfa. And then I can do the same thing for Google as well. But this way it’ll look for profiles that have any of those namespaces or attributes in order to send those profiles out for that segment. After that, I just click Next to select a segment schedule. And so, I just select a start date. And then I can click Next And I can see and review everything in here. And then of course I can click Finish, and I’m good to go. I hope this has helped to walk through the process of the configuration of a social destination in the platform. Good luck. - -

NOTE

The Experience Platform user interface is frequently updated and may have changed since the recording of this video. For the most up-to-date information, refer to the destination configuration tutorial.

Authenticate to destination

  1. Find the Facebook destination in the destination catalog and select Set Up.
  2. Select Connect to destination.
    Authenticate to Facebook
  3. Enter your Facebook credentials and select Log In.

Fill in destination details

To configure details for the destination, fill in the required and optional fields below. An asterisk next to a field in the UI indicates that the field is required.

  • Name: A name by which you will recognize this destination in the future.
  • Description: A description that will help you identify this destination in the future.
  • Account ID: Your Facebook Ad Account ID. You can find this ID in your Facebook Ads Manager account. When entering this ID, always prefix it with act_.

Enable alerts

You can enable alerts to receive notifications on the status of the dataflow to your destination. Select an alert from the list to subscribe to receive notifications on the status of your dataflow. For more information on alerts, see the guide on subscribing to destinations alerts using the UI.

When you are finished providing details for your destination connection, select Next.

Activate audiences to this destination

IMPORTANT

See Activate audience data to streaming audience export destinations for instructions on activating audiences to this destination.

In the Segment schedule step, you must provide the Origin of audience when sending audiences to Facebook Custom Audiences.

Facebook Origin of Audience

Mapping example: activating audience data in Facebook Custom Audience

Below is an example of correct identity mapping when activating audience data in Facebook Custom Audience.

Selecting source fields:

  • Select the Email namespace as source identity if the email addresses you are using are not hashed.
  • Select the Email_LC_SHA256 namespace as source identity if you hashed customer email addresses on data ingestion into Platform, according to Facebook email hashing requirements.
  • Select the PHONE_E.164 namespace as source identity if your data consists of non-hashed phone numbers. Platform will hash the phone numbers to comply with Facebook requirements.
  • Select the Phone_SHA256 namespace as source identity if you hashed phone numbers on data ingestion into Platform, according to Facebook phone number hashing requirements.
  • Select the IDFA namespace as source identity if your data consists of Apple device IDs.
  • Select the GAID namespace as source identity if your data consists of Android device IDs.
  • Select the Custom namespace as source identity if your data consists of other type of identifiers.

Selecting target fields:

  • Select the Email_LC_SHA256 namespace as target identity when your source namespaces are either Email or Email_LC_SHA256.
  • Select the Phone_SHA256 namespace as target identity when your source namespaces are either PHONE_E.164 or Phone_SHA256.
  • Select the IDFA or GAID namespaces as target identity when your source namespaces are IDFA or GAID.
  • Select the Extern_ID namespace as target identity when your source namespace is a custom one.
IMPORTANT

Data from unhashed namespaces is automatically hashed by Platform upon activation.

Attribute source data is not automatically hashed. When your source field contains unhashed attributes, check the Apply transformation option, to have Platform automatically hash the data on activation.

Identity mapping

Exported data

For Facebook, a successful activation means that a Facebook custom audience would be created programmatically in Facebook Ads Manager. Audience membership would be added and removed as users are qualified or disqualified for the activated audiences.

TIP

The integration between Adobe Experience Platform and Facebook supports historical audience backfills. All historical audience qualifications get sent to Facebook when you activate the audiences to the destination.

Troubleshooting

400 Bad Request error message

When configuring this destination, you may receive the following error:

{"message":"Facebook Error: Permission error","code":"400 BAD_REQUEST"}

This error occurs when customers are using newly created accounts, and the Facebook permissions are not yet active.

If you receive the 400 Bad Request error message after following the steps in Facebook account prerequisites, please allow a few days for the Facebook permissions to come into effect.

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