Last Monday, we posted about how Apple's release of the new iOS 9 beta may impact your iOS app and its Facebook integration. To help you prepare for iOS 9, today we're releasing Facebook SDK for iOS v4.6 and v3.24 in beta. This SDK includes the following updates:
- Compatibility with Xcode 7 and iOS 9 beta 5. (This also applies to Audience Network.)
- Support for App Thinning by including bitcode. (This also applies to Audience Network.)
- Automatic defaults to the optimum experience for iOS 9. This means that the SDK dialogs for Facebook Login, Sharing across Facebook and Messenger, App Invites, App Events, or Native Like will automatically determine the best experience for people based on their device — for example, defaulting the person's experience through SafariViewController instead of Safari for Facebook Login.
In addition to using the SDK v4.6 or v3.24 beta , you will still need to make the following changes we previously posted about on 8/10 and outlined in this guide:
- Whitelist Facebook domains in their plist, as your app will be affected by App Transport Security.
- Whitelist Facebook apps in your app's plist if you use any of the Facebook dialogs (for Facebook Login, Sharing across Facebook and Messenger, App Invites, App Events, or Native Like). This will allow your app to perform an app switch to Facebook.
If you are using the Facebook SDK for Unity, use the v7.0.3-ios9-preview for testing with iOS 9.
We recommend that you update to this new SDK in order to best prepare your app for the upcoming iOS 9 release and wait until Apple releases the GM version of iOS 9 to submit your app to the app store. Once Apple releases the GM version of iOS 9, we will also release a final version of the Facebook SDK.
Please refer to this guide and changelog for more information.
Over the past year, a growing number of mobile app advertisers have found success using video creative in their app ads to drive installs. In fact, video app ad impressions have grown roughly 10x since December 1 of last year, when we enabled autoplay for video app ads.
Gaming advertisers in particular are seeing positive results — installs from video app ads have returned higher lifetime value (LTV) and better engagement compared to image ads. This is because videos provide a much richer and engaging experience that allows advertisers to demonstrate the best features of their app or game, like a trailer or action scene. In addition, we’re excited to have recently made video app ads available off Facebook in our Audience Network to help boost performance even further.
Here are some examples of gaming apps that are seeing success with video app ads when compared to static image app ads:
- Tinyco's Family Guy app has seen a 46% lift in their Average Revenue per User (ARPU) and 66% higher three-day yield for video app ads.
- Kabam's Marvel: Contest of Champions App partnered with Nanigans, a Facebook Marketing Partner, to get 77% more purchases and a 78% better click-through rate.
- Ludia's Jurassic World saw a 30% higher yield, 26% lower cost-per-install (CPI) and 36% lower cost for acquiring daily active users.
Our marketing partners are sharing similar success stories. In a recent study, Nanigans found that video app ads resulted in a 16% lower CPI and drove more scale for their gaming advertisers.
Another Facebook Marketing Partner, Ampush, is seeing comparable performance from their clients.
"Facebook mobile app ads using video are opening eyes among our customers,” said Ampush CEO Jesse Pujji. “The format advances the promise of in-feed advertising by being even more engaging and relevant for consumers. Best of all, it works. One of our large gaming advertisers reduced CPI by 35% while doubling the number of acquisitions. These are the types of results that make Facebook such a critical part of any advertising plan."
If you are interested in learning more, check out our best practices and webinar to learn how to optimize your video ad campaigns for Facebook.
The Graph API Explorer is a simple interface for authenticating, making API requests, and easily debugging responses. It is one of our most popular Facebook Developer tools, and back in April we asked the Facebook Developer community for feedback on improvements.[1]
Today, we're excited to announce several new updates in response to your feedback. We've made improvements to three key areas: code generation, history/favorites, and a simplified interface. We hope these additions will make it easier to integrate your apps with the Facebook Graph API.
1) Code Generation
One of the most popular features requested was a simple way to generate code from Graph API requests. You can now click “Get Code” to easily copy-paste your request in one of the following formats: Android SDK, iOS SDK, Javascript SDK, PHP SDK, or cURL.
2) Favorites and History
You can now interact and replay requests in the Graph API Explorer with these two new methods:
- History retrieves recent method calls from your app admin and developer devices to allow you to replay them directly in the Graph API Explorer.
- Favorites allow you to save/bookmark an important or frequently used request.
3) Simplified Interface
In an effort to simplify interactions with our tools, we've also streamlined two commonly used features in the Graph API Explorer interface:
- The HTTP request method, version selector, and path are now combined into a single component.
- The Token Debugger tool has now been combined within Access Token section. This should eliminate the need to switch between browser tabs when debugging access tokens.
We know that the Graph API Explorer is an important part of your workflow when developing apps with Facebook, and we're always working on improving it further. We want to hear from you — please share any feedback in the Facebook Developer Community group.
