Facebook Releases Graph API v5.0, Marketing API v5.0

Facebook’s Halloween treat for developers was the release of application-programming interfaces Graph API v5.0 and Marketing API v5.0. Software engineer Evan Klein said in a blog post that the social network will limit the number of ads each page can run simultaneously in mid-2020, explaining that excessively high ad volume can hinder an advertiser’s performance and adding, “With too many ads running at the same time, fewer ads exit the learning phase and more budget is spent before the delivery system can optimize an ad’s performance.” Klein said the change will impact just a small percentage of advertisers, adding that Facebook released an Ad Volume API to enable developers to track a page’s ad volume for an ad account. He added that in the future, the Ad Volume API will also track ad volume across ad accounts and the number of ads each page will be permitted to use. Marketing API v5.0 also includes a special ad category field to enable businesses to comply with the social network’s rules announced earlier this year regarding ads promoting housing, employment or credit opportunities. Facebook also set two deadlines for businesses either running campaigns that do not fall under those special ad categories or that do fall under them and were created before Dec. 4, 2019: Feb. 11, 2020: Businesses located in the U.S. or targeting people in the U.S. must identify any active campaigns that belong to special ad categories and update the targeting settings for those campaigns, or those ads will no longer be allowed to run. Klein said it applies to all campaigns created or edited before Dec. 4, 2019, across all buying surfaces, including the Marketing API. March 31, 2020: All businesses using the Marketing API must identify whether or not new and edited campaigns belong to special ad categories and update their targeting settings to comply with restrictions for those categories, or the ads will be prevented from running. Businesses not running housing, employment or credit opportunity ads must indicate “none” in the special ad category field. In other changes, Facebook is depreciating the 10-second video view metric and 10-second video views optimization and replacing them with the ThruPlay optimization and metric. Filters were added to Facebook’s Ad Library to make it easier for advertisers to search for all ads stored and for active and inactive ads related to politics or issues and to find certain types of ads. Finally, the Ad Keyword Stats API is being sunset as part of an effort to retire endpoints with low adoption and simplify reporting-based solutions.