Facebook SDK and tracking installs and conversions from Facebook ads

Help: Expo SDK
#1

Please provide the following:

  1. SDK Version: 38
  2. Platforms(Android/iOS/web/all): IOS/Android

Hi team, long time reader and first time poster.

We have a marketing team that want to track app installs from when a person clicks on a Facebook Advertisement. Without this they cannot determine the advertising conversions and therefore what the effectiveness of the campaigns are. It also tells them which ads are performing the best.

I’ve searched existing feature requests and it seems that there may be a request in for adding similar functionality, but I’m not sure if we need the full SDK for this.

We already have the Facebook SDK enabled for our production app and it automatically records some events, but it does not connect the app installations with the Facebook Ads manager. This is the method we have turned on Facebook.setAutoLogAppEventsEnabledAsync(enabled: boolean)

We’ve noticed that there is someone looking for the same functionality on Upwork, but we feel that there must be another way around the problem (perhaps using Graph API or something).

Does anyone have any advice or experience that they can lend to solve this issue? If you know that this isn’t currently possible with expo and the managed workflow, can you also please let me know? We’re just trying to figure out if it’s possible.

Thanks in advance for your help.

#2

@adamjnav @bacon do you know whether this is possible or not? Thanks in advance

#3

Does anyone have any idea whether this is possible or now? From reading around it feels like there is a subset of events that the expo implementation of the FBSDK is not triggering. However I can’t definitively say that this is true or not.

If anyone has information one way or the other then guidance would be much appreciated.

#4

Same issue here. Has anyone figured this out?

#5

Same issue here.

Facebook SDK is integrated in the app, with Facebook auto log app events enabled. All auto logged events, such as normal installs show up in the Facebook Analytics dashboard for the app. However, no installs, from Ads, are being tracked in the Facebook Ads manager.

Would also like to know if this is possible

1 Like
#6

Thanks for your reply @brianbyun

Unfortunately we have been unable to find a solution to the issue so far. From my own investigations, it seems as though some members of the community have success when the eject Expo and use the bare workflow. In this case using the FBSDK directly seems to work. However we’d very much prefer not to eject the project as it’s currently very streamlined using Expo and the related services.

If anyone knows a workaround for this using the managed workflow then please post.

#7

This stack overflow post helped me fix my Mobile App Installs not tracking in Facebook Ads Manager. The answer by Dan J.

We re-configured the Ad Campaign, and in the section to “choose which app you want to promote”, we used the Facebook App ID instead of the store URL, and fixed the issue. Now Mobile App Installs are tracking in the Facebook Ads Manager.

Hopefully this helps.

1 Like
#8

Hi there @wecreatedev

Thank you so much for your reply. I’ll take a look into the configuration and see if it’s different from the stackoverflow post. Did you manage to get this working using the Expo “managed” framework, or was this the “bare” workflow?

#9

@troy.lutton we are using Expo managed framework

#10

Thanks very much @wecreatedev it’s very much appreciated. We’ll give it a go and report back.

#11

@troy.lutton did it work for you?

It seems the example was using Facebook android SDK.

#12

Hi there @jp_at_landed

Yes it’s definitely working for Android at the moment. The jury is still out for IOS as the team has created a new campaign to test the implementation. We were a little sceptical at first since the StackOverflow post was 5 years old, but kudos to @wecreatedev. I’ll report back about IOS in due course.

#13

@troy.lutton any updates on iOS? I tried it on iOS with the Facebook app id, but still not working, I picked Facebook app id under iTunes when you pick the app, not sure if I am missing something here. Any help is appreciated.

#14

Hi there @amakary, it seems that IOS isn’t working just yet but they are going to do a IOS targeted campaign next week. Android still seems ok, and as far as I know they just used the same instructions from the Stack Overflow post that @wecreatedev suggested.

#15

@troy.lutton Thank you for your reply. I followed the same steps for Android but so far it doesn’t seem to be working, not sure if it’s an FBSDK iOS issue, specially the FBSDK in expo-facebook is v5.8 not v9( the latest)

Please let me know if it works out for your team, I would really appreciate it.

#16

I’m in the same boat as well. I believe updating to the latest FB SDK would be a solid move, as it’s very difficult to debug on FB’s side. I’m seeing app install events showing up in Facebook’s Events Manager, but they don’t track against my iOS App Install ads (it works however for Android app install ads). It’s also worth noting that I’m seeing various warning around the Facebook Business manager’s UI regarding updating the SDK in my app.

#17

I’ve just spoken to our Marketing guys and unfortunately it seems that IOS doesn’t work. The Android is tracking just fine but IOS has no connection. Back to the drawing board potentially.
@wecreatedev did you manage to see yours working for IOS too?

#18

I’m actually not sure yet, the Android and IOS campaigns are offset, so we got the Android one working with the fix I mentioned. The current iOS campaign (before the fix) is still running, so I wont know until the marketing team makes a new one when its done.

When the fix worked on Android I was assuming it would fix the iOS one as well, but I suppose that is not the case based on your findings.

#19

Out of curiosity, are people experiencing problems also using Branch.subscribe in their apps?

#20

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