Ad Set

An ad set is a group of ads that share the same daily or lifetime budget, schedule, bid type, bid info, and targeting data. Ad sets enable you to group ads according to your criteria, and you can retrieve the ad-related statistics that apply to a set. See Optimized CPM and Promoted Object.

For example, create an ad set with a daily budget:

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My Reach Ad Set"' \
  -F 'optimization_goal="REACH"' \
  -F 'billing_event="IMPRESSIONS"' \
  -F 'bid_amount=2' \
  -F 'daily_budget=1000' \
  -F 'campaign_id="<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>"' \
  -F 'targeting={
       "geo_locations": {
         "countries": [
           "US"
         ]
       },
       "facebook_positions": [
         "feed"
       ]
     }' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'promoted_object={
       "page_id": "<PAGE_ID>"
     }' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v26.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets

Create an ad set with a lifetime budget

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My First Adset"' \
  -F 'lifetime_budget=20000' \
  -F 'start_time="2025-12-04T20:32:30-0800"' \
  -F 'end_time="2025-12-14T20:32:30-0800"' \
  -F 'campaign_id="<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>"' \
  -F 'bid_amount=100' \
  -F 'billing_event="LINK_CLICKS"' \
  -F 'optimization_goal="LINK_CLICKS"' \
  -F 'targeting={
       "facebook_positions": [
         "feed"
       ],
       "geo_locations": {
         "countries": [
           "US"
         ]
       },
       "publisher_platforms": [
         "facebook",
         "audience_network"
       ]
     }' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v26.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets

Limits

The following are the limits on ad sets

Housing, Employment and Credit Ads

Facebook is committed to protecting people from discrimination, and we are continually improving our ability to detect and deter potential abuse. It’s already against our policies to discriminate by wrongfully targeting or excluding specific groups of people. As part of a historic settlement agreement, we are making changes to the way we manage housing, employment and credit ads.

Advertisers must specify a special_ad_category for ad campaigns that market housing, employment, and credit. In doing so, the set of targeting options available for ads in these campaigns will be restricted. See Special Ad Category for more information.

Flagged custom conversions, custom audiences and/or lookalike audiences

If an ad set contains one or more custom lookalike audiences flagged with an operation_status of 471, the issues_info list will be populated with one issue per flagged audience as warning.

Example

{
  "effective_status": "ACTIVE",
  "issues_info": [
    {
      "level": "AD_SET",
      "error_code": 2460003,
      "error_summary": "Custom Audience is blocked",
      "error_message": "Custom Audience is blocked: Some of this ad set’s custom audiences and/or lookalikes are blocked because they suggest the use of information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta’s terms. Go to Audience Manager for more details, and you can either review each custom audience or lookalike and remove prohibited information, or choose a different one for your ad set or create a new one and make sure it does not include potentially prohibited information. You can also request a review in Audience Manager if you think any don’t use restricted information.",
      "error_type": "SOFT_ERROR",
      "additional_info": "Custom Audience ID: 120231141155310247"
    },
    {
      "level": "AD_SET",
      "error_code": 2460003,
      "error_summary": "Custom Audience is blocked",
      "error_message": "Custom Audience is blocked: Some of this ad set’s custom audiences and/or lookalikes are blocked because they suggest the use of information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta’s terms. Go to Audience Manager for more details, and you can either review each custom audience or lookalike and remove prohibited information, or choose a different one for your ad set or create a new one and make sure it does not include potentially prohibited information. You can also request a review in Audience Manager if you think any don’t use restricted information.",
      "error_type": "SOFT_ERROR",
      "additional_info": "Custom Audience ID: 120232742978230247"
    },
    {
      "level": "AD_SET",
      "error_code": 2460004,
      "error_summary": "Custom Conversion is blocked",
      "error_message": "Custom Conversion is blocked: This ad set’s custom conversion is blocked because it suggests the use of information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta’s terms. You can’t edit this custom conversion, but you can choose a different one for this ad set or create a new one that doesn’t use prohibited information. You can also request a review if you think your custom conversion doesn’t use prohibited information.",
      "error_type": "SOFT_ERROR",
      "additional_info": "Custom Conversion ID: 730362226205831"
    }
  ],
  "id": "120228591637010247"
}

In addition, attempting to create or modify ad sets containing any flagged custom audience, lookalike audience or custom conversion will fail with an error. The error will contain the list of IDs for the restricted assets.

