Create a Meta app and a system user token

Runads publishes through the Marketing API, so it needs an access token. A token of a person expires and depends on that person. A token of a system user belongs to the business. This guide goes from zero to such a token. The labels below are Meta’s and can differ in your account.

What you need

• A business portfolio in Meta Business Suite that owns the ad account and the Facebook page, or has access to them.
• Admin access to that portfolio.

1. Create the app

1. Open developers.facebook.com/apps and click Create app.
2. Choose the use case that creates and manages ads with the Marketing API.
3. Connect the app to your business portfolio.

A new app gets the Marketing API access tier Limited access. Meta’s documentation says about this tier:

• it is heavily rate-limited per ad account;
• it is for development, not for production apps that run for live advertisers;
• it allows one system user and one admin system user.

For regular work, request Full access with +Upgrade in the App Dashboard. Meta asks for App Review, at least 500 successful Marketing API calls in the last 15 days and an error rate under 15% in the last 500 calls. Source: Meta, Marketing API authorization.

On Limited access a large draft can reach Meta’s limit. Publishing then stops, and you continue from the failed step later: see fix publishing errors.

2. Create the system user

1. Open Business settings → Users → System users.
2. Click Add, name the user and choose the Admin or Employee role.

3. Give it the assets

Click Assign assets and add what your campaigns use:

Asset	Needed for
Ad account	every campaign
Facebook page	the identity of the ads; lead forms
Pixel	sales and leads on a website
Catalog	catalog ads
Instagram account	ads under that account

Add the app to the system user too.

4. Generate the token

Click Generate new token and choose the app. Meta offers a token that never expires and one that is valid for 60 days. Select the permissions:

Permission	The builder uses it for
ads_management	campaigns, ad sets, creatives, ads, audiences, pixels
business_management	the business of the ad account and its catalogs
pages_show_list, pages_read_engagement	the list of pages
pages_manage_ads, leads_retrieval	the lead forms of the page
catalog_management	catalogs and product sets

Take only what you use. Copy the token when it appears and store it at once.

5. Connect it

Paste the token in the Connection block of the builder and continue with connect a Meta ad account. An empty list there means that the system user lacks that asset or permission.