Collecting data from Facebook Ads

This guide contains detailed information about collecting data from Facebook Ads.

Introduction

This guide contains detailed information about using Facebook Ads in Adverity.

To create a datastream to collect data from Facebook Ads, follow the steps in our guide to Creating a datastream. If these steps are not detailed enough, refer back to this Facebook Ads guide for detailed configuration instructions.

For more information on the data fields that you can collect from Facebook Ads, see List of supported fields.

Prerequisites

Before you start collecting data from Facebook Ads, perform all of the following actions:

Creating a datastream to collect data from Facebook Ads

This section of the Facebook Ads guide contains information specific to Facebook Ads. Not all steps in the datastream creation process will be described here. If a step is not described here, follow the process in our guide to Creating a datastream.

Authorization: Allow Adverity to access Facebook Ads

1. If you choose Access using your credentials or Access using someone else's credentials, in Set up or edit Ad Accounts, you or the person granting access must choose one of the following options:

   • Choose Grant access to all Ad Accounts, including those created in the future to allow Adverity to access all existing Ad Accounts and all Ad Accounts created in the future.

   • Choose Select specific Ad Accounts to which you want to grant access to determine the specific Ad Accounts that you want Adverity to access. Adverity will not automatically have access to Ad Accounts created in the future. You will need to grant Adverity access to any Ad Accounts created in the future.

   If you use your credentials to grant Adverity access to Facebook Ads, all the Ad Accounts available to you using your credentials will be visible in the Authorizations page to all Adverity users with permission to edit this authorization.

   If someone else uses their credentials to grant Adverity access to Facebook Ads, the same applies to the Ad Accounts available using their credentials.

   This is important to consider if you do not want all Adverity users with permission to edit the authorization to be able to see the details of the Ad Accounts. For more information about user permissions, see Managing user permissions.

Configuration: Choose the data you want to collect from Facebook Ads

To choose what data to collect and customize the Facebook Ads datastream configuration, follow these steps:

1. (Optional) Rename your datastream.

2. In Businesses, Accounts, and Campaigns, select the businesses, accounts, and campaigns for which to collect data. If you do not select any items in a drop-down list, Adverity collects data for all items in the drop-down list.

3. In Fields, change the list of fields that you want to see in your data extract.

To configure all other Facebook Ads datastream settings, see Advanced Facebook Ads tips.

What's next?

• Apply Data Mapping to your collected data to harmonize data collected from different sources in Adverity.

• Load your data into Adverity Data Storage for further analysis in Adverity.

• Transform your data to meet your needs by creating and applying enrichments to your datastream.

Troubleshooting Facebook Ads

The status of a campaign, ad set or ad is not correct when fetching data from Facebook Ads

If the status of an object is incorrect, for example if an ad is inactive but its status is shown as active when fetching data for a long date range, this is this is because the metadata for the authorization used in this datastream is out of date.

To resolve this issue, Synchronizing metadata for the authorization used in this datastream.

Advanced Facebook Ads tips

Rate limiting

For information on rate limiting, see the Facebook documentation.

Configuring advanced data collection options for Facebook Ads

This section explains the advanced configuration options for your Facebook Ads datastream. You can adjust these settings in the Configuration step of the datastream creation wizard.

1. In the General section of the page, adjust the following settings:

   Breakdowns

   Select how the aggregated, collected data is separated (or broken down) within the data extract. For example, select age to view a breakdown of the age groups interacting with your ad campaigns.

   Action breakdowns

   Select how the aggregated, collected data is separated (or broken down) within the data extract in terms of actions on a campaign. For example, select action_reaction to view a breakdown of the number of reactions each campaign received.

2. In the Media Screenshots section of the page, adjust the following settings:

   Media Screenshots enabled

   To take screenshots of your ads, select this checkbox and populate Ad Preview fields below.

   The screenshots are saved in the same storage as the Facebook Ads data extracts. For more information, see Setting up storage for data extracts. The screenshots are stored until you delete them manually from the storage, or delete the Facebook Ads datastream.

   Ad Preview fields

   To take screenshots of your ads, select at least one field in Ad Preview fields.

   (Recommended) Select ad_preview_default_url to generate a screenshot.

3. To view advanced Facebook Ads datastream settings, click Show advanced settings and adjust the following settings:

   Adset Targeting Fields

   The Adset targeting fields are contained in a single, long JSON string. Adset Targeting Fields is a filter that allows you to select certain fields within this long JSON field to ensure they are included in the fetched data. Each selected Adset targeting field is displayed as a separate column within the data extract. Select the Adset targeting fields to include in your data extract.

