Facebook API datamining - supporting website cost with ads - facebook-graph-api

I have a project prototype that is pulling event data from the Facebook Graph API, so no personal information is being acquired. It is mostly an aggregation of event data to streamline searching for times, location, event names and performers.
However I would like to support the running of the website costs, firstly with a few ads on the side.
The Facebook policy page https://developers.facebook.com/policy section 3.9 states:
Don't sell, license, or purchase any data obtained from us or our
services.
Secondly, I am planning on making referral links so that if the User uses my website and clicks on a buy ticket link for example, then the link to the events ticket page will refer my website.
I am not selling the data but I am not sure how the law applies to making money from their data indirectly, am I complying with the Facebook policy since Facebook do not gain anything from my service?

Related

Requirements for Instagram Graph API testing and development

I'm trying to build a prototype which collects and analyses comments from Instagram. This can seemingly only be done with the Instagram Graph API. So to prototype and test I need:
A business IG account connected to a Facebook account (the account to access and read the comments of)
A Facebook App configured to access IG accounts (the account/app which gets authenticated to access the IG account)
However, this App needs to go through a verification process for each of the permissions required. The process apparently takes up to 5 days and needs a Privacy Policy on a website (neither of which I have yet).
This is a lot to do considering it is just a prototype/PoC to establish feasability and get better acquainted with using/testing the API and data.
Does anyone with experience working with the Instagram Graph API know whether I am over-thinking or misread what is required here? Or do you have to go through this before being able to access IG account comments?

Instagram Post Insights - Organic v/s Paid Breakdown

According to Instagram (GRAPH) documentation, it's straight forward to get the insights of a post or media object (even story).
Unlike the Facebook insights of a post, Instagram (GRAPH) does not provide paid/organic breakdown on a post level for available metrics like impressions and engagement.
This creates a big issue for marketing teams because they cannot differentiate organic from paid performance.
Another way to try to hack this is by fetching all related Ads created on this post. I didn't find anyway to read Ads, AdSets or Campaigns related to a post ID. The only way I can think about this is to manually select the Ads related, on a condition that those Ads were created by the same Ad Account we have access to.
So my question is: Is it possible to get organic vs paid breakdown on the performance metrics of an Instagram post through the API?
from Facebook Developer support I know that the Instagram Graph API only reports organic results (so if a IG post received 300 likes, 200 of which from paid activities, an API call for the media insights will only return a value of 100 likes).
At the same time as far as I know the Facebook Ads API only returns the paid performance, not the organic ones.
For this reason you should be able to report the two sources separatedly, since the metrics don't overlap. The problem arises if you need to join the two sources (for example getting the like total of a single post), since as far as I know there's no matching variable between the media from Graph API and the Ads from Facebook Ads

Access public data of other users using Instagram/Facebook API

I would like to access other users public data to show in my website when they configure the page by their username/id.
It means I will create an app on FB/Instagram side and with the help of this app's access token I would like to fetch public data of other user.
Is this scenario valid now? Earlier it was possible but I am not sure now with changes in policies. Even the documents are not clear enough which can say it's possible or not?
Has anyone tried this out recently?
Users: Only data of users who specifically authorized your App is available, depending on the authorized permissions. It does not matter if data of user profiles is public or not, you have to get permission from each user separately.
Pages: If you want to get data of pages you don´t own, you have to go through a review process with your App to get access to "Page Public Content": https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/feature/#reference-PAGES_ACCESS
That´s for Facebook, about Instagram you can just hit the docs (as well): https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api/business-discovery
My number one recommendation, in this case, is Facebook API or Instagram API from Data365. I may be considered biased since it is the tool I work for, but it is really a reliable tool you can get public profile data by users ID or username.
Of course, you can use the official Facebook/Instagram APIs for searching all public objects (post, user, page, event, group, place, check-in). But note, the official API has a number of restrictions. Andyrandy has already described them in his answer. Compared with official APIs, we do not have such restrictions.
Besides, our APIs provide such unique features as gender and age recognition (via face photos) along with identification of post reactions that give a competitive advantage in obtained analytics. Data365 APIs also enable developers to create monitoring tasks for a one-time or auto data update. And above all, we do not break the law but only provide web scraping within the legal framework.

