Collecting data from Facebook Page Insights

Collecting data from Facebook Page Insights#

This guide explains how to collect data from Facebook Page Insights. To learn how to collect data from a different data source, go back to the Available data sources in Adverity overview.

Introduction#

For a list of the fields that you can collect from Facebook Page Insights, see Facebook Page Insights.

Limitations#

Collecting data from Facebook Page Insights comes with the following limitations:

  • If your Facebook page has more than 600 posts per year, only the 600 most relevant posts are retrieved during the initial data fetch. The posts that qualify as most relevant are defined by Facebook and depend on when you fetch the data and when the post was created. Typically, more recent posts are likely to be returned as they are considered to be more relevant by Facebook.

  • Adverity tracks the post IDs and how recently the post was created. Once a post has been discovered, Adverity retains the post ID and you can collect data for the post anytime.

Prerequisites#

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

  • Ensure that the account you use to connect to Facebook Page Insights has the correct roles and permissions to collect the data. Edit these roles and permissions in Facebook Business Manager. For more information, see the Facebook documentation.

  • Add the Employee or higher business manager role to the account.

  • Add the View Page performance permission to the classic page.

Depending on your specific configuration, the following additional permissions may be required:

  • Manage Page permission: To retrieve additional metadata fields for pages, such as calls to action for a page.

  • ads_management, pages_manage_ads, pages_show_list permissions and a permission to perform the ADVERTISE task: To retrieve data for unpublished (also known as dark) posts.

Alternatively, if you do not use Facebook Business Manager, configure the roles and permissions on the page level. For more information, see the Facebook documentation.

Creating a datastream to collect data from Facebook Page Insights#

The basics of creating a datastream to collect data from any data source are explained in our guide to Collecting data in Adverity. This guide contains information about the specific steps to create a datastream to fetch data from Facebook Page Insights.

Authorization: Allow Adverity to access Facebook Page Insights#

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

    • Choose Grant access to all items, including those created in the future to give Adverity Pages to access all existing items and all items created in the future.

    • Choose Select specific items to which you want to grant access to only give Adverity Pages to access the selected items. Adverity will not automatically have access to items created in the future. You will need to grant Adverity access to any items created in the future.

    Warning

    If you use your credentials to grant Adverity access to Facebook Page Insights, all the items 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 Page Insights, the same applies to the items 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 authorization items. For more information about user permissions, see Managing user permissions.

Configuration: Choose the data you want to collect from Facebook Page Insights#

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

  1. (Optional) Rename your datastream.

  2. In Business and Facebook Pages, select the business entities and Facebook pages 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 Report type, select the type of data to collect from Facebook Page Insights.

  4. In Granularity, select the time unit in which you want to retrieve your data.

  5. In Dimensions and Metrics, change the list of fields that you want to see in your data extract.

What’s next?#

Advanced Facebook Page Insights tips#

Understanding the difference between Timestamp and Date fields#

Your data extract contains two fields with a timestamp. Both timestamps are in DD.MM.YYYY format. One of these fields is created by Facebook, and the other by Adverity. See the specific descriptions below:

Timestamp

This field is generated by Facebook. It provides information about the date on which the Facebook API captured the data. For example, data with the timestamp 02.07.2023 was collected on 02.07.2023 but is related to activity from 01.07.2023.

Date

This field is generated by Adverity. It provides information about the date on which the activity occurred. For example, data with the timestamp 02.07.2023 is related to activity from 02.07.2023.

Understanding the meaning of “unique” fields#

Some metrics that you can collect from Facebook Page Insights include the term “unique”. This means that the metric represents the number of unique users who have performed a specific action.

For example, you can collect both the “Link Clicks” and “Link Clicks (unique)” fields from Facebook Page Insights in Adverity. The difference between these fields is explained below:

  • Link Clicks represents the number of times users have clicked on a specific link.

  • Link Clicks (unique) represents the number of unique users who have clicked on a specific link.

For more information, see the Facebook documentation.

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