Ad Creative

Instagram Reminder Ads

This document shows you how to use the Marketing API to create Instagram reminder ads & ads with reminders.

Before You Start

Before you start, you need the following:

Limitations

  • If a reminder ad’s ad set has an end date, it must be after the start date of the reminder ad's Instagram upcoming event.
  • A reminder ad will stop delivering once its event is in the past.
  • Not all ad campaign objectives or ad set optimization goals support reminders. For example supported ad campaign objectives and ad set optimization goals include:
    • objective: OUTCOME_ENGAGEMENT & optimization_goal=REMINDERS_SET
    • objective: OUTCOME_ENGAGEMENT & optimization_goal=THRUPLAY
    • objective: OUTCOME_AWARENESS & optimization_goal=THRUPLAY
    • objective: OUTCOME_AWARENESS & optimization_goal=REACH
    • objective: OUTCOME_SALES & optimization_goal=OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS
  • Ad creatives using the reminder functionality cannot always be associated across different ad campaign objectives. To remedy this, create separate creatives for different ad campaign objectives.

Step 1: Create an Ad Campaign

Start by creating your ad campaign. To do this, send a POST request to the /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns endpoint where <AD_ACCOUNT_ID> is the ID for your Meta ad account. Your request must include:

  • name (Required)
  • objective (Required) — Note: Not all ad campaign objectives support reminder functionality
  • special_ad_categories (Required)
  • status (Optional)

Request

Formatted for readability. Make sure to replace placeholders with your own values.


curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name":"My First Reminder Ads Campaign",
    "objective":""OUTCOME_ENGAGEMENT"",
    "special_ad_categories":""[]"",
  }'

Response

On success, your app receives the following JSON response with the created ad campaign's ID:

{

  "id": "<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>"
}

Step 2: Create an Ad Set

Next, create your ad set. To do this, send a POST request to the /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets endpoint where <AD_ACCOUNT_ID> is the ID for your Meta ad account. Your request must include:

  • destination_type (Required)
  • optimization_goal (Required) — Note: Not all Ad Set optimization goals support reminder functionality
  • instagram_positions (Optional) — Supported placements for reminder ads include stream, story, and reels. For further information on specifying placement refer to Placement Targeting and Get Started: Placement for Instagram ads.

Request

Formatted for readability. Make sure to replace placeholders with your own values.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets" \
  -F 'billing_event=IMPRESSIONS' \
  -F 'campaign_id=<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>' \
  -F 'daily_budget=1000' \
  -F 'destination_type=ON_REMINDER' \
  -F 'name=Reminder Ads Ad Set' \
  -F 'optimization_goal=REMINDERS_SET' \
  -F 'targeting={
    "geo_locations": { "countries":["US"] },
    "device_platforms": ["mobile"]
  }'

Response

On success, your app receives the following JSON response with the created ad set's ID:

{

  "id": "<AD_SET_ID>"
}

Step 3: Create an Ad Creative with an Upcoming Event

The ad creative allows you to add assets to your ads. To create an ad creative, make a POST request to the /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcreatives endpoint where <AD_ACCOUNT_ID> is the ID for your Meta ad account. Your request must include:

  • asset_feed_spec: This will contain the ID of the upcoming event you wish to associate with the ad.
  • object_story_spec: For reminder ads, the value of link must be specified. If you do not want to a link to appear on your ad, use the dummy URL https://fb.com/. The dummy link will not appear on your ad.

Request

Formatted for readability. Make sure to replace placeholders with your own values.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adcreatives" \
    -F 'name=Sample ad creative' \
    -F 'object_story_spec={
        "page_id": "<PAGE_ID>",
        "instagram_actor_id": "<INSTAGRAM_ACCOUNT_ID>",
        "link_data": {
            "call_to_action": {
                "type": "LEARN_MORE"
            },
            "image_hash": "<IMAGE_HASH>",
            "link": "https://fb.com/"
        }
    }' \
    -F 'asset_feed_spec={
        "upcoming_events": [
            {
                "event_id": <EVENT_ID>
                "event_title": "Season Premiere",
                "start_time": "2024-05-11T16:00:00+0000",
            }
        ]
    }' \
    -F 'degrees_of_freedom_spec={
        "creative_features_spec": {
            "standard_enhancements": {
                "action_metadata": {
                    "type": "DEFAULT"
                },
                "enroll_status": "OPT_OUT"
            }
        },
        "degrees_of_freedom_type": "USER_ENROLLED_AUTOFLOW"
    }' \
    -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>'

Response

On success, your app receives the following JSON response with the created ad creative's ID:

{
  "id": "<AD_CREATIVE_ID>"
}

Step 4: Create an Ad

Ads allow you to associate ad creative information with your ad sets. To create an ad, make a POST request to the /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/ads endpoint where <AD_ACCOUNT_ID> is the ID for your Meta ad account. Your request must include:

  • name: (Required)
  • adset_id: The ID of the ad set created earlier (Required)
  • creative: A JSON object with the ID of the creative created earlier (Required)
  • status: PAUSED so you can review your ad before it starts running (Optional)

Request

Formatted for readability. Make sure to replace placeholders with your own values.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/ads" \
  -F 'name=Reminder Ad' \
  -F 'adset_id=<AD_SET_ID> \
  -F 'creative={
    "creative_id": "<AD_CREATIVE_ID>"
  }' \
  -F 'status=PAUSED \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>'

Response

On success, your app receives the following JSON response with the created ad's ID:

{
  "id": "<AD_ID>"
}