Click-to-Messenger Ads Quickstart

Click-to-Messenger ads are the best way to get people to start chatting with your Messenger bot. These ads allow you to directly start a thread with your Facebook Page when the ad is clicked.

How to create Click-to-Messenger Ads

Step 1: Create a campaign with the messages objective.

There are other objectives that are also supported, such as link_clicks and conversion, but setting the objective to messages optimizes ad delivery to people more likely to respond to your business in Messenger.

curl \
  -F 'name=My campaign' \
  -F 'objective=MESSAGES' \
  -F 'status=PAUSED' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns

The campaign ID is returned for the campaign you just created in the response body. Save this campaign ID to create the ad set. Learn more about campaigns

Step 2: Create an ad set for your campaign.

This is where you define the targeting, optimization and budgets for your campaign. Click-to-Messenger ads live on the desktop, mobile news feed and Messenger home placements. You don't need to specify any of the placements when you're creating this ad set; it automatically defaults to Automatic placements, which means that your ads are shown to your audience in the places that they're likely to perform best. Learn more about ad sets.

curl \
    -F 'name=My Ad Set' \
    -F 'optimization_goal=REPLIES' \
    -F 'billing_event=IMPRESSIONS' \
    -F 'is_autobid=true' \
    -F 'daily_budget=100000' \
    -F 'campaign_id=<CAMPAIGN_ID>' \
    -F 'targeting={ 
      "geo_locations": {"countries":["US"]}, 
      "user_adclusters": [ 
       {"id":6002714885172,"name":"Cooking"}, 
        {"id":6002714898572,"name":"Small Business Owners"} 
      ]
    }' \
    -F 'status=ACTIVE' \
    -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets

Step 3: Create an ad creative.

• Click-to-Messenger ad creative formats must be single image, single video, carousel or slideshow.
• You must set the app_destination to MESSENGER.
• When people click your ad, you want to send them a welcome message to introduce them to your bot; here are some options to do this:
  • Provide a default welcome message as a string in page_welcome_message.
  • Provide a default template message, or a series of up to 5 template messages, as Message Template JSON Blobs.

Example - Single image ad creative with a default template message including 2 buttons and 2 quick replies

curl \
-F 'name=My image creative for Messenger' \
-F 'object_story_spec={ 
  "link_data": { 
    "call_to_action": {"type":"LEARN_MORE","value":{"app_destination":"MESSENGER"}}, 
    "image_hash": "<IMAGE_HASH>", 
    "link": "<URL>", 
    "message": "Sample Ad Message",
    "page_welcome_message": {
      "message": {
        "attachment": {
          "type":"template",
          "payload": {
            "template_type":"generic",
            "elements": [
              {
                "title":"Enter a title to accompany your image",
                "image_url":"https://image.ibb.co/bz5t6Q/placeholder.png",
                "subtitle":"Optional: Enter a subtitle to provide more information",
                "buttons": [
                  {
                    "type":"web_url",
                    "url":"http://www.example.com/",
                    "title":"ViewWebsite"
                  },
                  {
                    "type":"postback",
                    "title":"Start Chatting",
                    "payload":"USER_DEFINED_PAYLOAD"
                  }
                ]
              }
            ]
          }
        },
        "quick_replies": [
          {
            "content_type":"text",
            "title":"Hello",
            "payload":"reply1"
          },
          {
            "content_type":"text",
            "title":"Learn More",
            "payload":"reply2"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "page_id": "<PAGE_ID>" 
}' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcreatives

Learn more about different ad creatives and message templates; see Ad Creative, Reference and Message Templates, Reference.

Step 4: Associate your creative to the ad set.

curl \
  -F 'name=My Ad' \
  -F 'adset_id=<AD_SET_ID>' \
  -F 'creative={"creative_id":"<CREATIVE_ID>"}' \
  -F 'status=PAUSED' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/ads

Need more help?

• To get your campaign running, see the Campaign Reference on setting up the parameters for your campaign, such as its status and start_time and end_time.
• Learn more detailed information about how to set up Click-to-Messenger ads using the Marketing API.