How to link Facebook Ads to Google Data Studio
By pulling your Facebook Ads data into Google Looker Studio, you can create dashboards which show how well your ads are performing and how this impacts your website and your business. But how do you do it? Let’s find out…
Google Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio) is a powerful tool which enables you to pull in data from various sources and display them in any format you want – be it in tables or various types of graph – and really drill down into your data.
Facebook Ads’ own analytics platform is renowned for being confusing – while it does offer a lot of data, it’s nearly impossible to know whether to look in Ad Centre, Ads Manager, Meta Business Suite, or on your page itself?!
Finding Facebook Ads data can be a nightmare
By pulling Facebook Ads data into Google Looker Studio, you can see all of your insights in a much more user-friendly format, and create dashboards which show exactly the data that you need.
You can also combine your Facebook Ads data with other sources such as Google Analytics, MailChimp or eCommerce data such as Shopify, and start to see how your Facebook Ads are helping to grow your business.
Choosing a 3rd party connector
Adding Facebook Ads as a data source in Google Looker Studio requires a 3rd party connector.
Supermetrics and Power My Analytics are two of the biggest companies making Google Looker Studio connectors, and between them enable you to pull in data from 100+ data sources.
We have a review comparing the two here. While both have their own advantages and disadvantages, Supermetrics is by far the easiest if you want to get instant access to your Facebook Ads data within Google Looker Studio without using a “data warehouse”.
Supermetrics connects directly to the Facebook Ads API and can be set up in a matter of minutes.
Supermetrics has a 14 day free trial, so you can see if it’s the right solution for your business. After that it’s just $39 USD a month for the Individual plan, which includes 1 data source (Facebook Ads being a data source), 1 user and 5 accounts per data source. If you need more data sources, you’ll need a more expensive plan.
How to Connect Facebook Ads to Google Looker Studio with a Connector
1) Sign up to Supermetrics
First, sign up to Supermetrics here. They’ve got a 14-day trial which gets you access to all of their connectors, so you can try it out and see if it’s worth the investment.
Use code ‘rusticated’ at checkout for 20% off.
2) Log into Google Looker Studio and connect your data
Once you’re all signed up, sign into your Google Looker Studio account and start a blank report.
On the ‘Add data to report’ screen, ensure you’re on the ‘Connect to data’ tab.
Then, search for ‘Facebook Ads,’ and from the ‘Partner Connectors’ list choose the ‘Facebook Ads by Supermetrics’ option with the red logo.
3) Connect Looker Studio to Supermetrics
Click ‘Facebook Ads by Supermetrics’ and you’ll get to an Authorisation screen, and a title reading “Looker Studio requires authorisation to use this community connector.”
Click the blue ‘AUTHORISE’ button and follow the instructions, which grant Supermetrics permission to fetch the data.
You will get you a popup asking you to grant Supermetrics permission to use your Google account.
Once done, a second Authorisation box should appear to the right of the first one, this time reading “Facebook Ads requires authorization to connect to data.”
Click ‘AUTHORISE’ again. This time you’ll be prompted to sign into your Supermetrics account.
At this stage, you’re granting Supermetrics permission to access your Facebook account – make sure to log in with a Facebook account that has permissions to manage ads for the relevant page.
If it doesn’t seem like anything’s happened, and you still see the second blue ‘AUTHORISE’ button, you may need to click it a second time. The majority of times I’ve tried adding a Supermetrics connector, I need to repeat this step a second time for it to all link up.
4) Select your Facebook Ad Account
Select your Facebook Ads account from the dropdown, choose your conversion window and reporting timezone then click the blue ‘Add’ button.
If you don’t see any Facebook Ad accounts under ‘Select accounts’ then click the blue link just above. It reads something like “To add/manage more Facebook Ads user accounts, visit…”
Your Facebook Ads account should now be a data feed within your new Looker Studio report, and you’re free to pull in all the dimensions and metrics needed to visualise your data.
For 20% off Supermetrics, use code rusticated upon signup.
We have more guides on using Supermetrics to pull data into Google Looker Studio here.