Questions about Boosted Facebook Posts - facebook

Question

I am trying to figure out if the following is possible through the various Facebook APIs:
Create a Post on a Page through the API (I know that's possible:)
Boost that Post through the Ad API (I read that it's possible but I
can't really find the API that would let me do that. if you know it,
please point it out! Thanks!)
Once boosted, is there a way I can pull the boosted post information
from the original post? I assume that once boosted, the boosted post
is a different version of the original post, right?
I can get post stats through the Insight API and I can get boosted
post stats through the various Ad stats API. Do the post stats only
apply to the post and the boosted post stats only apply to the
boosted post or are they all one set of stats that applies to both?
Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

Everything you are looking to do is available trough both the Graph API and the Marketing API.
1) Yes this is possible, as you pointed out. You can read more here
2) I would suggest that you read through the Marketing API doc I linked above to find out the full structure of an ad. But in short, an ad is split into the following 4 objects:
Ad Campaign: This is simply a grouping of Ad Sets which all have a similar business purpose as defined by the campaign objective.
Ad Set: An ad set is a group of ads that share the same daily or lifetime budget, schedule, bid type, bid info, and targeting data.
Ad Group: An ad object contains the data necessary to visually display an ad and associate it with a corresponding ad set. Each ad is associated with an ad set and all ads in a set have the same daily or lifetime budget, schedule, and targeting. Creating multiple ads in each ad set will let us optimize their delivery based on variations in images, links, video, text or placements.
Ad Creative: An ad creative object is an instance of a specific creative which is being used to define the creative field of one or more ad groups.
3) When a post has an ad created based on it there is not "duplicate" post created for the purpose of the Ad. If you want to only get paid/boosted information on the post then the best way to do this would be using the Ads Insights API.
4) When you pull stats from the insights API you will see metrics with 'paid' appended to them, for example 'post_impressions_paid'. This will return you the number of paid impressions (i.e. from an ad) but it will not give you any information on which ad caused those impressions. The Ad Insights API's will only return impressions, likes, comments etc caused by the ads that serve the post, they will NOT return organic actions.
Here is a quick run down of cURL commands that will create a campaign to boost a Post, but before trying them I would fully read the Marketing API docs so you understand whats happening.
// First we need to get the Ad Account from a user
curl https://graph.facebook.com/{USER_ID}/adaccounts&access_token={TOKEN}
// Now we can create our Ad Campaign. Response: {"id": "CAMPAIGN_GROUP_ID"}
curl \
-F 'name=my campaign group' \
-F 'campaign_group_status=PAUSED' \
-F 'objective=POST_ENGAGEMENT' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcampaign_groups
// Using the Campaign Group ID we can create an Ad Set. Response: {"id": "AD_SET_ID"}
curl \
-F "name=My Adset" \
-F "bid_type=CPC" \
-F "bid_info={'CLICKS': 500}" \
-F "campaign_status=ACTIVE" \
-F "daily_budget=2000" \
-F "campaign_group_id=<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>" \
-F "targeting={'geo_locations':{'countries':['US','GB']}}" \
-F "access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
"https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcampaigns"
// Before we create an Ad Group, it is recommended to create an Ad Creative.
// Response: {"id": "CREATIVE_ID"}
curl \
-F "name=sample creative" \
-F "object_story_id=<POST_ID>" \
-F "access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
"https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcreatives"
// Now that we have the Creative ID we can use that to create the final piece
// of the puzzle, the Ad Group. Response: {"id": "AD_GROUP_ID"}
curl \
-F "name=my ad" \
-F "campaign_id=<AD_SET_ID>" \
-F "creative={'creative_id':<AD_CREATIVE_ID>}" \
-F "adgroup_status=PAUSED" \
-F "access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
"https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adgroups"