Travel Ads - Audience Management

This guide assumes you have a catalog with your travel inventory ready, and have set up the required travel events on your website and/or in your mobile app, and have associated your catalog with your event sources.

As of September 20, 2018 we will not support subtype after v3.0 of Marketing API for custom audiences for websites, apps, engagement custom audiences, and audiences from offline conversion data. The one exception is that subtype will still be supported for engagement custom audiences for video.

Create a travel audience in two steps:

• Step 1: Create a Travel Event Source Group
• Step 2: Create Travel Audiences

Step 1: Create and Share a Travel Event Source Group

Besides associating your event sources with your catalog, you must also create an event source group. Event source groups are used to fill audiences.

curl \
  -F 'name=My Travel Company Events' \
  -F 'event_sources=["<PIXEL_ID>","<APP_ID>"]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/<BUSINESS_ID>/event_source_groups

You must then share this event source group out to any ad accounts that wish to create an audience backed by it. Again, this is done by making an HTTP POST call:

curl \
  -F 'accounts=["<ACCOUNT_ID_WITHOUT_ACT>"]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>/shared_accounts

Step 2: Create Travel Audiences

At this point you should have your user signal (i.e. pixel and/or app events) set-up and associated with an event source group and your travel catalog(s).

To target people whom have shown explicit travel intent, you must create a dynamic travel audience of people who you would like to serve the ad to. You can include and exclude people based on their travel intent signals. You can also apply additional rule-based filters on top of the events like with Website Custom Audiences. The flight_set_id field is required for a dynamic flight audience. For hotel and destination audiences, you are not required to specify a hotel_set_id or destination_set_id.

To set up a new travel audience, make an HTTP POST to /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences.

Audience Parameters

"event_sources": [
 {
 "type": "pixel",
 "id": "562030684179932"
 },
 {
 "type": "app",
 "id": "562030684179934"
 }
] 

Inclusion Object Parameters

Retention Object Parameters

Booking Window Object Parameters

Exclusion Object Parameters

Rule Object Travel Parameters

Just as with the classical parameter, each parameter here can be used with any of the standard JSON operators.

Code Samples

Single travelers who have searched at least 3 times in the last 5 days but haven't booked yet:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=HOTEL' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"num_travelers":{"eq":1}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[ 
    { 
      "event": "Search", 
      "count": {"gt":3}, 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":432000} 
    } 
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who viewed or started booking a hotel in a hotel set in the last 2 days but never completed their booking:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=HOTEL' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"hotel_set_id":{"eq":"<HOTEL_SET_ID>"}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[ 
    {"event":"ViewContent","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}, 
    { 
      "event": "InitiateCheckout", 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800} 
    } 
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who have initiated check out or purchased the flight tickets in the last 5 days and their flight booking window is between 2 to 7 days:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=FLIGHT' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'inclusions=[ 
    { 
      "event": "InitiateCheckout", 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":432000}, 
      "booking_window": {"min_seconds":172800,"max_seconds":604800} 
    }, 
    { 
      "event": "Purchase", 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":432000}, 
      "booking_window": {"min_seconds":172800,"max_seconds":604800} 
    } 
  ]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who have searched hotels in 'New York City' more than 3 times in the past 2 days but haven't booked yet:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=HOTEL' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"destination":{"i_contains":"New York City"}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[ 
    { 
      "event": "Search", 
      "count": {"gt":3}, 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800} 
    } 
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who have searched hotels between specific checkin_date and checkout_date in the past 2 days but haven't booked yet:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=HOTEL' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={ 
    "and": [ 
      {"checkin_date":{"gte":"2018-02-02"}}, 
      {"checkout_date":{"lte":"2018-02-05"}} 
    ] 
  }' \
  -F 'inclusions=[{"event":"Search","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who have searched hotel stays containing a specific date (e.g. Christmas) in the past 2 days but haven't booked yet:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=HOTEL' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"itinerary_contains_date":{"eq":"2018-12-25"}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[{"event":"Search","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

People who create an audience for one-way flights:

curl \
  -F 'name=Travel Audience' \
  -F 'claim_objective=TRAVEL' \
  -F 'content_type=FLIGHT' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"and":[{"returning_departure_date":{"exists":false]}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[ 
    { 
      "event": "Search", 
      "count": {"gt":3}, 
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":432000} 
    } 
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{"event":"Purchase","retention":{"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":172800}}]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

Once you have created your audience(s), they can then be added to the targeting spec in your travel ads campaign.