To connect Facebook Ads to Google Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio), go to Create report (or to the Looker Studio community connectors gallery), choose the Facebook Ads integration by Porter Metrics, connect your Google account, connect your Facebook profile, choose your ad accounts, see the list of fields available, and generate a default report template to monitor your campaigns performance and automate your marketing reports.
By the end of the tutorial, you’ll know:
- 3 free and paid ways to connect Facebook Ads to Looker Studio
- Customize your Facebook Ads reports
- Available Facebook Ads metrics and dimensions
- Customize Facebook Ads metrics and dimensions
- Free Facebook Ads Report templates for Google Looker Studio
We made a step-by-step Youtube video so you can see how the different alternatives work:
Free and paid ways to connect Facebook Ads to Looker Studio
You can connect Facebook Ads to Looker Studio through a connector (suggested for this tutorial), or importing data first to a Google Sheet automatically or manually.
As an additional resource, learn to connect any data to Looker Studio, or, if you present any problems during the setup, go to our troubleshooting guide.
Facebook Ads connector for Looker Studio
The advantage of using a direct connector is that you can create charts by freely combining metrics and dimensions, without managing queries or Sheets in between, making it faster and easier to build reports.
In a nutshell, follow these steps when using a Facebook Ads connector for Looker Studio.
Go to the Porter Metrics onboarding or the Google Looker Studio connectors gallery and choose the Facebook Ads connector (by Porter).
Connect the same Google account you’re using on Google Looker Studio.
Click on Authorize to connect Porter and Facebook.
Connect the Facebook profile with access to your ad accounts. It doesn’t need to be the same one as the one from Google.
Optionally, connect other Facebook profiles to connect Facebook Ads accounts your profile doesn’t have permissions for.
Close the authentication popup and go back to Looker Studio.
Define the ad account(s) to add to the report, a conversion window, and conversion time, and click on Connect.
See the fields and go to Create report.
Download our free Facebook Ads report template for Looker Studio, and start a 14-day free trial:
Importing Facebook Ads data on Google Sheets
The advantage of using Google Sheets as integration is instant load time when querying small amounts of data, and guaranteed stability, as you’re using Google’s native integrations.
With Sheets, also, you can edit your data. For instance, you could set goals, agency markups or commissions.
As a downside, connecting to Google Sheets first hinders the use of templates and removes data granularity (i.e. freely combining metrics and dimensions when creating charts).
Use the Porter Metrics Google Sheets add-on to automatically import your Facebook Ads data on a Google Sheet to later connect that Google Sheet to a Looker Studio report.
Uploading a CSV file
As a free option, manually download your Facebook Ads data as a CSV file and import it on a Google Sheet, but:
- Data won’t refresh and update automatically
- Up to100 uploads
- Max 100MB per CSV
- All CSV files structure must be identical
Customize your Facebook Ads reports
To continue with the report setup, you can add a new page on the report template just downloaded, or create a new report from scratch, and go to the Edit view.
If you opt to create a new report, here’s how to connect again your data on Looker Studio.
Adding charts
Add scorecards, time series, tables, pie charts, and more chart types to visualize your data.
Scorecards
Scorecards are the most simple way to display your data, by only showing a metric.
Go to Insert, choose a scorecard, and paste it in the canvas.
We’ll use Amount spent as the metric, that corresponds to ad spend on Facebook Ads.
Create 2 more scorecards by repeating the process or copy-pasting the original scorecard.
Optionally, use Clicks and impressions, or +600 fields, including custom and standard conversions.
Time series
Time series charts are useful to visualize trends over time.
Go to Insert – Time series.
Use date as date dimension. Use Amount spent as the metric.
Optionally, use other date dimensions like month, week, day of week.
Tables
Tables are the most flexible and complete way to visualize data, letting you add as many metrics and dimensions as you want.
Go to Insert – Table.
Use Campaign name and Ad image as dimension; Use Amount spent, Clicks, and Impressions as the metrics.
Bar charts, pie charts, and maps
Both bar charts and pie charts let you visualize your data by breakdowns. Bar charts are better for cardinal and ordinal data; pie charts are better for nominal data.
