Meta Business Manager: affiliate channel guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Menlo Park-based affiliate channel Meta Business Manager (née Facebook Business). Here you can find information on how to request a Meta Business Manager account, how to configure this affiliate channel on ChannelEngine, and what the specific requirements are.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Channel features

Settings and configuration

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Product selection
• Categorization
• Mappings
• Pricing

Additional information

Commercial information

How to request an account

To start advertising on Meta's properties, go to the Meta Business Manager page and log in with your Facebook account.

Associated costs

Meta Business Manager does not charge setup or monthly fees. However, you pay for every click on ads linked to the products listed – and this cost varies. For more information on the cost per click (CPC), check out the Setting your ad budget and schedule page.

Channel features

Meta Business Manager is an affiliate channel; it does not support marketplace actions such as processing orders or shipments.

The channel plugin generates a feed that you can upload to your Meta Business Manager, but all order handling is done on your webstore.

Settings and configuration

Setting up each channel on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, though not every channel includes the steps listed below.

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Fill in the Stock settings.
7. Finish the Activation.
8. Check the Listed products overview.

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On ChannelEngine

Settings

• Do not expose actual stock - if enabled, the stock of available products is shown as 1 (one) and the stock of unavailable products is shown as 0 (zero).

Conversion tracking

• Cost per click (CPC), excl. VAT/sales tax - to use ChannelEngine's conversion tracking feature, enter your Cost per click here. This allows ChannelEngine to automatically calculate returns on investment (ROI).

Product selection

This channel accesses your product data directly from source files that ChannelEngine generates. In the Product selection step, you see one URL, which is a placeholder for the product feed file that this channel receives from ChannelEngine, in XML format.

To generate the product feed file for this channel:

1. Create a product selection for this channel.

2. If your product data contains custom fields, mark them as public. See the section custom fields.

3. Complete the remaining steps in Settings and configuration.

4. Let ChannelEngine run its export task for the first time. This task runs every 60 minutes.

The feed content is visible after you finish the Activation step and ChannelEngine completes its export task.

Custom fields

To include your custom fields in the generated feeds and, therefore, expose your custom fields to this channel, mark them as public on ChannelEngine.

To mark your custom fields as public:

1. Go to Products, Custom fields.

2. Locate the custom field that you want to expose to this channel.

3. Change the Include in channel product feed status by selecting the pencil icon and setting it to enabled.

For more guidance on custom fields, check out ChannelEngine: custom fields.

This URL does not change unless you remove the affiliate channel and re-add it later. You need to add this URL to your Meta Business Manager Center account.

Categorization

Before you can map your products' attributes, you need to categorize your products.

Mappings

Content mappings

All products (required)

• Age group - the product's target age group. E.g.: kids.
• Availability - the product's current availability. E.g.: out of stock.
• Brand - the product's brand or manufacturer. The maximum number of characters is 100. E.g.: Fairphone.
• Category - the product's category.
• Color - the product's color. The maximum number of characters is 200. E.g.: black.
• Condition - the product's condition. E.g.: refurbished.
• Currency - the currency in which the product is priced.
• Description - the product's description. HTML tags are not supported, and the maximum number of characters is 9,999. For additional requirements, check out the article Product description specifications for catalogs in the Meta Business Help Center.
• Gender - the product's target gender. E.g.: unisex.
• Google category - the product's most specific category on Google, either as its name or ID. For more information, check out the article Data feed fields and specifications for catalogs in Commerce Manager in the Meta Business Help Center.
• Group ID - the SKU of the product used to group its variations. E.g.: Parent SKU.
• GTIN - the product's unique ID, such as its EAN or UPC.
• ID - the product's SKU or Merchant product number.
• Image link - the product's image URL. The main requirements are listed below, and additional requirements can be found in the article Product image specifications for catalogs in the Meta Business Help Center.
  • File format - JPG or JPEG.
  • Resolution - at least 500x500 px.
  • File size - at most 8 MB.
• Manufacturer part number - the product's MPN.
• Material - the product's main material. The maximum number of characters is 200. E.g.: pineapple leather.
• Pattern - the product's pattern or graphic print. The maximum number of characters is 100. E.g.: leopard print.
• Price - the product's price.
• Product link - the link to the product's detail page in your webstore.
• Shipping country - the ISO 3166 code of the country where the product is shipped from. E.g.: AQ.
• Shipping price - the product's shipping cost.
• Size - the product's size. The maximum number of characters is 200. E.g.: Small, 10 months, M, etc.
• Title - the product's title. The maximum number of characters is 200, and the recommended number is 65.

