Facebook Insights Data Connector User Guide

Facebook Insights Data Connector User Guide

Info
Facebook Insights provides valuable data about your Facebook Page's performance, audience, and content engagement. This guide will help you set up and use Facebook Insights as a data source in Power My Analytics.



Prerequisites

Before connecting Facebook Insights to Power My Analytics, ensure you have:
  1. A Facebook account with the following permissions:
    1. For classic page management: Administrator access
    2. For Business Manager: Page Editor access
    3. For New Page Experience: Partial access with Content, Community activity, Messages, Ads, and Insights permissions

The Power My Analytics app in Facebook's Business Integrations must have these permissions:
  1. Access your Page and App insights
  2. Read content posted on the Page
  3. Read user content on your Page
  4. Show a list of the Pages you manage

Adding Facebook Insights as a Data Source

  1. To add the correct Facebook account, you must be logged in to that account in your browser. Open an Incognito window in your browser to log into the correct Facebook account before connecting with Power My Analytics.
  2. Log in to your Power My Analytics account and navigate to the Sources page.
  3. Click the + New Data Source button and select Facebook & Instagram from the gallery.
  4. Grant Facebook business access by selecting "Opt in to all current and future Businesses" and click Continue.
  5. Grant Facebook page access by choosing "Opt in to all current and future Pages" and click Continue.
  6. Grant Instagram account access by selecting "Opt in to all current and future Instagram accounts" and click Continue.
  7. Finalize permissions by clicking Save, then click Got it.

Creating a Looker Studio Report

Follow these steps to create a Looker Studio report using your Facebook Insights data:
  1. After adding Facebook Insights as a data source, go to Reports > Looker Studio in your Power My Analytics hub
  2. Click on Facebook Insights under Create Looker Studio Report to open the official Looker Studio application
  3. Google Looker Studio Configuration:
    1. Step 1:
      1. Name your data source (e.g., "Facebook Insights - [Your Organization]")
      2. Select your Power My Analytics hub from the dropdown
      3. Optional: Keep "Use report template for new reports" checked to use the PMA demo template
      4. Click Next
    2. Step 2:
      1. User Account: Choose your Facebook Insights account or "Sample Account" for sample data
      2. Click Next
    3. Step 3:
      1. Choose “Page” for reports
      2. Optional: Allow “Page” modification in reports
      3. Click Connect in the top right to complete the configuration
    4. Step 4:
      1. Click Create Report in the top right
      2. Include "today" in your report's date range to begin historical data storage
For a quick start, you can use our pre-built Facebook Insights demo template.

Key Reports and Fields

Popular metrics for Facebook Insights include:
  • Page Metrics: Total Page Followers (lifetime), New Followers, Page Likes
  • Post Metrics: Views (Facebook views), Content Interactions
  • Interaction Metrics: Reactions, Comments Total, Shares, Post Link Clicks, Likes, Engagement
  • Audience Metrics: Age and Gender
  • Review Metrics: Review Rating by Review Creation Date, Reviewer Name, Review Text, Recommendation Type
  • Location Metrics: Total People Who Viewed by City, Total People Who Viewed by Country
  • Reels Metrics: Total Plays, Replays
For a complete list of available Facebook Insights fields, refer to the Schema Explorer.
Notes
On June 15, 2026, Meta is deprecating a large group of legacy reach, impression, and video view metrics in the Facebook Insights API, including Reach, Post Reach, and most video impression and unique video view fields. These fields will no longer receive new data after that date; data already collected remains available in your reports. See Facebook Insights Deprecated Legacy Reach and Video View Metrics (June 15, 2026) for the complete list of affected fields and recommended alternatives.

Limitations and Important Considerations

  • Backfilling: Up to 1 year
    • Metrics that cannot be backfilled: Age, Gender, and Location are lifetime metrics and cannot be backfilled.
  • Time Zone: All data is reported in time zone UTC-8:00 (UTC-7:00 during Daylight Saving Time).
  • Unique Metrics: Unique metrics are fields that count individual users. Unique metrics can only be summed in the following periods: 1 day, 7 days, 28 days
  • 48-Hour Delay in Pages: Allow 48 hours after connecting Facebook Insights as a data source for all pages to appear.
  • Over 100 Pages: If your account has more than 100 pages, Facebook will not return a complete list of pages.
  • Post Limits: Data is only available for the most recent 100 posts in this year.
  • Demographic Metrics: Age, gender, and location are only available when there is data for 100 or more users.
  • Demographic Reporting Limitations: Demographics data is only available as lifetime and does not include the most recent 3 days. Reports including the most recent 3 days will display “No data”.
  • Video Posts: Video data is only available for the past year.
  • Tagged Posts: Pages that tagged you will only be reported if Facebook considers the Page to be authentic.
  • Privacy: Pages may conceal post data from accounts that do not have permission to see them. User information may also be concealed.
  • New Account Delay: After adding a new account in Facebook, it is necessary to wait 24 hours before using this account in your PMA reports.
  • API and Authentication: Facebook and Instagram use the same underlying API. PMA's Facebook Ads, Facebook Insights, Instagram Ads, and Instagram Insights data connectors use the same authentication process.
  • Pages Lifetime Data Delay: Data from fields in the Pages Lifetime table is delayed by 48 hours. You can view affected metrics by searching for the Pages Lifetime table under Facebook Insights in our Schema Explorer.

Unavailable Data

  • Messages
  • Actions on Page
  • Facebook's API provides limited data on Stories. Instead, use the metric Video Stories by Action Type Distribution with the dimension Video Stories by Action Type.
  • Orders
  • Page likes by age and gender
  • Realtime data
  • Custom fields

Show Multiple Pages in One Report

To include multiple pages in the same report:
  1. On the connector configuration page, select Allow "page" to be modified in reports.



  2. Select all of the pages you would like to show and compare in your report. All of the pages managed by your Facebook account should be available.



  3. Select any chart and use the Parameters drop-down menu to select the page you wish to report on. 



  4. Create multiple tables to compare page performance.

Show Daily New Followers

Use our Google Sheets extension to calculate new followers and see this metric that is not included in Facebook's API.

Troubleshooting

See our article Troubleshooting Facebook for information on issues that may affect Facebook connectors.

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