Learn more about getting started on Graph API here.
[1] FB Developer Community Poll: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fbdevelopers/permalink/882517998458382/
Since launching last year, the Audience Network has provided publishers and developers with engaging, high performing ad units backed by Facebook's two million advertisers. Today, we’re excited to announce a significant expansion of ad types and formats available in the Audience Network. The goal is even better outcomes for you, your advertisers, and the people that use your app.
We have a deep understanding of what formats perform well and drive engagement in Facebook News Feed and are taking two of our best performing units and making them available off Facebook to further empower Audience Network publishers and help drive results for advertisers.
Native Video
Over the past six months we have seen increased publisher adoption of native ads with ~5x more apps now using native ads than the start of 2015. In fact, native ads represent over 80% of impressions in the Audience Network. Starting today, by upgrading to the latest SDK for iOS and Android and utilizing the new MediaView, publishers can now bring the autoplay video ads experience from Facebook directly to their apps. Video demand will also compete with native display in the same auction to maximize yield for each impression served.
Unique Formats for Interstitials
We're also bringing demand from high performing Facebook formats to publishers through server-side changes. Publishers who already use Audience Network full screen interstitials will be eligible to deliver the following formats without any changes to their existing placements:
Dynamic Product Ads: This solution enables advertisers to create relevant and timely ads based on the products people have visited in their website or app. Retailers and e-commerce businesses with large product catalogs have seen success creating personalized ads for their shoppers on Facebook, and now their campaigns can extend to the Audience Network.
Carousel Ads: The carousel format gives advertisers more creative real estate in full screen interstitials to showcase compelling imagery for their mobile app. They can showcase up to five images within a single ad unit.
Click-to-Play Video: Full screen interstitials also deliver click-to-play video ads while providing people with complete control over their experience.
Add Native Video to Your App
To learn more about how you can enable native video ads for your app by creating a custom format or using native templates, visit our native ads mobile monetization page.
Interested in Learning More?
Get connected with an Audience Network specialist right away or subscribe to our Newsletter and stay up-to-speed on our latest news!
This year we kicked off the FbStart World Tour, an event series across 20 cities to meet with mobile developers around the world. We've held events in London, New York, and Mexico City, and over the past couple of weeks we met with startups and developers across Asia, holding events in Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Bangalore, and Gurgaon.
Since we launched the FbStart program in 2014, we've distributed benefits worth $50 million to developers in Asia Pacific, providing them with free tools and services to build, grow, and monetize their apps. You can read more about our investment in Asia Pacific developers and their success here.
In Asia alone, we have more than 1,000 members in the FbStart program. Some examples of apps growing with FbStart include:
Carousell
Singapore-based Carousell is a lifestyle marketplace app that makes selling as simple as taking photos and allows anyone to create a free listing to sell their items in just 30 seconds. Since it launched in 2012, Carousell has grown to have more than 8 million listings and millions of items successfully transacted across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan.
Through FbStart, Carousell's team was able to run and test marketing campaigns with their Facebook Mobile App Ad credit. The quality of users acquired and cost targets have exceeded expectations with the help of Lookalikes from Custom Audiences of their top buyers and sellers. They also used FbStart's partner benefits, including Transifex to scale to multiple countries and languages and Mobile Action to improve their app store optimization. Additionally, Carousell uses Facebook Platform products such as Facebook Login, Social Plugins, and Facebook Analytics for Apps.
Cardback
Delhi-based app Cardback helps cardholders and wallet users identify their best ways to pay and maximize their rewards and savings for every transaction they make. It is a payment recommendation platform that helps credit, debit, prepaid cardholders and mobile wallet users make smarter payment decisions.
As a member of FbStart Cardback has used Facebook ad credits to increase the number of people installing their app by 5x in the past six months, now with 50 percent of people coming to their app through Facebook ads.
Cardback also uses Facebook Login, which now accounts for 60 percent of signups on iOS and Windows. Through Facebook Analytics for Apps they are also able to better understand their customers and make more informed decisions based on user engagement, demographic information and retention patterns.
Samosa
Samosa, based in Hyderabad, offers a curated collection of clips from popular movies that people can share with their friends, including punchlines, proverbs, love proposals, witty responses, funny expressions and song clips. FbStart's free tools and services helped the team focus their time and effort on building their app, rather than spending precious time searching and deciding which services to use to fulfill their needs.
With Parse, Samosa was able to quickly iterate on their app. As an Android-first company, they were able to ship more than 10 different versions of the user interface in the span of just a month by relying on a Parse-powered backend. Samosa also uses Facebook Login to sign up customers, and they integrated with Messenger to bring their collection of clips to even more conversations.