Retrieve user data from Google Analytics based on the __utma cookie

I am trying to find out how active are the users of my web page after registration, based on what was the source/landing page of their first visit. I would rather not try to track users myself - I am already employing Google Analytics on my web page and I know it uses the __utma cookie to tell one user from another. I can see summarized landing pages/sources in my Analytics reports but would need to have this data per specific user in the time of their sign up.
Essentially, when the user signs up with my web page I would like to retrieve their landing page and source from Google Analytics and store it in my application's database along with user's name, password, activity etc. This way I could check later, for example whether users who came from Google were more prone to buying premium service that those who came from Facebook etc.
I checked the Google Analytics API reference but it doesn't seem to provide getters for this specific data. I've been looking in up in Google and in Stack Overflow for a while.
This seems like a pretty useful functionality, which many websites should need. What am I missing? Maybe I should seek for a solution that doesn't involve GA? Or switch to a different analytics? Or track user's landing pages with cookies myself?

How to track client payment information of a visitor redirected from my website

I want to implement a system similar to affilite tracking systems like Skimlinks, Viglink, etc. I searched their customer tracking systems. Found some information about tracking systems. I have also searched Analytics systems like Google Analytics, Piwik, OWA. There is a point I need to be guided.
When a user visits my website, clicks a product link of a shopping website like ebay, amazon, etc. I need to track the payment information of my user at the shopping website.
I achieved tracking user activity, clicks, etc on my web site with using Analytics's tracking methods (JS tracking). But I cannot find a way how Skimlinks or Viglink tracks user activity(succesful payment of users) in the shopping website which user redirected.
(Tracking user activity in the shopping website without using a service from shopping website, without Instant Payment Notification service of PayPay or something else)
I noticed Viglink and Skimlinks redirects user to their server before shopping and adds some additional information (like cookies, URL parameters etc)
Here is an example link to affiliate link of Skimlinks
website : http://www.capoeira-izmir.com/capoeira-kiyafetleri/
link : Street Abada
http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=25227X845172&site=capoeira-izmir.com&xs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2FHELANCA-POLYAMID-CAPOEIRA-PANTS-ABADA-YOGA-FREE-BONFIM-%2F280678232152%3Fpt%3DUS_CSA_MC_Pants%26hash%3Ditem4159b9f058%23ht_2891wt_1163&xguid=94275a6f74c7ce02bf4739e364d8831c&xcreo=0&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.capoeira-izmir.com%2Fcapoeira-kiyafetleri%2F
It redirects user to go.redirectingat.com first, then a redirection is done to ebay.com/...
I also noticed that it adds an attribute to the url of ebay product link : afsrc=1
I guess it is "affiliate source = 1 " or something like that.
Any guidance or documents about this will be great for me.
Thanks in advance!!
I think your question is more about how online advertising works rather than technical.
This is a two parts answer.
1. How a conversion tracking works:
In any advertising platform that tracks conversions (any user action that happens in the advertiser property like, in example, a sale) you need to make a request to the advertising platform to notify this.
This is usually done by placing a "Tracking pixel" in the confirmation page the users see after performing the action, commonly known as the "Thank you page".
So the process goes like:
User goes to a website and sees an ad
User clicks the ad
The user's browser goes to the advertising platform (Adwords, Rightmedia, Appnexus, etc) and a cookie is placed in her browser. In this cookie there's a click ID, containing all the relevant information (website that originated the click, time, IP, campaign, etc) and it is redirected to the advertiser's website
The user lands in the advertiser website and "converts" (buys)
The user is redirected to the Thank you page where a "Tracking pixel" is placed, this makes a request to the advertising platform, which reads the cookies in the user's browser and if there's a match, logs the conversion.
Note: The previous example is a Client Side conversion. The same logic could be done in a Server Side request by the advertiser saving the "click id" in step 4 and sending it to the advertising platform in step 5. This is useful when the conversion occurs offline.
For more information: Adwords Conversion tracking: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722054?hl=en
2. How I assume VigLink works
I noticed that many of the products VigLink tracks are from ClickBank, since this is the one I'm more used to, I will write the answer using this example.
You first need to be aware that VigLink is an "affiliate" of Clickbank. As such, it has a report of every sale made by users they referred. They, as affiliates, also have the chance to pass extra information in each click as a TID parameter. This TID sent as a URL parameter in the click will be shown in the sales report.
When a user clicks on a link to a clickbank product using VigLink. VigLink attaches their affiliate link to this same product and a unique TID. I assume this TID matches an ID in their database containing the information of the VigLink website who referred the click.
If the user buys the product, VigLink will see in their ClickBank report (I assume via the ClickBank API) the product bought and the TID, and so on they will know in which website the sale was originated.
Short answer: VigLink is not tracking user actions in the advertiser's website. They are just matching click IDs between their click tracker and the advertiser's reports.