Go to Insert – Pie chart.
- For the bar chart, use Device Platform as the dimension.
- For the pie chart, use Publisher Platform as the dimension.
- For the map, use Region as the geo dimension.
As metrics use Clicks, Impressions, or any of your preferences but conversions. The Facebook Ads API doesn’t break down conversion data by audience dimensions.
Comparisons
Add goals, reference lines, or conditional formats to compare your data and add context.
Comparison date range
Select the scorecards and set Previous Period as the comparison date range.
Reference lines
Select the time series Go to Style – Add a Reference line, choose Metric as type, and Average, as aggregation.
Conditional formatting
Select the time series Go to Style – Conditional formatting, choose Color scale and any metric.
Adding controls
Use dropdowns, search bars, data range controls, or parameters to make your reports interactive by applying filters. Learn more about controls.
Date range controls
Go to Add a control – Dropdown. Choose Campaign name as the dimension.
Dropdowns
Go to Add a control – Dropdown. Choose Campaign name as the dimension.
Design
To influence your team or clients, design and white-label your marketing dashboards. Also, follow our recommendations on designing marketing reports.
Shapes
Use rectangles or circles to draw sections or headers. Right-click the rectangle – Order – Send to back.
Text
Use text to add headers, chart titles, or complementary analysis or comments to your charts.
Go to Text on the Looker Studio menu and paste it in the header of the report. Customize the font family and size.
Colors
Customize the colors of every single chart.
Select the scorecard and go to Style. Change the value size, colors, backgrounds, and borders.
Optionally, select and copy a chart, and copy-paste its style in another chart with right-click – paste special – Paste style only.
Logo
Change the current logo or add your own by choosing Image and uploading a PNG file.
Theme and layout
Change your report’s canvas size, navigation menu, background colors, and default charts’ style.
To customize the theme, go to Theme and Layout – Theme. Choose one of the default templates or customize it.
To customize the layout, go to Theme and Layout – Layout.
- View mode: set the header visibility to Initially hidden; set the navigation type to the left; and set the mode to fit to width and remove the margin to make your report mobile-friendly.
- Canvas size: we’d suggest 1024×768 for a slide view, or 900×1200 for a vertical view.
Navigation
You can create multiple pages for your report, divide them by sections, and add icons.
Go to Page – New page. On Page settings, you can do any customization at a page level, without impacting the whole report.
Share
Share your Google Looker Studio reports with an audience through permissions, links, embeds, PDF, or email schedules.
Permissions
Grant editor or viewer permissions to users with Google accounts within or outside your company.
Schedule delivery
To schedule an automatic report delivery, go to Share – Schedule delivery.
Set the subject, recipients, pages, filters, start date, and frequency to send your reports via email.
Download PDF
Download a PDF version of your reports and, optionally, exclude pages.
We encourage you to take our Google Looker Studio tutorial for marketers and learn to present your marketing reports.
Facebook Ads metrics and dimensions
As reference, see the Facebook Ads fields list and suggestions for choosing Facebook Ads KPIs.
The Facebook Ads connector for Google Looker Studio offers all the +600 metrics and dimensions available on the Ads Manager, including:
Facebook Ads metrics
Conversion metrics
- Custom and standard conversions (e.g. landing page views, adds to cart, contacts, etc.)
- Leads, Cost per Lead
- Purchases, CPA, ROAS, purchase value for e-commerce
Standard events break down also by aggregation type and event location.
By Aggregation:
- Total: the total number of times an event was hit (e.g. Purchases)
- Unique: the number of unique users that hit an event (e.g. Unique purchases; aka “purchasers)
- Value: the economic value assigned to every conversion (e.g. Purchase value)
- Cost: the division of ad spend by the conversion (e.g. Cost per Purchase)
By event location (aka where the event was logged):
- Total: the total number of conversions regardless where it happened (e.g. Leads)
- Offline: events logged in your POS or CRM, or non- traceable with the pixel (e.g. Offline leads)
- Website: events logged from your website (Website leads)
- On-Facebook: events logged on Facebook (e.g. Facebook leads)
- Mobile app: events logged on mobile apps (e.g. mobile app purchases)
The Facebook Ads API doesn’t bring the metric “Results”; instead choose any event set as the campaign objective.
