Updates to Potential Reach and pre-campaign estimates

Updated on 10/22/2021: We understand that the shift to ranges may be challenging for some to implement by October 27. As such, through November 15, we will continue to make available a single-point estimate as an additional endpoint.

Updated on 10/11/2021: New updates to the section below, Breaking Change for Developers on October 27, 2021. The new updates include:

• Corrected the impacted endpoint for Custom Audience
• Added additional affected endpoints and values for Custom Audience and Saved Audience, Detailed Targeting, Reach & Frequency, Delivery Estimate, and Custom Broad Category Targeting
• Included links to the changelog and the developer documentation

Today we’re announcing updates to Potential Reach and some of our pre-campaign estimates.

What’s happening: We’re changing the name of Potential Reach to Estimated Audience Size on October 5, 2021. Estimated Audience Size generally estimates how many people meet the targeting and ad placement criteria that advertisers select while creating an ad.

Beginning October 5, 2021, we will begin moving pre-campaign estimates to ranges: This includes Estimated Audience Size, related estimates in Reach and Frequency and Campaign Planner and - if using interest categories - an estimate of the number of people within an interest category. We currently present Estimated Daily Results (e.g. Estimated Daily Reach & Estimated Daily Conversions) as a range, and, as part of an ongoing product development initiative to provide metric consistency, we are moving these pre-campaign estimates into ranges instead of single numbers. Ranges are also in line with how pre-campaign estimates are presented on other platforms across the advertising industry.

For more details, please visit the Facebook for Business blog and the Help Center.

Updated on 10/22/2021: Breaking Change for Developers on November 15, 2021

For advertisers and partners using the API’s listed below, the move to ranges will be a breaking API change. Beginning October 13, developers can start to implement the code changes below, and will have until November 15 when the breaking change occurs and prior values are deprecated. Through November 15, we will continue to make available a single-point estimate as an additional endpoint. Refer to the October 13, 2021 changelog for the full list of changes.

• Reach Estimate
  • Impacted endpoint: GET /AdAccount/reachestimate
  • The users field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: users_lower_bound, users_upper_bound
• For Delivery Estimate
  • Impacted endpoints: GET /Adset/delivery_estimate, GET /AdAccount/delivery_estimate, GET /AdAccount/adsets
  • The field estimate_mau field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: estimate_mau_lower_bound, estimate_mau_upper_bound
• For Reach and Frequency
  • Impacted endpoints: GET /AdAccount/reachfrequencypredictions, GET /ReachFrequencyPrediction
  • The target_audience_size field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: audience_size_lower_bound, audience_size_upper_bound
• For Detailed Targeting
  • Impacted endpoints: GET /AdAccount/targetingsearch, GET /AdAccount/targetingbrowse, GET /AdAccount/targetingsuggestions, GET /AdAccount/targetingvalidation, GET /Search
  • The audience_size field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: audience_size_lower_bound, audience_size_upper_bound
• For Custom Broad Category Targeting
  • Impacted endpoint: GET /AdAccount/broadtargetingcategories
  • The size field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: size_lower_bound, size_upper_bound
• For Custom Audience and Saved Audience
  • Impacted endpoints: GET /CustomAudience, GET /AdAccount/customaudiences, GET /SavedAudience
  • The approximate_count field will be deprecated
  • Introducing two new fields: approximate_count_lower_bound, approximate_count_upper_bound

This blog will be updated with links to the developer documentation and changelog on October 13, 2021, once the code is available to implement.