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Question - is there a way to get the current size of an audience from facebook? (if so, Java SDK details would be appreciated)

Why do I need this? - I'm looking to achieve the following in facebook using the java sdk (tech is irrelevant here - same issue regardless of api) -

  • Create a custom audience using a bunch of email ids.
  • Follow that with creating a look-alike audience based on the new audience above.

Complication - Now the above are pretty straightforward as individual steps and we are able to that with no issue. Trouble comes due to the following -

  1. Facebook allows creation of look-alike audiences only when the origin audience has at least a 100 members.
  2. Also, Facebook take a little time processing the first list (looking up matches etc. I guess) during which time the "size"of the custom audience is low (like 20 etc.). If I check back in like an hour or so, it would have updated with all the matches, and the size is now as expected.

Due to the above, if I follow the "create custom audience" call immediately with a "create look-alike audience" call, it will fail with the error below (have tried it multiple times) - 

{
  "error":{
    "message":"(#1234) Source Audience is Too Small: 
                       There are not enough people in your source in the country you chose. 
                       Please choose a country that includes at least 100 people in your source.",
    "type":"Exception-type",
    "code": 1234,
    "error_subcode":5678,
    "fbtrace_id":"fb-trace-id"
  }
}

If I try the look alike audience creation a while later, it works, cos by then the audience is processed (at least partially) and the size has gone > 100.

Solutions explored -

So one obvious way to solve this is to introduce a delay in creating the lookalike audience after having created the initial custom audience. This has its issues (most important is that it is guess work vs. a solid hand-shake).

Therefore (out of my innate need to have control) I'd like to "know" when the custom audience is ready (hence the original question above) so I can create the look-alike audience - am looking for help to see how this can be achieved?

I've looked thru facebook graph api docs here (http://restfb.com/javadoc/), scanned facebook forums here (https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/) to see if the CustomAudience has (or if there is another API) that gives the current size of an audience, but haven't found any. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.

Razor Clawson
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  • did you get any answer to this? – nEO Jul 11 '17 at 17:05
  • the "approximate_count" gives us what we need, although it is not v accurate - if I hit it over time i sometimes get numbers that decrease. I'll take this up with facebook support, but the solution below is good. Thank you ! – Razor Clawson Sep 20 '18 at 21:20

1 Answers1

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I guess this is already not relevant, but anyway.

You can make a GET request with a parameter "fields" set: https://graph.facebook.com/v2.10/{custom_audience_id}?fields=["approximate_count", "operation_status"]

The result you'll get shows approximate count of the CA and status (is the CA ready)

{ { "approximate_count": 20, "operation_status": { "code": 200, "description": "Normal" }, "id": "{custom_audience_id}" }

Emma Paulowicz
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  • this was incredibly helpful to me. However, delivery_status, rather than operation_status is what will give you the description about the audience being too small – Veg Mar 07 '18 at 22:39