Meta Ads

Connect your Meta ad accounts to analyze Facebook and Instagram ad spend, delivery, and conversions with natural language. Better Analyst reads the Meta Insights API for the ad accounts you select and saves each report as a dataset you can chart, combine with other sources, or turn into a dashboard.

Prerequisites

• A Facebook account with access to at least one Meta ad account
• If the ad account belongs to a business portfolio, permission to share that business's ad accounts

Setup

1. Open Connectors and choose Meta Ads.
2. Click Continue with Facebook, choose the businesses and ad accounts to share, and confirm the permissions.
3. Select the ad accounts you want to analyze and click Save.
4. Attach a Meta Ads account to a chat and ask a question.

Permission and data use

Better Analyst signs in through Facebook Login for Business and requests these Meta permissions:

• ads_read to read Insights reports (spend, delivery, clicks, conversions, and related metrics) for the ad accounts you select.
• business_management to list the ad accounts in the businesses you choose to share during sign-in.

The connector stores an encrypted long-lived Meta access token (valid for about 60 days), the ad accounts you select with their names, currency, and time zone, query records, and the report outputs created in your chats. This information is used only to answer your questions and build the charts and dashboards you ask for. Relevant report data may be processed by Better Analyst's hosting, storage, sandbox, and AI service providers as described in the Privacy Policy; it is not sold or used for advertising.

Disconnecting Meta Ads removes Better Analyst's stored Meta sign-in and its ad account connectors, which stops new API access. Existing chats, query records, and generated reports remain subject to your normal retention settings. You can also remove Better Analyst from Business Integrations in your Facebook settings.

What you can ask about

• Spend, impressions, reach, frequency, clicks, CTR, CPC, and CPM
• Conversions (purchases, leads, and other actions), conversion value, and ROAS
• Account, campaign, ad set, and ad level reports, as totals or as daily, weekly (7-day buckets), or monthly series
• Breakdowns by age, gender, country, region, DMA, device, placement (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network), and hour of day

Example questions:

• "How much did we spend on Meta ads last month, by campaign?"
• "Show daily spend and purchases for the last 30 days."
• "Which ad sets have the best ROAS this quarter?"
• "Break down last month's performance by age and gender."
• "Compare Facebook and Instagram placements for the last 90 days."

Spend and revenue are reported in the ad account's currency, and dates use the ad account's time zone. Meta's default attribution settings apply.

Use in dashboards, Data Flows, and alerts

• Dashboards. Build a dashboard from a Meta Ads report in chat. It refreshes on its schedule or when you select Refresh. Presets such as "last 30 days" and rolling date ranges move forward in the ad account time zone; a fixed calendar range stays fixed.
• Data Flows. A Meta Ads report can be the source of a Data Flow that delivers to Google Sheets or a database on a schedule, alone or combined with other sources. Each run fetches up to 50,000 rows per report.
• Alerts. Ask for a daily breakdown ("spend by day for the last 90 days"), then select Create alert to watch it. See Create an Alert.

Report columns stay the same on every refresh and run. An action type with no activity in a run comes back empty rather than disappearing. If the Facebook sign-in expires, scheduled refreshes and flows pause with a reconnect notice until you continue with Facebook again.

Limits

• One report returns up to 50,000 rows. Larger results are marked partial; ask for a shorter range, a higher level, or fewer breakdowns.
• A report can use at most two breakdowns, and each one multiplies the number of rows.
• Region, DMA, and hourly breakdowns cannot be combined with conversion metrics such as purchases, conversion value, or ROAS. Ask for those breakdowns without conversions, or drop the breakdown.
• Hourly breakdowns and unique-count metrics cover the last 13 months.

Troubleshooting

The account I want is missing

Make sure your Facebook user has access to the ad account, and that you shared its business when you connected. Connect again with Add account to change what you shared.

The connection expired

Meta sign-ins last about 60 days and renew while you use the connector. If it expired or you changed your Facebook password, open the connector and sign in again with the same Facebook account.

Meta is rate limiting requests

Meta limits how often an ad account's reports can be read. Wait a few minutes and ask again.

A breakdown or field was rejected

Meta rejects some combinations, such as a region breakdown with ROAS. Ask for fewer breakdowns, remove the conversion metrics, or split the question into two reports.

No data

Check that the date range includes days with ad delivery, and remove filters or breakdowns to confirm data exists.

Removing access

Remove the Facebook account on the Meta Ads connector page to delete the stored sign-in and its connectors. You can also remove Better Analyst under Settings → Business integrations in Facebook. See Data Deletion Instructions for every way to delete Meta data from Better Analyst.

Next steps

• Connect Google Ads
• Connect Google Analytics
• Learn about asking questions
• Build dashboards
• Meta Ads reporting examples