Billing Events

Updated: Jun 28, 2026

billing_event defines events you want to pay for such as impressions, clicks, or various actions. Billing depends on the size of your audience and your budget.

For example, to optimize for POST_ENGAGEMENT and pay per IMPRESSIONS:

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My First Adset"' \
  -F 'lifetime_budget=20000' \
  -F 'start_time="2025-11-11T14:18:00-0800"' \
  -F 'end_time="2025-11-21T14:18:00-0800"' \
  -F 'campaign_id="<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>"' \
  -F 'bid_amount=500' \
  -F 'billing_event="IMPRESSIONS"' \
  -F 'optimization_goal="POST_ENGAGEMENT"' \
  -F 'targeting={
       "facebook_positions": [
         "feed"
       ],
       "geo_locations": {
         "countries": [
           "US"
         ],
         "regions": [
           {
             "key": "4081"
           }
         ],
         "cities": [
           {
             "key": 777934,
             "radius": 10,
             "distance_unit": "mile"
           }
         ]
       },
       "genders": [
         1
       ],
       "age_max": 24,
       "age_min": 20,
       "behaviors": [
         {
           "id": 6002714895372,
           "name": "All travelers"
         }
       ],
       "life_events": [
         {
           "id": 6002714398172,
           "name": "Newlywed (1 year)"
         }
       ],
       "publisher_platforms": [
         "facebook"
       ],
       "device_platforms": [
         "desktop"
       ]
     }' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
https://graph.facebook.com/v25.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/adsets

Once you select optimization_goal, you have one or more billing_event options. See Optimization goal and billing events and CPA.

Validation

Buying type and billing events

buying_type defines how the advertiser pays for delivery, set on the campaign level. In most cases, advertisers use AUCTION. Two special cases exist: RESERVED (Meta bases billing on prediction) and FIXED_CPM (the advertiser negotiates a fixed price). Campaigns with buying_type require ad sets with a billing_event defined.

Valid billing_events for each buying_type:

	AUCTION	RESERVED	FIXED_CPM
IMPRESSIONS	✓	✓	✓
LINK_CLICKS	✓
PAGE_LIKES	✓
POST_ENGAGEMENT	✓
VIDEO_VIEWS	✓

Optimization goal and billing events

For buying_type=AUCTION campaigns, with an optimization_goal set, Meta restricts which billing_event values you can choose for your ad set.

The restrictions below assume you have an objective specified on the campaign level.

optimization\_goal	Valid ad set billing\_event
APP_INSTALLS	IMPRESSIONS
AD_RECALL_LIFT	IMPRESSIONS
ENGAGED_USERS	IMPRESSIONS
EVENT_RESPONSES	IMPRESSIONS
IMPRESSIONS	IMPRESSIONS
LEAD_GENERATION	IMPRESSIONS
LINK_CLICKS	LINK_CLICKS, IMPRESSIONS
OFFSITE_CONVERSIONS	IMPRESSIONS
PAGE_LIKES	IMPRESSIONS
POST_ENGAGEMENT	IMPRESSIONS. As of v2.11, POST_ENGAGEMENT is not an option.
REACH	IMPRESSIONS
REPLIES	IMPRESSIONS
SOCIAL_IMPRESSIONS	IMPRESSIONS
THRUPLAY	IMPRESSIONS, THRUPLAY
TWO_SECOND_CONTINUOUS_VIDEO_VIEWS	IMPRESSIONS, TWO_SECOND_CONTINUOUS_VIDEO_VIEWS
	IMPRESSIONS and VIDEO_VIEWS
VALUE	IMPRESSIONS
LANDING_PAGE_VIEWS	IMPRESSIONS