Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is an advertising platform. Businesses and individuals use it to create and run targeted ad campaigns on Facebook. It includes tools for audience targeting, ad creation, and performance tracking.

Refer to this page to see all available endpoints from the Facebook Ads API.

If you have multiple Facebook Ads accounts and would like to extract the same data from all of them, it's possible through multi-account extraction. Contact our Solutions team to enable this feature.

Authentication Methods

Facebook Ads supports more than one way to connect. Pick one when you create the authorizer in Dataddo:

• Facebook account - sign in with Facebook and approve access (recommended).
• Meta Admin Center - connect through the Meta Admin Center.
• Your own Facebook app - use your own Facebook app credentials (for advanced setups).

Authorize Connection to Facebook Ads

To authorize this service, use OAuth 2.0 to share specific data with Dataddo while keeping usernames, passwords, and other information private.

1. On the Authorizers page, click on Authorize New Service and select your service.
2. Follow the on-screen prompts to grant Dataddo the necessary permissions to access and retrieve your data.
3. [Optional] Once your authorizer is created, click on it to change the label for easier identification.

Ensure that the account you're granting access to holds at least admin-level permissions. If necessary, assign a team member with the required permissions with the authorizer role to authenticate the service for you.

For more information, see our article on authorizers.

Using System User

The best practice is to create a dedicated Admin System User in Facebook (Meta) Business Manager. Here is the step-by-step guide:

1. Go to business facebook manager and create a Business Manager account if you don’t already have one.
2. Add your Facebook page to your Business Manager.
3. Create a Facebook App: In the facebook developer portal create a new app (or use an existing one).
4. Add a System User: In Business Manager, navigate to Business Settings > Users > System Users.
5. Click Add to create a new system user (give it a name and assign it a role, usually “Admin” for full access).
6. Assign Assets and Permissions: Assign your Facebook page as an asset to the system user.
7. Grant the system user the necessary permissions for the page.
8. Generate a System User Access Token: In the system user’s settings, click Generate New Token. (Select your app and the required permissions.)
9. Use the System User Access Token to generate a System Page Access Token

Data Coverage

Facebook Ads exposes the following datasets. Each dataset maps to a table you can extract. Example fields are a representative sample; each dataset returns more columns. The Date range column shows whether a dataset extracts a selected relative window or all available data (see below).

How Data Extraction Works

What each extraction pulls depends only on whether a dataset supports a date range (see the Date range column above):

• Date range supported (Yes): the source reads a relative window (for example "last 7 days"), and that window slides forward with the current date. Every run re-reads the window, so a range of "1 day ago" always pulls the previous day (D-1). Each run replaces the window's data rather than adding older history. To load records from before the window, run a full data re-sync with a wider range. See Data Backfilling.
• No date range (No): every run pulls all currently available data.

Set the relative date range when you create the source.

Metadata Columns

When you create a source, you can add these Dataddo metadata columns to the extracted data:

• dataddo_hash - a fingerprint built from each record's key fields. It works as a natural key, so it is ideal for upserts (updating existing rows in your destination instead of creating duplicates).
• dataddo_extraction_timestamp - the date and time the row was extracted. Use it to track how records change over time, for example to build slowly changing dimensions.

Hash Sensitive Fields

Some datasets include columns with personal data, such as names, email addresses, or phone numbers. When you create a source, you can turn on Hash Sensitive Fields and use the Select Columns for Sensitive Computation picker to choose which of these columns to protect. Dataddo replaces the selected values with a hash before the data leaves Dataddo, so the raw personal data is never written to your destination.

How to Create a Facebook Ads Data Source

Creating a data source takes you through five steps, shown in the progress bar at the top of the wizard. Each step is explained below.

1. Pick the connector

On the Sources page, click Create Source, then select the connector from the catalog. Use the search bar or the category tabs if you do not see it right away. You can rename the source at any time using the pencil icon next to its name.

2. Choose the account

This step selects what Dataddo reads from.

• Authorizer: Select an account you have already authorized from the drop-down. If you have none yet, choose Add new account and follow the prompts. If no authorizer is selected, Dataddo asks you to authorize before you continue.
• What to extract from: Select the exact entity you want to pull data from. Depending on the service this may be labelled an account, property, profile, workspace, or similar, sometimes with a sub-level to choose as well.
• Multiple accounts: To pull the same data from every entity you can access, turn on Automatically collect data from all .... This is multi-account extraction. Leave it off to choose them by hand.

3. Build the data model

Choose exactly what to extract. What you can pick depends on the connector, and the wizard may group the fields differently for each one.

• Values: the measures you want, often called metrics, such as sessions, clicks, or revenue.
• Breakdowns: the fields you group or split those values by, often called dimensions or attributes, such as date, country, or campaign.
• Context metadata (when available): identifier fields that Dataddo derives from your selection, such as the account or property ID. They let you tell rows apart when you combine several sources.

Some connectors limit which fields can be queried together; the wizard flags this where it applies. Click Test on Sample Data at any point to preview the result before you continue.

4. Add metadata columns (optional)

Two optional columns help your destination handle the data.

• Dataddo Hash (Include Row Hash): a fingerprint built from the columns you pick. It works as a natural key, so your destination can deduplicate rows and run upserts instead of creating duplicates. Turn it on, then select the columns that uniquely identify a row.
• Dataddo Extraction Timestamp: the time each row was extracted. Use it to watermark the data, for example to build slowly changing dimensions or to track when a value last changed.

5. Set the schedule

Decide how often Dataddo runs the extraction.

