Facebook Marketing API Authorization

Question

I'm building an internal app for a client of mine (an ad agency) who wants to do ad performance reporting for about 30 of their clients. Part of this project is to pull down performance metrics from Facebook Ads for these 30 clients.

I've created a Facebook App and got a development token. With this token, I've been able to get the technical part of the project working -- I can pull down the metrics just fine using Facebook's Marketing API.

My question is about authorization and authentication. I'm thoroughly confused by Facebook's mechanisms for this.

What do I need to do to get access to Marketing API metrics for these 30 clients?

Do I need to publish a Facebook App? If so, do I need to go through the approval process? This seems kind of crazy because Facebook wants a login so they can test things out, but the product is strictly internal so there's really nothing they can log in and see.

I guess another question is: Is there another way I can get access to these 30 clients? With Google Adwords, it was easy. I just used oauth and am granted access as needed. Is there a simple way like that with the Facebook Marketing API?

Answer 1

You need to submit your app for review, if you want to be able to ask all users for the permission.

If your app is used by a limited number of people only, that you can add to a role in the app - then they can be asked for all permissions, even without review. This is mainly for testing purposes, but Facebook has it documented as a kind of “loophole” for apps that are only used by a limited user base. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/faq#faq_180362122361921