New Marketing and MPA API Requirements for Facebook and Instagram Ads Targeting the EU

Last updated: August 7, 2023

Meta continuously works to meet regulatory requirements. As part of our efforts to create transparency for businesses and people, and to respond to EU regulations, we will require advertisers to designate who benefits from their ads (beneficiary) and who is paying for their ads (payer) for all Facebook and Instagram ads which target the EU, associated territories, or select global/worldwide.

Starting May 16, developers who use the Marketing API to create and publish ads to Facebook or Instagram will have the ability to provide beneficiary and payer information for their ads which include the EU, associated territories, or who select worldwide in their Facebook or Instagram ad targeting (see here for full list). This information will be required on all ad creation surfaces beginning August 16. Starting August 17, 2023 for active ads that were created on or after June 22, 2023 we will display the ads and additional details, including beneficiary and payer information for ads that delivered an impression to the EU or associated territories. (details here).

What is changing in the Marketing API: we are introducing two new fields - dsa_payor and dsa_beneficiary for creating, copying and editing ads which target the EU or associated territories.

For convenience, we also provide a feature to save beneficiary and payor information at the Ad Account level (“default beneficiary and payor feature”). After the default beneficiary and payor are set at the Ad Account level, the beneficiary and payor information will be filled in automatically with the default values and you won’t have to provide beneficiary and payor information for each ad set. Advertisers can always overwrite the value in requests at the ad set-level and change/unset the default values at the Ad Account level.

Additionally, we’re offering a new API that outputs a list of strings that we’ve identified to likely be the beneficiary/payor, based on recent activity of the ad account.

DSA enforcement impacted endpoints:

• Create DSA ad set: POST /act_<ad_account_id>/adsets
• Create ad in DSA ad set: POST /<ad_account_id>/ads
• Update ad in DSA ad set: POST /<ad_id>
• Update DSA ad set: POST /<ad_set_id>
• Copy ad in DSA ad: POST /{ad_id}/copies
• Copy campaign with ad sets in DSA: POST /{campaign_id}/copies
• Copy ad set in DSA: POST /{ad_set_id}/copies

DSA saved feature impacted endpoints:

• Update AdAccount: POST /act_<ad_account_id>
• Get AdAccount: GET /act_<ad_account_id>

Please refer to the developer documentation for detailed information and the full list of changes.

Notice for Targeting EU Ad Objects:

1. To use the default beneficiary and payor feature, both of them are required
2. Without default beneficiary and payor setup, the two fields are both required explicitly. Missing information will cause the request to fail and make no effect on your targeting objects.
3. In ad set creation/updating requests, if only one of the beneficiary or payor is provided in the request, the other one will be automatically filled with the default value. It will not use the same value as the one provided for the other field.
4. Changing default values at the Ad Account level does not affect existing ad sets.
5. Copying an existing ad set without beneficiary and payor setup will cause a failure when no default values are set up. After the default values are set up, the newly generated ad set will fill with default beneficiary and payor information.
6. When creating or copying an ad in an ad set which does not have beneficiary and payor set, the ad will fill with the default values. If the default values are not set, it fails.

For Marketplaces Leveraging the Managed Partner Ads (MPA) API:

Changes to the MPA Seller Creation API have already launched on May 30, 2023. MPA developers have already received separate notifications related to this.

What is changing in the MPA API: we are also introducing two new fields - dsa_payor and dsa_beneficiary for creating, copying and editing MPA campaigns which target the EU or associated territories.

Impacted endpoints:

• Create Seller Ad: POST /act_<accound_id>/managed_partner_ads
• Update Seller Ad: POST /act_<accound_id>/managed_partner_ads

Please refer to the developer documentation for Managed Partner Ads API for detailed information and the full list of changes.