For flagged custom audiences

{
  "error": {
    "error_subcode": 246003,
    "error_data": {
      "Restricted Custom Audience IDs": [
        "<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID1>",
        "<CUSTOM_AUDIENCE_ID2>"
      ]
    }
    "error_user_title": "Your custom audience is currently blocked",
    "error_user_msg": "	This custom audience is blocked because it may contain information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta’s terms. Visit the audience manager to appeal this decision, edit your audience and remove prohibited information, or choose a different audience."
  },
}

For flagged custom conversions

{
  "error": {
    "error_subcode": 246004,
    "error_data": {
      "Restricted Custom Conversion ID": "<CUSTOM_CONVERSION_ID>"
    }
    "error_user_title": "Your custom conversion is currently blocked",
    "error_user_msg": "This custom conversion is blocked because it may contain information (e.g., health, financial) not allowed under Meta’s terms. Visit the events manager to appeal this decision, edit your custom conversion and remove prohibited information, or choose a different custom conversion."
  },
}

To resolve flagged audiences

If your custom or lookalike audiences are flagged, consider these options.

To resolve flagged custom audiences:

• Review flagged audiences: Use Audience Manager to review your custom audience along with other information included in an audience, and remove any information that is not allowed under edit the audience to comply with Meta's terms.
• Create new or choose different audiences: Alternatively, you can create a new custom audience or choose a different existing custom audience and make sure that it does not include information not allowed under our terms and use that to run campaigns.

To resolve flagged lookalike audiences:

• Resolve issues with the underlying custom audience: If the underlying custom audience (also known as the seed audience) of your lookalike audience is flagged, you will need to resolve the issue with the underlying custom audience on which the lookalike audience is built. Please refer to the preceding section on how to resolve flagged custom audiences.
• Create new audiences: Consider developing new lookalike audiences and make sure that they don't include information that is not allowed under our terms.

Request a review

If you believe your custom audience or lookalike audience has been flagged in error and doesn't include non-permitted information, you can request a review via Ads Manager under the campaigns table or, or in Audience Manager by clicking on individual audiences and under the summary tab of the impacted audience.

To resolve flagged custom conversions

If any of your custom conversions are flagged for suggesting information that is not allowed under our terms, you may want to consider the following options.

To resolve a flagged custom conversion in a new campaign creation:

• Create new custom conversion: Use a new custom conversion and make sure that it does not include information that is not allowed under our terms.
• Choose a different custom conversion: Select a different existing custom conversion and make sure it does not include information that is not allowed under our terms.

To resolve a flagged custom conversion in an existing campaign:

• Duplicate your campaign and select an existing custom conversion: If you have a running campaign that is flagged due to a flagged custom conversion, consider duplicating the campaign and selecting a different custom conversion that is not flagged before publishing the new duplicated campaign. Note: Once the campaign is published, you cannot remove or select a different custom conversion.

Request a review

If you believe your custom conversion has been flagged in error and doesn't include non-permitted information, you can request a review via Ads Manager under the campaigns table, or in Events Manager under the custom conversions page.

Targeting European Union Ads

Beginning Tuesday, May 16, 2023 advertisers who include the European Union (EU), associated territories, or select global/worldwide in their ad targeting on Facebook and Instagram will be asked to include information about who benefits from the ad (the beneficiary) and who is paying for the ad (the payor) for each ad set. Advertisers will be prompted for this information in all ads buying surfaces including Ads Manager and the Marketing API. Beginning Wednesday, August 16, 2023, if beneficiary and payer information is not provided, the ad will not be published.

We are launching this requirement to respond to the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) which goes into full effect for Facebook and Instagram later this year.

Ad sets targeted to the EU and/or associated territories (see here for a complete list) are required to provide beneficiary information (who benefits from the ad running), and payer information (who pays for the ad). This applies to new ads, duplicated ads, or significantly edited ads from May 16 forward, and without the required information, the API will respond with a wrong parameter error. For convenience the advertiser can set a saved beneficiary and payor in their ad account, which will be auto-populated during ad set creation, copying, and updating targets to include EU locations and ads under existing ad seta without configured the payor and beneficiary.. For more information about the ad account level parameters, default_dsa_payor and default_dsa_beneficiary, see to the check the Ad Account reference document.

To facilitate the creation of ad sets targeting the EU, we're offering a new API which allows developers to get a list of likely beneficiary/payer strings, based on ad account activity. See Ad Account DSA Recommendations for more information.

Notice:

• When the default values are set in the ad account, during ad set creation, updating, and ad creation under an existing ad set, if one of them is not provided, the API will automatically fill the default value listed in the ad account. Do not pass only one of them and expect the API to set the other one to be the same value. For example, in the ad account settings, default_dsa_payor is payor_default and default_dsa_beneficiary is beneficiary_default. During ad set creation, if only dsa_payor is passed with the payor, the dsa_beneficiary will be automatically filled with value of beneficiary_default instead of dsa_payor.
• If no saved default values are set or the values are unset, without explicitly passing the payor or beneficiary during ad set creation or when making updates, it will trigger an error and the request will fail.
• The payer and the beneficiary fields are only for ad sets targeting the EU and/or associated territories.
• For ad sets targeting regions other than the EU and/or associated territories, that information will not be saved even if it is provided.

To facilitate the creation of ad sets targeting the EU, we're offering a new API which allows developers to get a list of likely beneficiary/payer strings, based on ad account activity. See Ad Account Dsa Recommendations for more information.