• Frequency: how often the pipeline runs, for example daily. Click Show advanced settings to also set the exact hour and minute (UTC).
• Date range: the relative window each run extracts, for example "Yesterday". The window moves forward on every run.
• Historical data: a new source starts from the current window. To load older data, run a full data re-sync after the source is created.
• Allow Empty Data Extractions: when on, a run that returns no data records zero rows instead of failing. Turn it on if the source can legitimately have periods with no data.

Click Save. Your data source is ready.

Limitations

Attributes Selection

You can select Facebook Ads attributes based on the reporting level.
The reporting level is a hierarchy-type report:

• 1st level: Account
• 2nd level: Campaign
• 3rd level: Adset
• 4th level: Ad

Find more information in Facebook's official documentation.

Historical Data Limitation

The Facebook Ads API has two limitations for historical data:

• You may load up to 90 days per extraction batch.
• In total, you may extract up to 37 months of historical data.

For more information, refer to our guide for data backfilling.

Limited Data Breakdown Combinations

Due to the Facebook Ads API, not all data insight breakdown combinations are viable. Dataddo offers a list of all possible combinations what are supported and won't cause issues for your data source.

Refer to Facebook's official documentation for the list of possible data insight breakdown combinations.

However, if you require a combination that is supported but not available in Dataddo, please contact our Solutions team.

Number of Metrics

The Facebook Ads API allows you to select up to 200 metrics per source.

Number of Rows

Under normal circumstances, the Facebook Ads API sets a hard limit on the total number of rows that can be extracted per call.

To overcome this limitation, Dataddo supports automatic pagination to make multiple calls and retrieve all your data.

Using Audience Breakdowns

Using both demographic and geographical dimensions to to break down the metrics according to the audience categories might lead to data discrepancies.

This is caused by underlying calculations which are based on data sampling. As such, while the data will have correct percentage values, the absolute values can be distorted.

Troubleshooting

Data Preview Unavailable

No data preview when you click on Test Data might be caused by an issue with your source configuration. The most common causes are:

• Date range: Try a smaller date range. You can load the rest of your data afterward using manual data load.
• Insufficient permissions: Please make sure your authorized account has at least admin-level permissions.
• Invalid metrics, attributes, or breakdowns: You may not have any data for the selected metrics, attributes, or breakdowns.
• Incompatible combination of metrics, attributes, or breakdowns: Your selected combination cannot be queried together. Please refer to the service's documentation to view a full list of metrics that can be included in the same data source.

Authorization Error

Broken Facebook sources that return the following error messages when testing the extraction (broken source > three dots > Test Extraction) must be reauthorized:

"response_status": "401 Unauthorized"

"Www-Authenticate": "OAuth \"Facebook Platform\" \"invalid_token\" \"You cannot access the app till you log in to www.facebook.com and follow the instructions given.\""

"response_body": "{\"error\":{\"message\":\"You cannot access the app till you log in to www.facebook.com and follow the instructions given.\",\"type\":\"OAuthException\",\"code\":190,\"error_data\":\"{\\\"checkpoint_url\\\":\\\"https:\\\\\\/\\\\\\/www.facebook.com\\\"}\",\"error_subcode\":459,\"fbtrace_id\":\"AUWZQsg7Opr7SEpp_lk9wUa\"}}"

Unable to Find Facebook Sub-Accounts

If your access rights have changed or you gained access to a new Facebook account, it's possible that your other accounts will not be immediately listed in Dataddo. To fix this, try the following steps:

Fully Reauthorize the Service

1. Go to the Authorizers tab in Dataddo and delete the Facebook authorizer.
   Deleting an Authorizer

   Please keep in mind that you will first need to delete all sources created with the authorizer. This will also affect your flows.

   You can also temporarily switch the source using the authorizer to a different account before deletion.

2. Go to your Facebook settings and navigate to the Business integrations tab.
3. Find Dataddo and click on Remove.
4. Now, go back to the Authorizers tab in Dataddo and authorize your Facebook account again.

Check Your Account Permissions
If the method above doesn't work, please check your Facebook account's permissions. To access insights, make sure the permissions are at least on the analyst/admin level.

Metric and Ad Recall Data Don't Match

The Reach and Recall metrics cannot be summed to get the totals for longer time periods. As these metrics measure the daily unique users who view your ad (= reach) or will remember the ad (=ad recall), it is not possible to get data for a specific time period and/or aggregate the data.

To avoid this, you can

1. Get daily breakdowns: The daily values will match, but not when summed up over a longer time period.
2. Extract data weekly or monthly: These weekly/monthly values will match.

Simply create a new source and a new flow with the particular breakdown (for example, a source and a flow with daily breakdowns/synchronizations).

Show Image Asset URL as an Image

To have Image Asset URLs show as images in your destination, configure Advanced Settings during data source creation:

1. For the Breakdown, select Image Asset.
   • This breakdown adds the following fields to your table: Image Asset ID, Image Asset Hash, Image Asset Name, and Image Asset URL.
2. In your destination (e.g. Looker Studio), change the URL type of the Image Asset URL field to image .

Related Articles

Now that you have successfully created a data source, see how you can connect your data to a dashboarding app or a data storage.

Sending Data to Dashboarding Apps

• Simple Data Integration to Dashboards
• Data Backfilling to Dashboarding Apps

Sending Data to Data Storages

• Batch Ingestion to Data Warehouses
• Data Backfilling to Storages

Other Resources

• Troubleshooting
• Extraction Logs
• Data Duplication