This article covers the limitations, considerations, and workarounds for working with Facebook Ads data in Power My Analytics. For instructions on connecting your Facebook Ads account and creating reports, see the Facebook Ads Data Connector User Guide.

General Limitations and Considerations

• Backfilling: An initial backfill of 24 months of data will be performed when you first connect your Facebook Ads account as a data source.
• Data Span: Lifetime metrics cover 37 months of data.
• Live Metrics: Reach and metrics starting with "unique" are live metrics and cannot be used in daily sums.
• Cached Data Requests with Unique Metrics and Date Dimension: When a unique metric is paired with the date dimension, this will result in a request for cached data instead of a request for live data. For this reason, only cached data will appear in a report or chart that pairs a unique field with the date dimension. For more information, see Cached Data Requests in Facebook Ads with Unique Metrics and Date Dimension.
• Campaign Daily Budget: Only current values for Campaign Daily Budget are available; historical data is not available for this field.
• User Segment Key (Audience Segment Breakdown): The User Segment Key field is supported for Advantage+ Shopping and Advantage+ Sales campaigns. For other campaign types, this field will return "unknown." These segment values depend on Meta's internal audience classification and may not appear if insufficient data is available, and the availability and behavior of this breakdown may vary by account, campaign setup, and reporting level.
• Advantage+ Campaign Types: As of May 19, 2026, Meta no longer allows creating, duplicating, or updating legacy Advantage+ shopping campaigns and Advantage+ app campaigns through its Marketing API. This change affects campaign management tools only; it does not affect Power My Analytics. PMA collects and reports your Facebook Ads data and does not create or modify campaigns, so reporting for your existing and new Advantage+ campaigns continues as normal.
• New Account Delay: Wait 24 hours after adding a new account in Facebook before using it in PMA reports.
• Time Zone: All data is reported in time zone UTC-8:00 (UTC-7:00 during Daylight Saving Time).
• API and Authentication: Facebook and Instagram use the same underlying API. PMA's Facebook Ads, Facebook Insights, and Instagram Insights data connectors use the same authentication process.

Geographic (DMA) Breakdown: Meta's Move to Comscore Markets

As of June 2026, Meta retired the Nielsen DMA (Designated Market Area) geographic breakdown and replaced it with Comscore Markets. Power My Analytics handles this automatically: the connector requests the new breakdown from Meta and continues to deliver it under the same DMA field, so your field names, warehouse columns, and dashboards are unchanged and no action is needed. Because the underlying numeric market codes differ between the two systems, reporting that relies on the numeric market code (rather than the market name) may see different code values. For details, see Facebook Ads: DMA Breakdown Now Uses Meta's Comscore Markets.

Removed Configuration Options

The following configuration options have been removed from the Facebook Ads connector due to changes in Meta's API:

• action_attribution_windows: This configuration option is no longer available. Attribution is now managed at the ad set level within Facebook Ads Manager.

Historical Data Limitations for Specific Fields

Due to changes in Meta's Facebook Ads API, the following fields have limitations on how far back historical data can be retrieved via API requests:

These limitations apply to new API calls only. If the data has already been cached in Power My Analytics' database through previous data syncs, PMA can provide historical data beyond these limitations.

Reach Reporting Limitations

As of June 10, 2025, reports that combine the Reach metric with breakdowns will have this report data limited to the last 13 months (394 days). This is due to a change in Meta's API. Reach data will only be available for the most recent 13 months when used with the following breakdowns:

• Action Target ID
• Action types/Action type with custom labels
• Age
• Applink Treatment
• Carousel Card ID
• Carousel Card Name
• Conversion Device
• Country
• Device Platform
• DMA
• DMA Code
• Gender
• Hour of Day - Advertiser Time Zone
• Hour of Day - Audience Time Zone
• Impression Device
• Place Page ID
• Placement
• Platform Position
• Publisher Platform
• Region
• Template URL

For more information, please see Meta's 2025 API Changelog.

Unavailable Data

The following data is not available through Meta's Facebook Ads API and cannot be reported through Power My Analytics:

• Purchase breakouts by device and publisher platform
• Offsite metrics
• Conversions by country
• Breakdowns by Objective

Report Custom Events

The Facebook Ads connector automatically includes any custom events you've configured in Facebook Ads. In Data Studio, if your custom events have not appeared as available fields in your report, reconnect the Facebook Ads data source from within Data Studio. The custom events fields should appear after reconnecting.

