A bid expresses how much you value your ad reaching a target audience and delivering results on your optimization_goal. bid_amount is the amount you want to spend to acquire a given event based on optimization_goal, and bid_strategy is the the how you want to control your spend on a given event based on optimization goal.

At Facebook’s ad auction, Facebook evaluates your bid strategy, bid_amount, the probability of acquiring your optimization_goal to calculate an effective bid so that you only win auctions and have your ads delivered when you are likely to reach your optimization_goal at a centain bidding constraints such as cost per result.

As part of our effort to simplify our product offering, we consolidated Reach and Impressions optimizations to help advertisers achieve their reach goals more effectively.

In the API, selecting the Reach optimization will return the value of “Impressions” in optimization_goal and with the advertiser’s frequency control setting.

Bidding and Optimization core concepts include:

Bid Strategies - How you want to place your bids.

Optimization Goals - Advertising goals you want to achieve when Facebook delivers your ads.

Budgets

Pacing and Scheduling - How your ads budget is spent over time.

Campaign Budget Optimization - A way of optimizing the distribution of a campaign budget across your campaign’s ad sets.

Billing Events - Events you want to pay for such as impressions, clicks, or various actions.

Bid Setup

When you choose your bid:

Bid your true value: Think about your advertising objective and bid the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for that objective.

Decide whether you want to maximize for profit or for growth.

You can also set objective and billing_event but neither directly impact bid_amount or your effective bid. If a bid_amount is set, your actual cost per result is usually around or less than bid_amount, depending on your Bid Strategies.

For example, use these settings to spend about $10.00 for 1,000 daily unique views:

Campaign objective: APP_INSTALLS

Ad set optimization_goal: REACH

Ad set billing_event: IMPRESSIONS

However, to spend $10.00 for each app install, use these settings:

Campaign objective: APP_INSTALLS

Ad set optimization_goal: APP_INSTALLS

Ad set billing_event: IMPRESSIONS

Optimization Goals

Define advertising goals you want to achieve when Facebook delivers your ads. We use your ad set’s optimization_goal to decide which people get your ad. For example with APP_INSTALLS, Facebook delivers your ad to people who are more likely to install your app.

optimization_goal defaults to a goal associated with your objective. For example, if objective is APP_INSTALLS, optimization_goal defaults to APP_INSTALLS.

Validation

These older objectives are deprecated with the release of Marketing API v17.0. Please refer to the Outcome-Driven Ads Experiences mapping table to find the new objectives and their corresponding destination types, optimization goals and promoted objects.

Certain campaign objectives support only certain ad set optimization_goals:

Campaign Objective	Default optimization_goal	Other valid optimization_goal
`APP_INSTALLS`, promoting an Instant Experiences app	`APP_INSTALLS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`
`APP_INSTALLS`, promoting a mobile app	`APP_INSTALLS`	`OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS`, `LINK_CLICKS`, `REACH` and `VALUE`
`BRAND_AWARENESS`	`AD_RECALL_LIFT`	`REACH`
`CONVERSIONS`	`OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `LINK_CLICKS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`, `VALUE`, `LANDING_PAGE_VIEWS`, and `CONVERSATIONS`
`EVENT_RESPONSES`, promoting an event	`EVENT_RESPONSES`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `REACH`
`EVENT_RESPONSES`, promoting a Page post	`EVENT_RESPONSES`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`
`LEAD_GENERATION`	`LEAD_GENERATION`	`QUALITY_LEAD`, `LINK_CLICKS`, and `QUALITY_CALL`
`LINK_CLICKS`	`LINK_CLICKS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`, `LANDING_PAGE_VIEWS`
`LINK_CLICKS`, promoting an Instant Experiences app	`ENGAGED_USERS`	`APP_INSTALLS`, `IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`
`LINK_CLICKS`, promoting a mobile app	`LINK_CLICKS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `REACH`, `OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS`
`MESSAGES`	`CONVERSATIONS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `LEAD_GENERATION`, and `LINK_CLICKS`
`PAGE_LIKES`	`PAGE_LIKES`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`
`POST_ENGAGEMENT`	`POST_ENGAGEMENT`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `REACH`, and `LINK_CLICKS`
`PRODUCT_CATALOG_SALES`	`OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS` or `LINK_CLICKS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `POST_ENGAGEMENT`, `REACH`, `CONVERSATIONS`, and `VALUE`
`REACH`	`REACH`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`VIDEO_VIEWS`	`THRUPLAY`

FAQ

What events does ‘POST_ENGAGEMENT’ cover?

Most actions in an ad, including link clicks, app installs, video viewing over a certain period, tag photo, like, comment, share, and so on.

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