All products (optional)

• Additional image link - the product's additional image URL. Multiple links can be separated by a comma ( , ), semicolon ( ; ), space (  ), or pipe ( | ). For the requirements, refer to Image link.
• Additional variant attribute value/label - for a product variant, indicate the type (label) and the value of the variation (value), e.g.: Label - 'Season', Value - 'Winter 2025'.
• Adult content - defines if the product is strictly for adults or not. E.g.: false.
• Availability date - date in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmZ format on which your product is first available. Required if your product's availability is set to preorder or backorder.
• Bundle - indicate if the product is part of a bundle. Select Yes or No. 
• Certification authority/name - for products targeting the EU, the authority or certification body responsible for issuing the certification.
• Certification code - required for European energy labels. If you map a value to this attribute, then map 'EPREL' in Certification name.
• Certification value - an indication of the certification level when a certification code is not required by a given certification, e.g. vehicle CO2 emissions class. 
• Cost of goods sold (cogs) - the costs associated with the sale of a particular product, as defined by the accounting convention you set up, e.g.: '4.95'.
• Custom label 0-4 - the product's custom tags, which can be used when filtering. The maximum number of characters is 100. E.g.: spring sale.
• Energy efficiency class - for products targeting Switzerland, Norway, or the United Kingdom, select a nominal, maximum, and minimum energy rating.
• Inventory (or Quantity to sell on Facebook) - the product's stock available for this channel. E.g.: 50.
• Maximum handling time - the longest amount of time between when an order is placed for a product and when the product ships, in days. For products ready to be shipped the same day, submit '0'. 
• Minimum handling time - the shortest amount of time between when an order is placed for a product and when the product ships, in days. 
• Mobile link - the link to the mobile version of the product's detail page in your webstore.
• Multipack - the number of identical products sold within a merchant-defined multipack. Required for some Google Shopping countries
• Offer price - the product's offer price. If mapped, the Offer price effective date attribute must also be mapped.
• Offer price effective date - the period when the offer price is valid. The format is: YYYY-MM-DDT23:59+00:00/YYYY-MM-DDT23:59+00:00. E.g.: 2025-10-01T13:30-01:00/2025-12-31T23:59-01:00. If mapped, the Offer price attribute must also be mapped.
• Product has a GTIN (EAN, ISBN, UPC etc.) - defines if the product has a unique identifier. E.g.: true.
• Product dimensions - the length, width, and height of the product, including the unit of measure, e.g.: '50 cm'.
• Product highlight - unique selling points of your product, maximum 150 characters.
• Return policy label - your return policy.
• Sale price - the product's sale price. If mapped, the Sale price effective date attribute must also be mapped.
• Sale price effective date - the period when the sale price is valid. The format is: YYYY-MM-DDT23:59+00:00/YYYY-MM-DDT23:59+00:00. E.g.: 2025-10-01T13:30-01:00/2025-12-31T23:59-01:00. If mapped, the Sale price attribute must also be mapped.
• Shipping country - select to which country you deliver the product.
• Shipping dimensions and weight - the length, width, and height of the item with packaging, to calculate the shipping cost. Include the unit of measure, e.g.: '100 cm'.
• Size system - for apparel, select the country of the size system used by your product.
• Size type - for apparel, select the applicable special size format of the product.
• Unit pricing base measure - the measure and dimension of your product as it is sold, including the unit of measure, e.g.: '1.5kg'.
• Visibility (or Status) - the product's status on the channel.

Pricing

If your target countries have a currency different than your own, you need to set up a currency conversion.

Additional information

Generating a product feed via Meta Business Manager

To generate a feed via Meta Business Manager, which you can then upload to ChannelEngine, check out the article How to create a data feed for your catalog using a template in the Meta Business Help Center.