Can't create Facebook Ad creative with a facebook app in a development mode

Question

I am working on a FB app for creating Facebook Ads. In the past I was able to debug the whole FB Ad creation process in a development mode but suddenly I started getting this error that I was not able to find documentation for.

Request:
https://graph.facebook.com/v2.2/act_foo/adcreatives?access_token=bar

Response:
{"error":{"message":"Invalid parameter","type":"FacebookApiException","code":100,"error_subcode":1885183,"is_transient":false,"error_user_title":"Ads creative post was created by an app that is in development mode","error_user_msg":"Ads creative post was created by an app that is in development mode. It must be in public to create this ad."}}

I've searched Facebook API documentation but haven't found anything about this error error_subcode: 1885183. Anyone has experience with this error or a hint how to deal with it?

EDIT Bug is already reported to FB: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1605648466391176/

Answer 1

For completeness of this question, the answer from the resolved bug report is as folows:

Across our entire platform, Marketing API included, content created by apps is only visible to users that can see the app

We had a bug which was allowing ads to be created which were promoting posts created by apps that are in development mode - such ads would not be visible to anyone other than Admins, Developers or Testers of the app - this caused multiple issues in our ad delivery system and the correct validation is now in place to prevent such ads being created

If you want to create ads from an app which is in development mode, this is possible, but the post you're going to promote must have been created by an app which isn't in development mode - i.e if your app is in development mode it's OK provided you're promoting existing page posts from a page's /promotable_posts endpoint and the app that created those posts is not itself in development mode

If you're not using existing page posts, and are creating them inline/implicitly as part of an ad creation, the app used to create the ad must be visible - you can change this for your app using the "Do you want to make this app and all its live features available to the general public?" toggle on the Status & Review tab of the app dashboard for the app

https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1605648466391176/?comment_id=1039672816061177

Answer 2

We had the same issue and found a workaround that fixed it.

We created a new basic facebook-app with no additional permissions and published it right away.

We then added ourselves as admins and could create creatives through the marketing api again.

Hope this helps you