Billing Events

Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Copy for LLM

Ads in WhatsApp Status are available via the Marketing API. Learn more about ads in WhatsApp Status.⁠

billing_event defines events you want to pay for such as impressions, clicks, or various actions. Billing depends on the size of your audience and your budget.

For example, to optimize for POST_ENGAGEMENT and pay per IMPRESSIONS:

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My First Adset"' \
  -F 'lifetime_budget=20000' \
  -F 'start_time="2025-11-11T14:18:00-0800"' \
  -F 'end_time="2025-11-21T14:18:00-0800"' \
  -F 'campaign_id="<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>"' \
  -F 'bid_amount=500' \
  -F 'billing_event="IMPRESSIONS"' \
  -F 'optimization_goal="POST_ENGAGEMENT"' \
  -F 'targeting={
       "facebook_positions": [
         "feed"
       ],
       "geo_locations": {
         "countries": [
           "US"
         ],
         "regions": [
           {
             "key": "4081"
           }
         ],
         "cities": [
           {
             "key": 777934,
             "radius": 10,
             "distance_unit": "mile"
           }
         ]
       },
       "genders": [
         1
       ],
       "age_max": 24,
       "age_min": 20,
       "behaviors": [
         {
           "id": 6002714895372,
           "name": "All travelers"
         }
       ],
       "life_events": [
         {
           "id": 6002714398172,
           "name": "Newlywed (1 year)"
         }
       ],
       "publisher_platforms": [
         "facebook"
       ],
       "device_platforms": [
         "desktop"
       ]
     }' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v26.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets

Once you select optimization_goal, you have one or more billing_event options. See Optimization goal and billing events and CPA.

Validation

Buying type and billing events

buying_type defines how the advertiser pays for delivery, set on the campaign level. In most cases, advertisers use AUCTION. Two special cases exist: RESERVED (Meta bases billing on prediction) and FIXED_CPM (the advertiser negotiates a fixed price). Campaigns with buying_type require ad sets with a billing_event defined.

Valid billing_events for each buying_type:

	AUCTION	RESERVED	FIXED_CPM
`IMPRESSIONS`	✓	✓	✓
`LINK_CLICKS`	✓
`PAGE_LIKES`	✓
`POST_ENGAGEMENT`	✓
`VIDEO_VIEWS`	✓

Optimization goal and billing events

For buying_type=AUCTION campaigns, with an optimization_goal set, Meta restricts which billing_event values you can choose for your ad set.

The restrictions below assume you have an objective specified on the campaign level.

`optimization_goal`	Valid ad set `billing_event`
`APP_INSTALLS`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`AD_RECALL_LIFT`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`ENGAGED_USERS`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`EVENT_RESPONSES`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`IMPRESSIONS`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`LEAD_GENERATION`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`LINK_CLICKS`	`LINK_CLICKS`, `IMPRESSIONS`
`OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`PAGE_LIKES`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`POST_ENGAGEMENT`	`IMPRESSIONS`. As of v2.11, `POST_ENGAGEMENT` is not an option.
`REACH`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`REPLIES`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`SOCIAL_IMPRESSIONS`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`THRUPLAY`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `THRUPLAY`
`TWO_SECOND_CONTINUOUS_VIDEO_VIEWS`	`IMPRESSIONS`, `TWO_SECOND_CONTINUOUS_VIDEO_VIEWS`
	`IMPRESSIONS` and `VIDEO_VIEWS`
`VALUE`	`IMPRESSIONS`
`LANDING_PAGE_VIEWS`	`IMPRESSIONS`