Custom Audiences from your Mobile App

Getting Started:

Get started using a Custom Audience from your mobile app by doing the following steps: 1) register your app and set up events to reach users 2) create your audience, and 3) start running mobile app engagement ads.

Step 1: Register your app and set up events to reach specific users

You will need to register your app and set up app events for iOS or for Android to reach users taking specific actions (events) within your app. This is done by sending an event from your app via Facebook's SDK. This event can be one of 14 predefined events such as 'added to cart' in a commerce app and 'level achieved' in a game, or you can alternatively set up your own custom events.

Please see the app events for iOS or for Android documentation to fully learn how to register your app and set up these events. After doing so, please move on to step 2.

You may also choose to use a Mobile Measurement Partner for your mobile app measurement needs, and will need to inform them of which events you would like to measure to ensure you can send app events to Facebook.

Step 2: Create your audience

You are able to create your audience in multiple interfaces - in our Ads Create tool, Power Editor, or in Ads Manager. In all of these interfaces, you will find the option to create a new audience and will be able to choose "Mobile App" as your source.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

For standard audience set up instructions, please continue reading; however, if your goal matches one of our common scenarios below, please follow our those walkthroughs instead:

• Reach those who recently completed a purchase
• Reach those who recently opened your app
• Reach those who have completed large purchases
• Reach those who have reached a certain level in your game
• Reach those who have abandoned cart
• Reach those who have completed registration in your app

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to). Your app needs to be measuring app events as described in step 1 to proceed.

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose Action Taken, Action Not Taken, or Combined Action. This will give you the option to target users who have taken an action, those who have not, or those who have taken an action but not taken another. Choose which you would like to create an audience with.

Next, you will need to choose the app event you would like to target your users by.

Afterwards, you will see the option to add parameters for the event (for instance, the value for a purchase app event). These will similarly pre-populate with the parameters you are measuring for your app events. Parameters are optional for both measuring app events and for creating an audience.

After choosing parameters associated with your app event (if any), you will need to choose which users, specifically, you would like to reach. This can include all users, or you can target those most active (completing the action most), or those of highest value (contributing the highest value for that action).

Next, choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. For instance, you can choose a purchase event you are measuring and specify "In The Last 30 days" to reach users who have completed a purchase event in the past 30 days.

If you chose most active users or highest value users, you will also need to choose which percentage of those users. We will give you the option of top 25% and top 10%, but you will also have the option of selecting a custom percentage using the slider.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

At this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking Audiences on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to re-engage users who have opened your app in the past 60 days, but not the past 7. You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

For common scenarios and associated walkthroughs, please see the examples below.

Step 3: Start running mobile app engagement ads

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Alternatively, use lookalikes for install campaigns

Note: You can create a lookalike audience to reach new people who are similar to those taking already taking actions within your app.

To do so, you will need to use Power Editor, choose "Audiences", then "Create Audience", and choose "Lookalike Audience". You can then choose your Custom Audience from your mobile app.

Other considerations

Excluding audiences for better targeting

As explained above, it can be valuable to also exclude an audience so that you reach a subset of users taking actions within your app. This can be by time period (i.e. reach users who have purchased in the last 30 days, but not the last 7 days) by specific parameters (i.e. people who have purchased an item over $5 but under $100, or reached a low level, but not a very high level in a game), or even across different events (i.e. people who have added to cart, but not purchased).

You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

Considering the best use of operators

It is important to note that when using the operators (e.g. "greater than", "equal to", etc.), these function to analyze values associated with single event occurrences, rather than that accumulated over several events. For example, you can set an audience to reach anyone who has made a purchase over $10 but not anyone who has cumulatively purchased over $10.

If you want to reach an audience by those who have cumulatively purchased a large amount, or most actively purchased, you can do that by choosing to include highest value users or most active users, respectively.

Other ways to reach your audience

While Custom Audiences from your mobile app are a natural fit for mobile app engagement ads - given that you are reaching existing installed app users as your audience - you can also use your new Custom Audiences across all Facebook ad types and across all device types (mobile and web).

For instance, you may want to reach users that are active purchasers within your mobile app with a Facebook desktop campaign to ensure they are also being driven to purchase on your site. To do so, you would simply begin your ad creation with a different objective, yet still create an audience using your mobile app.

You can also create a lookalike audience to reach new people who are similar to those taking already taking actions within your app.

To do so, you will need to use Power Editor, choose "Audiences", then "Create Audience", and choose "Lookalike Audience". You can then choose your Custom Audience from your mobile app.

Scenarios

Because a Custom Audience from your mobile app offers flexibility in defining your events, their associated parameters and time periods, your resulting audience and the creative you will want to run to that audience can greatly vary based on your goals. We have put together what we expect will be common goal-driven scenarios for campaigns to engage your existing app users in order to help make your audience creation easier.

These walkthroughs are a more specific version of step 2 mentioned above when you are creating your audience. Please ensure you have already completed step 1.

Recent purchasers

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach any user who has recently completed a purchase in your app.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring an app event for purchases within your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNamePurchased app event for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_PURCHASED app event for Android, or a custom app event.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your purchase event.

You will then need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. Enter "30" in the empty field so that it reads "In The Last 30 days" in order to reach users who have completed a purchase event in the past 30 days. If you would like a longer or shorter time period, please adjust accordingly.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to reach users who have purchased within your app in the past 30 days, but not the past 7.You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

You will now have an audience for any user who has recently completed a purchase in your app that you can reach with your ads.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Recent users

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach any user who has recently opened your app.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring an app event for opens of your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNameActivatedApp app event for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_ACTIVATED_APP app event for Android, or a custom app event.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your app launch event.

