Messenger Platform

Ads that Click to Messenger

Ads that click to Messenger are Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger Inbox ads that send people into a conversation with your business in Messenger.

Businesses can use ads that click to Messenger to start conversations at scale, leveraging Facebook targeting to find customers relevant to their business. Whether the goal is to generate leads, raise awareness of brands or products, or drive sales, businesses can then tailor conversations in Messenger to meet their specific needs — driving business outcomes one conversation at a time.


Contents


Creating an Ad

1. To get started, go to Ads Creation.

2. Select Messages objective, then click Continue.

Objective selection

The Conversions objective should be used by advertisers tracking events with a Facebook pixel and driving conversions at scale.

3. Specify the audience and budget for your ad set.

4. Select Carousel, Image, or Video as your format.

5. Go to the Message Setup section to configure the user experience in Messenger when the ad is clicked. All Messenger Platform features, including quick replies, postbacks and templates are supported in the Messenger content, which can be specified two ways:

  • Click the JSON tab, and manually enter JSON that describes the message.
  • Click the Standard tab, and use the quick creation tool.

6. For ad creation using the quick creation tool, fill in the fields to set the content of your ad. You may also optionally specify the following calls to action, under Customer Actions':

  • Quick replies: Places up to 10 standalone buttons at the bottom of the conversation for the user to click. Quick replies will post text to the conversation, and can optionally by configured to send a postback webhook event to your webhook by clicking the 'Connect Your Bot' link, and specifying a payload. For more information on quick replies, see Quick Replies.
  • Buttons: Attaches up to three buttons to the message template. Buttons can be set to send either a postback webhook event or open a website in the Messenger webview. For more information on postback and URL buttons, see Buttons.

Bot payloads

Attaching a payload to a welcome message button or quick reply allows you to send specific audiences to a specific flows in your Messenger experience. This feature, combined with Facebook targeting, enables a more relevant user experience for businesses that cover multiple use cases or customer segments in Messenger.

7. Optional: To use m.me referral parameters with your ad, under Advanced Options, specify the ref in the URL Parameters field:

8. If applicable, enable conversion tracking in the Advanced section of Ad Setup (Note: You need to have advertising permission for each tracked event):

9. Click Place Order to finish creating your ad.

User Experience

When the user clicks or taps on the ad, they will be taken to a conversation with your business in Messenger and receive the message you specified as your Messenger content.

To protect the user's privacy, this conversation is only visible to the advertiser/developer after user takes an action in the conversation (sending a message, tapping on quick reply, or tapping a CTA).

Ad Attribution

In case the next message from the user is a postback ("Get Started" or any other postback specified in Persistent Menu or in Structured Message), the referral is included as part of the postback webhook event. In case of other message types (such as quick replies, text messages), the referral is sent over messaging_referrals. Check m.me links guide for more details.

The referral always follows this format:

{
   "source": "ADS",
   "type": "OPEN_THREAD",
   "ad_id": "6045246247433",
   "ref": "myparam" // Only included if specified in "URL Params" in the Ad as "ref=myparam"
}

On Reply Only

If the user does not send any message after clicking on the ad, the referral is neither sent over the webhook, nor is it available in the user profile.

Verify Ad Attribution

To verify Ad Attribution, select you Ad in Ads Manager and click on "Preview":

And then send yourself Preview Message:

This will send you the message on Messenger. When you reply to this message, the ad attribution is updated.

Conversion Tracking

You can track actions taken by the user (e.g. purchase, add to cart, content view etc) and attribute these to ads.

  • Log the user actions using app events API. Check Messenger Platform app events guide for more details.
  • You should use one of the predefined events (e.g. fb_mobile_add_to_cart, fb_mobile_purchase). The complete list is available here
  • While creating the ad, enable app events tracking in Advanced section of Ad Setup (Note: You need to have advertising permission on the App)
  • To view the results, in Ads Manager customize the columns and add the corresponding columns for the events you added (e.g. for purchase add "Mobile App Purchases" column)
  • The purchases attributed to your ad will now be visible in Ads Manager along with "Cost per Purchase"

Ads Insights

The performance of the ad is available in Ads Manager. In addition to standard ad metrics (including tracked conversion events) messaging-specific metrics (such as "Messaging Conversations Started") are also available. You can select "Messenger Engagement" from the list of columns to see the Messaging metrics for your ad:

Note that the "Messaging Conversations Started" metric only includes two way conversations. When users clicks on the ad, they receive the "Structured Message" (if one is not defined, they'll receive a copy of the ad) in the conversation with your page/bot. Until the user takes an action, the conversation is visible only to the user (and not to the page) and is not counted as part of "Messaging Conversations Started".

Retargeting

To retarget the users who have interacted with your bot/page before you can use Custom Audience. Custom Audiences can be created using:

  • Uploading the list of Page Scoped User IDs