Facebook Ads API - How to create NewsFeed ads? - facebook

Question

I can successfully create right column ads, but failed to create NewsFeed ads.
According to what I know, I should create type 27 creative first, and for this purpose, I need to provide parameter object_id and story_id. The first one is our company's facebook page, and the 2nd one is an unpublished post on that page.
To create a story, I used the codes below. I think it should be 'promotable_posts'. This is to create an unpublished post in the page so that it can be used in the newsfeed ad.
$api.put_connections('id_of_companys_fb_page', 'promotable_posts',
{
"message" => 'my_message',
"name" => "my_name",
"link" => "url_of_a_page",
"caption" => "my_caption",
"description" => "This is a longer description",
"picture" => "url_to_a_picture"
}
Unfortunately it always throws exception "type: GraphMethodException, code: 100, message: Unsupported post request. [HTTP 400] (Koala::Facebook::ClientError)".
If I change 'promotable_posts' to 'feed', then it works, but I cannot use the post id to create the ad, and I noticed that the id starts with 5xxx.. which is different from other manually created posts ids (starting with 1xx..) that worked. I even tried other types, but none works. I didn't find an example to create such post.
Any suggestions, even wild-guess, are appreciated.

Answer 1

Are you using the Ads API documentation?
Once you create the page post (via the /feed connection of the page) or have someone create it using the page management interface you create a type 25 or 27 ad using the post ID you retrieve from the API, or from the response of the API call you used to create the post itself.
The /promotable_posts endpoint returns the ID of any posts that can be turned into ads, it's a subset of the posts on /posts
A sample type 25 and 27 ad creative are included in the 'examples' section of the Creative Specs documentation
e.g. the type 27 example, modified to use a specific post ID, not the most recent post on the page:
curl \
-F "name=sample creative" \
-F "type=27" \
-F "object_id=<PAGE ID>" \
-F "story_id= <POST ID>" \
-F "access_token=_____" \
"https://graph.facebook.com/act_<ACCOUNT ID>/adcreatives"