You also have the option of first app launch, if you would like to reach users who only first opened your app in a specified time period, rather than those who opened your app regardless of any number of times previously.

You will then need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. Enter "60" in the empty field so that it reads "In The Last 60 days" in order to reach users who have opened your app in the past 60 days. If you would like a longer or shorter time period, please adjust accordingly.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to reach users who have opened your app in the past 60 days, but not the past 7. You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

You will now have an audience for any user who has recently opened your app that you can reach with your ads.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Recent large purchasers

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach only users who have recently completed large purchases in your app.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring an app event for purchases within your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNamePurchased app event for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_PURCHASED app event for Android, or a custom app event. You will also need to ensure you are associating the value of each purchase with either the valueToSum parameter for the predefined events or as part of your custom app event.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your purchase event.

Afterwards, you will see the option to add parameters for the event - in this case, you will want to choose the value for purchase events. You can choose the operator "is greater than" and a value of "5", for example, to target users who have made individual purchases of a greater value than a price of 5. You may also choose to specify the currency as a separate parameter if you are targeting by market.

Alternatively, you could choose to include only "highest value users" so that you reach those that are cumatively spending large amunts in your app

After setting your parameter and operator associated with the purchase, you will need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. For instance, you can choose a purchase event you are measuring and specify "In The Last 30 days" to reach users who have completed a purchase event in the past 30 days.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to reach users who have purchased within your app in the past 30 days, but not the past 7. You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

You will now have an audience for only users who have recently completed large purchases in your app that you can reach with your ads.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Reached a level

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach any user who has reached a specific level in your app.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring an app event for level achieved within your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNameAchievedLevel app event for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_ACHIEVED_LEVEL app event for Android, or a custom app event. You will also need to ensure you are associating a level parameter, FBAppEventParameterNameLevel parameter for iOS or EVENT_PARAM_LEVEL for Android, for the predefined events or as part of your custom app event.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your level achieved event.

Afterwards, you will see the option to add parameters for the event - in this case, you will want to choose the name of the level achieved. You can choose the operator "is equal to" and enter the exact name of your level you specified, for example, to target users who have achieved at least that level.

After setting your parameter and operator associated with the level achieved, you will need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. Enter "90" in the empty field so that it reads "In The Last 90 days" in order to reach users who have completed a level achieved event in the past 90 days. If you would like a longer or shorter time period, please adjust accordingly.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to reach users who have reached a lower level of your game, but not much farther. You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

You will now have an audience for any user who has reached a specific level in your app that you can reach with your ads.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Abandoned cart

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach any user who has expressed interest in completing a purchase but has not done so.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring multiple app events, for adds to cart, and purchases within your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNameAddedToCart and FBAppEventNamePurchased app events for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_ADDED_TO_CART and EVENT_NAME_PURCHASED app events for Android, or custom app events.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

Choose "Combined Action" -- A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" and "Action Not Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your added to cart event for Action Taken, and purchase for Action Not Taken.

You will then need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. Enter "30" in the empty field so that it reads "In The Last 30 days" in order to reach users who have added to cart in the past 30 days. If you would like a longer or shorter time period, please adjust accordingly.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience will be ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until they're pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You will now have an audience for any user who has added to cart, but not purchased in the past 30 days.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Completed registration

Please follow the steps below if your goal is to reach any user who has registered in your app.

For this walkthrough, you must be measuring an app event for completed registrations within your app - this can be the predefined FBAppEventNameCompletedRegistration app event for iOS, the EVENT_NAME_COMPLETED_REGISTRATION app event for Android, or a custom app event.

If you’ve never created a Custom Audience, we recommend creating your first Custom audience in our Ads Create interface. We will walkthrough how to create a Custom Audience from your mobile app in this interface below.

After choosing "App Engagement" as your objective, and the app you would like to advertise, you will then need to choose "Create New Audience" and "Mobile App" as your source from the pop-up window.

Continue by clicking "Create Audience". Name your audience, and choose your app (includes apps that your ad account has rights to).

A new section of the pop-up window will appear that will allow you to choose "Action Taken" - clicking within the empty box next to this will show the app events your app is currently measuring. Choose your completed registration event.

You will then need to choose how far back you would like your audience populated by when the event occurred for your users. Enter "90" in the empty field so that it reads "In The Last 90 days" in order to reach users who have completed a registration event in the past 90 days. If you would like a longer or shorter time period, please adjust accordingly.

Going forward, users will be added and removed from your audience based on this date range, as it will dynamically update to include only users completing actions in the specified date range.

Please also note that at this time Custom Audiences from mobile apps can only go as far back as 180 days.

Finally, click "Create Audience" to finish. A check box to agree to Facebook's Custom Audience Terms will be checked and creating an audience means you are agreeing to these. You will need to agree to the terms to use your audience.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour until it's pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check on the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking "Audiences" on the left hand navigation.

You may also want to exclude a smaller part of your audience from your ads. For example, you may want to reach users who have completed registration within your app in the past 90 days, but not the past 7. You can choose Combined Action and two events - one that users have taken, and another they have not yet.

You will now have an audience for any user who has recently completed registration in your app that you can reach with your ads.

After your audience is created you can begin running your mobile app engagement ads by clicking "Place Order" in the Ads Create tool, or clicking "Upload" in Power Editor. Please ensure that you have already completed all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.