   Custom Filter

   To filter the data to collect from Facebook Ads, provide a set of filters in JSON format. For example, to find data with the ID 123, enter the following:

   [{"field": "id", "operator": "EQUAL", "value": "123"}]

   For more information on the parameters that can be filtered, see the Facebook documentation.

   Translate custom conversions

   Select this checkbox to collect the names for custom conversions.

   Action attribution windows

   An attribution window is the time period between a user clicking on or viewing an ad, and performing an action (such as a purchase or download) as a result of the ad click or view. In Action attribution window, select the time period for which to collect attribution data.

   For each action selected in the Actions Breakdowns field, a column will be placed next to the action column in the data extract, displaying the number of actions that occurred within the selected action attribution window.

   Force action fields

   Select this checkbox to create a column of every possible action field in the data extract, even if the action field is empty. By default, Facebook does not return empty values. This feature resolves destination issues where certain destinations may require a set number of columns to be loaded. For more information on action fields, see the Facebook documentation.

   Pivot action fields

   Select this checkbox to display action data as rows instead of columns in the data extract. Each action is broken down by row, with the columns action_type and action_values. This setting only is only effective if you select an action in the Action breakdown field.

   Include future campaigns

   Select this checkbox to collect data on campaigns that are yet to run.

   Use unified attribution setting

   Select this checkbox to apply the attribution settings defined at the ad set level in the Facebook administration. This allows you to apply default attribution settings to all ads within an ad set.

   If this checkbox is enabled, Adverity ignores your selection in the Action attribution windows field.

   Action report time

   Ad impressions and conversion actions can occur on different dates. A recorded action can be attributed to one of the following:

   • The date when an impression occurred.

   • Time when a conversion action occurred.

   Some actions can only be attributed to the date of a conversion, and these actions are not reported by Facebook Ads if you select Impression in the Action report time field. Adverity recommends the Mixed option because it returns data on both impressions and conversion actions.

   To specify which actions to report, select one of the following options:

   • (Default, Recommended) Select Mixed to report the following:

     • The date of an impression that occurs on your ad (for example ad-views and ad-clicks).

     • The conversion action dates that occur off your ad (for example purchases on your website).

   • Select Conversion to report all off-ad and off-Facebook action dates.

   • Select Impression (only data before May 3, 2021) to report all impression dates. This option is only supported for impression data before May 3, 2021. For more information on the discontinuation of impression collection, see the Facebook documentation.

   For more information on off-Facebook actions, see the Facebook documentation.

   Product ID limit

   Enter the maximum number of product IDs to be returned for each ad set. For example, a carousel ad campaign may have up to five products included in the ad, each with its own product ID.

   Time increment

   Select the time increment in which to collect data. Choose from one of the following options:

   • Select a whole number of days such as 1 day or 7 days.

   • Select all_days to collect all data in one data extract.

   • Select monthly to collect data for each calendar month in a different data extract. For example, when you collect data for the date range 2021-03-15 to 2021-05-16, Adverity collects data in three data extracts, one for calendar month.

Obtaining the campaign results metric

The results_by_adveritymetric shows you how well a campaign performed, calculated based on campaign objectives and metrics.

To add the results_by_adveritymetric to your datastream, follow these steps:

1. Select the workspace you work with in Adverity and then, in the platform navigation menu, click Datastreams.

2. Open the Facebook Ads datastream by clicking on its name.

3. In the top navigation panel, click Settings.

4. In the Fields section, write results_by_adverity and select the value from the drop-down list.

5. Click Save.

6. In the top right corner, click Fetch now.

7. Choose the time period for which data is collected.

8. Click Fetch.

The results metric provided by Facebook cannot be fetched from the Facebook Ads connector because it is only available in the Facebook Ads user interface and cannot be retrieved using the API. Adverity calculates the results metric through a different metric called results_by_adverity. Therefore, the results metric in Facebook Ads may differ from the results_by_adverity metric in Adverity.

For more information on results, see the Facebook documentation:

• Results

• View results on your Facebook ad in Ads Manager

List of all campaign objectives and metrics used for calculating the results_by_adveritymetric:

Campaign objective	Metric used for calculation
App installs	actions.omni_app_install
Brands awareness	estimated_ad_recallers
Conversions	conversions
Event responses	actions.rsvp
Lead generation	actions.lead
Link clicks	actions.link_clicks
Local awareness	clicks
Messages	onsite_conversion.messaging_conversation_started
Offer claims	action.receive_offer
Page likes	actions.like
Post engagement	actions.post_engagement
Product catalog sales	actions.purchase
Reach	reach
Store visits	store_visit_actions
Video views	video_30_sec_watched_actions

Facebook Ads store visits

The store visits objective allows you to create Facebook ad campaigns to increase sales at physical stores.