How to Set Up a Facebook SDK

Prepare your mobile app for retargeting with Facebook

3 min readOct 7, 2018

What is the Facebook SDK?

The Facebook SDK is what allows mobile app developers to integrate Facebook within a mobile app. SDK stands for software development kit, and it allows for a website or app to integrate with Facebook seamlessly.

Examples of what you can do with Facebook SDK include:

Facebook Login functionality
Facebook content sharing
Social plugins

More importantly for marketers, it’s what allows you to send data from your mobile app to Facebook ads. Similarly to the Facebook pixel, you can then use it to do things like retarget people, track conversions, and more. If you’re responsible for marketing a mobile app, understanding and using a Facebook SDK is a must.

Before you get started:

Before we dive in, make sure you have a Facebook page and Facebook ads manager set up. If you don’t, check out the Lightning AI guide to Getting Started with Facebook Advertising.

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How to set up your SDK for mobile apps

As mentioned, SDK packs a lot of meaning. But for the purposes of this article, we’re concerned about maximizing your marketing efforts — so we’re going to focus on getting your SDK set up to track events (user actions) within your app.

First, you’ll need to get set up with a Facebook for Developers account. Go to Facebook for Developers, then just follow the steps from Facebook that will appear within a pop-up modal.

Once you have a Facebook Developer account, you’ll need to add your app to your account, then add all of the details about your app such as domain, platform, and a link to your privacy policy and terms of service.

Your app domain is the URL for your app in either the Apple App Store for iOS or the Google Play store for Android. You won’t need to worry about this for Javascript.

Platforms can be added by going to Settings > Basic within your new dashboard and add a Platform, or multiple platforms. Your platform options are iOS (for iPhones and iPad users), Android, and Javascript. Make sure you add all the correct platforms.

Your privacy policy and terms of service will be the URLs to those web pages for your business.

For more detailed guides based on each platform, check out these step-by-step instructions from Facebook:

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Lightning AI can help you reach your target audience; our AI platform will study your current data on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, and it will identify new interest groups based on your most successful advertisements. You won’t have to wait to see results — Lightning AI will run tests as soon as it has finished analyzing your data, connecting you and your brand to millions of potential buyers within seconds.