Apply to join
To join the FbStart program, developers can visit our website and apply today.
With Apple's release of the new iOS 9 beta, certain changes — including App Transport Security, App Thinning, and updates to the mechanics of app switching — may impact your iOS app and its Facebook SDK integration. Specifically, apps that use Facebook Login, sharing across Facebook and Messenger, App Invites, App Links, App Events or Native Like may be impacted.
We've compiled a guide to help you update your apps and to help ensure that people continue to have great experiences with your apps on iOS9. Updates you'll need to make in preparation for the new iOS release include:
- Whitelist Facebook servers for network requests by updating your app's plist.
- Whitelist Facebook apps in your app's plist if you use any of the Facebook dialogs (such as Login, Share, or App Invites). This will allow your app to perform an app switch to Facebook.
- Disable bitcode within your app to make the login flow smoother for people logging into your app.
To make these updates even easier for developers, we will be releasing a new version of the Facebook SDK to support iOS9 in the upcoming weeks. We're also hard at work building a variety of additional solutions to help developers transition smoothly to iOS 9 and to enhance the experiences people have in apps.
To learn more about how you can make the necessary changes in your app, visit our support page.
We are excited to announce the launch of Graph API v2.4. This is our fifth versioned API release since we committed to versioning our core APIs and SDKs in 2014, which gives developers more control over when and how they opt into new features. We're also announcing updated iOS and Android SDKs designed to work with Graph API v2.4.
Here are the key updates in this version:
- New Insights for Page videos:
v2.4includes additional metrics in the Page Insights API for tracking performance of the videos you upload to your Page. You can now view information about total plays, autoplays, and paid vs. organic views. - Additional categorization for Page videos: When uploading videos to your Page, you can now choose a category, indicate whether the video is embeddable, and set the expiration behavior.
- Fewer default fields for faster performance: To help improve performance on mobile network connections, we've reduced the number of fields that the API returns by default. You should now use the
?fields=field1,field2syntax to declare all the fields you want the API to return. - Simplified access to Timeline posts: We've simplified how you access content from a person's Timeline if the person has given your app permission to do so. Instead of different object types for statuses and links, the API now returns a standardized Post node with attachments that represent the type of shared content.
- Marketing API improvements: In
v2.4, you can now use labels to tag campaigns, adsets, ads, and creatives. This helps you organize your ad objects, and query for insights aggregated by label. We've also consolidated multiple metrics endpoints into the Marketing Insights API to improve consistency when accessing ad performance data.
For a complete list of new features, changes, and deprecations, see the Graph API changelog and upgrade guide and the Marketing API changelog and upgrade guide.
How to Upgrade to v2.4
To upgrade, mobile developers should download our latest iOS and Android SDKs (v4.4). Web developers should declare v2.4 in the version property when calling the init() method of the JavaScript SDK. Developers calling the Graph API directly should specify /v2.4/ in the URL path.
With the release of API v2.4 and in keeping with our versioning process, Graph API v2.3 will be deprecated on July 8, 2017 and Marketing API v2.3 will be deprecated in 90 days' time on October 7, 2015.
A reminder that API v2.0 will be deprecated in just over one year's time on Aug 7, 2016. If you are still using FQL, we recommend upgrading to API v2.1 or greater as soon as possible.
We introduced App Links at F8 2014 as a cross platform standard for deep linking. We've now seen more than 1,000 developers create more than 7 billion App Links-enabled URLs, contributing to the global growth of the open standard.
App Links is designed to create a universal standard for linking on mobile, so developers can easily link to other mobile apps and make it easy for other apps to link to them. And for people, this means they can click a link to an app on mobile and go directly to that app if it's installed on their phone. App Links is also an open protocol, so developers can customize the code in a way that makes sense for their apps.
Microsoft recently announced the Bing search engine will support App Links. Bing is expanding its search index to include apps and app actions so content from App Links enabled apps can appear in mobile Bing search results. This can help drive more installs, engagement, and re-engagement for your app.
“Bing has embraced App Links as one of the open standards for app publishers to participate in our index of Apps and App actions – which allows our searchers to naturally discover and re-engage with their apps directly from Bing and Bing-powered search,” said Vincent Wehren, Senior Product Lead for Bing.
We're going to continue investing in the App Links ecosystem and add App Links support to more Facebook products and services. We recently made it simpler for advertisers on Facebook to deep link directly to their content from mobile app install ads. For example, a travel app can run a Facebook ad promoting a trip to San Francisco, and then send people directly to that San Francisco deal (rather than the app's homepage) when they first open the app after installation. Advertisers can also use the same features when they run a mobile app re-engagement ad.
We're excited to see the power of App Links extending across apps to help developers provide people with the best experiences on mobile. Take a peek at our docs to get started, or visit GitHub to view our sample apps.