Engagement metrics
Engagement metrics represent how users interact with your content.
- Clicks: all clicks, outbound clicks, Link clicks (Unique and total)
- Page and posts: engagement, likes, comments, reactions, saves, shares, views, responses, check-ins
- CTR and engagement rate: the relation of all clicks-related and engagement-related metrics with impressions and reach
- Video: Video plays; Video Average Play Time; Video Plays at 25%, 50%, 75%, 95%, 100%; 2-second and 3-second video plays
- Messages: New messaging connections, Messaging connection started from Messenger and WhatsApp
Visibility (or awareness) metrics
- Ad spend: amount spent, campaign budget, ad set budget
- Impressions, reach, and frequency
- CPM
- Estimated Ad Recall Lift (People) and Estimated Ad Recall Lift Rate
With these metrics, you could visualize your Facebook Ads funnel for e-commerce and lead generation.
Facebook Ads dimensions
To monitor your Facebook Ads performance, break down your data by dimensions.
The most common ways to break down your marketing data are by:
- Over time: for hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting
- Account: break down by client, if you’re an agency, or by product, if you’re a business.
- Channel: channels correspond to the acquisition sources or mediums (SEO, ads, Facebook, etc) you get traffic and conversion from.
- Campaign: campaigns refer to a set of activities to sell products by defining a specific objective, offer, target audience, and content.
- Objective: break down your marketing efforts by funnel stage or objective, such as awareness, engagement, and conversion.
- Audience: to know to whom you’re marketing, you may break down data by geographic, demographics, and tech dimensions, such as city, gender, age, device, platform.
- Content: to analyze by best-performing post, article, creative, etc.
For analyzing Facebook Ads data with breakdowns, some popular use cases are:
- Ad spend and pacing (Hourly, daily tracking)
- Campaign and ad set monitoring
- Best-performing creatives
- Peak hours with heatmaps
- Audience analysis (Gender, age, location, devices)
- Breakdown by platform: Facebook Ads vs Instagram Ads
Customize Facebook Ads metrics and dimensions
Often, you need to calculate your own metrics:
- You have a different way to calculate formulas
- Need to clean and filter data
- Need to combine from other data sources
To analyze Facebook Ads data and get accurate marketing KPIs, customize metrics on your Looker Studio reports.
Custom metrics with calculated fields
With Google Looker Studio, you can create custom formulas like done on Sheets. With Facebook Ads data, some popular use cases include calculating your own:
- Conversion rate
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
- ROAS
- Custom goals and budgets
- Total conversions and amount spent
Custom dimensions with REGEX
Regular Expressions (or REGEX) on Google Looker Studio let you create custom dimensions to tag or group your data in ways not available by default from the data sources.
Some popular use cases of REGEX for Facebook Ads are grouping by client, product, or business line.
Clean your data with filters
Set filters at chart, page, or report level.
Select the scorecards (or any chart), go to Setup – Add a filter.
Name your filter, set to Include, Publisher Platform that CONTAINS “instagram”.
With this filter, you’ll visualize your performance only from Instagram Ads.
Blend data for cross-channel reporting
To fully visualize your funnel or calculate general marketing KPIs accurately, you may need to blend data on Looker Studio from ads, social media, CRM, e-commerce, or GA4.
For Facebook Ads, some use cases of data blending include:
- Blending Facebook Ads + GA4 to track actual CPA and conversions
- Cross-channel reporting on Google Looker Studio
- Blending Facebook Ads + Google Ads to calculate total ad spend, clicks, and conversions
- Combining Shopify sales data with Facebook Ads spend to calculate CPA and ROAS
- Blending HubSpot and Facebook Ads data to calculate actual CPL
Free Facebook Ads report templates for Looker Studio
To download a Google Looker Studio report template, go to the report, click on the ellipsis icon in the top-right-corner, click on Make a copy, connect a new data source that matches the original data source, and Copy report.
