NOTE: Certain information in this article may be missing or out of date. We are in the process of updating the content.
Overview
Facebook Ads helps you promote your page and business to the right people across Facebook’s Audience Network, so you get big value out of every advertising dollar. The Facebook Ads/Grow integration gives you the chance to see your data in real time, enabling you to make powerful decisions for your campaigns.
How to Connect
Before you get started you will need to obtain your Facebook Ads login information.
Here are the steps to connect your Facebook Ads account to Grow:
- Log into your Grow account and click on Add Metric.
- Navigate to Facebook Ads integration, if you don’t see it in your list click on Connect Your Data.
- Select the integration icon and you will see connection options.
- A pop up window may appear, if it does not pop up please enable pop ups from Grow.
- Type in your Facebook login information and click login and allow access.
And that's it! You are good to go.
Building a Metric
To help get you started in using Facebook Ads, here's a quick tutorial for building a custom metric that measures the the ad spend over the last 12 months. It also briefly covers the different parameters you can select when pulling in a custom report.
Endpoints
Facebook Ads doesn’t have set reports through which to pull data. You can, however, break it down the data by different levels.
- Account: This is the highest hierarchical level. Total spend/clicks for the entire account by day.
- Campaign: Data for an account, broken down by campaign.
- Ad Set: Data for an account, organized by ad sets within a campaign.
- Ad: Specific ads
For each of these levels, you can access the same types of information. The Fields dropdown will show the options for data. If you don’t select any fields, it will show you general information about the level you have selected (start and stop date for the data being pulled, impressions, spend, account ID, and other IDs).
Below is a list of some common fields, along with a short description. Some fields don’t just bring in one column of data; rather, it will display anything associated with that field. For example, the field “Action_value” brings in link click, post reaction, page engagement, post engagement, like, comment, among others.
- CTR: Click through rate. This is the percent of clicks to number of times your ad was shown.
- Action_value: All actions taken by users (links, page views, engagements, conversions, etc.). Actions subsumes things that would be tracked in a conversions field. This includes pixel data, if you have set that up on your Facebook Ads site.
- CPC: Cost per click. How much you pay for each click on one of your ads.
- Spend: Spend for your data level (ad, ad set, etc.)
- CPM: Cost per thousand impressions. The M is the Roman numeral for thousand.
- Unique actions: Number of unique actions. A unique action is the first time someone takes an action or interacts with your ad.
- Impressions: The number of times your ads were viewed.
- Clicks: Total number clicks
- Ad/adset/campaign name: The name of your ad/ad set/campaign. Be aware of your data levels with this field: if you have the field ad_name selected for campaign-level data, you will only get columns with dates, but no names of ads or campaigns.
Beyond the levels, there are other ways in Grow that you can slice up the data:
- Breakdown: Sort data by demographic information.
- Filters: Greater than, less than, contains, etc. for activity surrounding your ads. Most of these are the same options as the options under Fields.
- Windows: Start and stop period of ad windows (clicks or views)
FAQs + Tips and Tricks
How can I track revenue generated?
Before you can utilize this functionality in Grow you need to set up a conversion value in Facebook first. Once you have done this, select the total_action_value metric which returns the total revenue returned from conversions. This will be $0 for most ads and companies unless you have set up the conversion value manually.
To calculate your conversion value you would divide the value of a sale, conversion, by the number of conversions needed to get that value. For example, let's say you are selling a shirt, and you are tracking conversions as clicks. If the shirt generates $20 a sale, and you convert 10% of ad clicks (conversions) to buyers, that is 1 in 10. So $20 value / 10 conversions = $2 value per conversion. Each ad click is worth $2, so in Facebook you would set your conversion value to $2. Once you have this calculated, set this value in Facebook.
Setting this up in Facebook can be surprisingly difficult as you have to add it directly to your pixel code. If you want dynamic values, you would need to work with your developer or platform to customize it. You can set up different values for each custom conversion. Facebook has a pretty comprehensive help article about how to set the value if you need additional help.
How do I track my Facebook conversions?
Facebook has this data being tracked under a field called action/pixels. This field brings back one column for every action, which includes pixel conversions, clicks, calls, and anything else you are tracking on your ads.
Can I see my Ad Images?
Yes you can but it can be a little tricky to get. First select the account for which you want to see the ads. Choose Ad from the summary level drop-down. Click the Fields section and select ad_creative. In the Breakdowns area select impression_device, publisher_platform, and platform_position. Do not add any other filters or breakdowns or you will get an error. Set the date range, then press Get Data. This will return a table with the following information:adCreative.id, adCreative.body, adCreative.image_url, adCreative.title, adCreative.call_to_action_type.
The best way to view each ad picture on a dashboard is to create a table chart. Select the column adCreative.image_url as your data, along with other columns that help you identify the ad, and that’s it! Go ahead and save your metric.
NOTE: While we can get an image URL for display ads, Facebook doesn't provide an image URL for carousel ads.
How do I use the filters section?
When you select the Filters field you will see two additional sections open up asking for your filter statement. Simply select your operator and enter your filter statement and click Get Data.