Replicating Custom Metrics

Custom metrics can be replicated with formulas in your report:

Create Breakdowns by Objective

Breakdowns by objective are available in Facebook Ads Manager but not in the API. You can use the following workaround:

1. Create a filter on your table.
2. Choose Include > Campaign ID (ad sets, campaign insights, campaigns, insights) > RegExp Match.

Report Result Rate

The Result Rate field is unavailable through Meta's Facebook API, so Power My Analytics cannot report total result rate for all KPIs. However, to report result rates for individual KPIs, please see our instructions at How to Report Result Rate in Facebook Ads.

Working with Ad Image Fields

Power My Analytics offers multiple image-related fields for Facebook Ads. Understanding their differences will help you choose the right field for your reports.

The Ad Creative Image field is recommended for most use cases. This field automatically displays the highest-quality image available:

• Uses the high-resolution Ad Image URL when available
• Falls back to the Thumbnail URL when Ad Image URL is not available
• Ensures your reports display an image for each ad (for Advantage+ Catalog dynamic ads, this will be a generic placeholder image; see Carousel Images for Advantage+ Catalog Ads below)
• For boosted Facebook Page posts, may repeat the same image (your Page's profile picture) across different ads; see Repeated Images for Boosted Page Posts below

To access this field, you may need to reconnect your Facebook Ads data source in Data Studio.

Individual Image Fields

Carousel Images for Advantage+ Catalog Ads (Dynamic Product Ads)

If every carousel ad in your report shows the same generic image, your ads are most likely Advantage+ Catalog Ads. This is expected behavior caused by a limitation in Meta’s API.

Carousel ads created as Advantage+ Catalog Ads (also known as Dynamic Product Ads) do not return their carousel card images through Meta’s Marketing API. Meta builds these ads from your product catalog at the moment each ad is shown, selecting different products for different viewers. Because the images are chosen at display time, they are never stored as part of the ad creative, and the API provides only a generic placeholder thumbnail.

As a result, image fields such as Ad Creative Image, Ad Image URL, and Thumbnail URL will display the same placeholder image for these ads. This is a limitation of Meta’s API rather than a Power My Analytics issue, and it affects all marketing data connectors. Reconnecting your Facebook Ads data source will not change this behavior. Standard image ads and static carousel ads are not affected; their image fields work normally.

Because Meta chooses which products to show each viewer at the moment of impression, there is no way to match specific product images to specific ad creatives or performance metrics through the API. However, you can still get useful insight into these ads:

• Use the Product ID dimension to report performance by individual product.
• Reference product images directly from your own product catalog feed, which is the original source of the images in these ads.
• Use the Is Dynamic Creative field to help identify dynamic ads in your reports.

If you have questions about reporting on Advantage+ Catalog Ads, please submit a ticket and our support team will be happy to help.

Repeated Images for Boosted Page Posts

If the same image (often your Page's profile picture) repeats across different boosted-post ads, this is expected behavior caused by a limitation in Meta's API. You can recover the correct per-ad images by blending in Facebook Insights data.

1. In your Hub, make sure the relevant Page is selected as an active account in the Facebook Insights connector.
2. In your Data Studio report, blend your Facebook Ads data source with the Facebook Insights Posts data source (left outer join, with Facebook Ads on the left).
3. Set the join key to Effective Object Story ID (Facebook Ads) = Post ID (Facebook Insights). Both use the same {pageID}_{postID} format.
4. Use Full Picture (from Facebook Insights) as your image field.

Video Ad Thumbnail Fields

For video advertisements, the following thumbnail-related fields are available:

• Video Asset Thumbnail URL — Direct URL to the video thumbnail (Dynamic Creative breakdown)
• Video Asset Thumbnail Hash — Internal identifier for the thumbnail image

Limitations:

• Video thumbnail fields are part of the Dynamic Creative asset breakdowns and can only be used with the metrics Impressions, Clicks (All), Amount Spent, and Reach
• An image will only be returned for ads that include image or video creatives; non-visual ad types will not return images
• Meta's API does not provide a dedicated field to identify specific ad formats (Reels, Standard, Videos, etc.)

Troubleshooting

Follow the instructions in Troubleshooting Facebook Ads for information on issues that may affect the Facebook Ads connector.