Steps to creating a Custom Audience for your app ad:

1. Register your app
2. Set up the SDK and log app events on the Facebook for developers site
3. Create your Custom Audience
4. Start running mobile app engagements ads

Before you get started:

Set up app events:

Once you register your app, you'll need to set up app events for each platform that your app is available in, in order to reach users taking specific actions (called "app events") within your app. This is done by sending an event from your app via Facebook's SDK. This event can be one of 14 pre-defined events, such as "added to basket" in a commerce app or "level achieved" in a game. You can also set up your own custom events.

You may also choose to use a Facebook Mobile Measurement Partner for your app measurement needs and will need to inform them of which events you would like to measure to ensure that you can send app events to Facebook.

Learn more about setting up app events specifically for iOS and Android on our developer site.

Getting started:

Create your Custom Audience:

You can create your audience in Ads Manager. In all of these interfaces, you'll find the option to create a new audience and will be able to choose Mobile app as your source. Here are the steps to set up your Custom Audience from Ads Manager:

1. Go to Audiences at the ad set level in Ads Manager.
2. Click to select Create new.
3. Click to select Custom Audience in the drop-down menu.
4. Select App activity.

   Note: You'll need to agree to the Terms of Service before you can create a Custom Audience.

5. From the drop-down menu, select which app events you'd like to base your audience on.

   You can either include or exclude people in your Custom Audience who have completed any of five different app events of your choosing. For example, you can include people who have either opened your app or achieved a level or added their payment info or made an in-app purchase or completed a tutorial. You could also choose to include people who have either opened your app or achieved a level, but exclude people who have made an in-app purchase.

Note: Make sure that you have the ad account rights to the app that you want to use. Bear in mind that your app needs to be measuring app events to create a Custom Audience from it. The app events your app is setup to measure for will automatically populate in the drop-down menu.

6. Choose how far back you would like your audience to be populated by when the event occurred for people using your app. For example, you can specific "in the past 30 days" to reach people who have completed a purchase event in the past 30 days.
7. Add details to the app events you base your Custom Audience on by selecting Refine by and choosing the type of details you want to specify. For example, you can add a parameter to target people who have made an in-app purchase over a certain amount. If you want to target people who have made a certain number of in-app purchases, you can specify an aggregated value. You can also select people who have completed a chosen app event on a specific device type, like Android or iOS.
8. Name your audience.
9. Click to select Create Audience to finish.

Your audience is ready to use immediately, but note that it may take up to an hour for it to be pre-populated with users from the past who have logged a matching app event. You can always check the size of your audience by going to Ads Manager and clicking Audiences on the left-hand navigation.

Use your Custom Audience to run app engagement ads:

Create app engagement ads with your Custom Audience:

After your audience has been created, you can begin running your app engagement ads by clicking Place Order in the Ads Create tool. Make sure that you complete all other required fields for your ad before starting your campaign.

Want to get more people to install your app? Try creating a Lookalike Audience based on your new Custom Audience and creating an App Install ad campaign with it. A Lookalike Audience will let you target your ads towards people who are similar to people who have used your app before.