A Simple Way to Upload

Facebook Ads Manager Data

to Google Analytics

Erwanda Liao
·

Working as a digital marketing analyst a couple of years ago, I

remember vividly how it was ‘uncool’ to export different data
sources, then combine the dimensions and metrics through Excel to
see the performance of paid media. I had to go back and forth
between Facebook Ads Manager and Google Analytics. As we know,
Google Ads and Google Analytics are ‘best friends’ because we can
link them easily, but connection between Facebook and Google
Analytics is completely different.

Okay, enough with the prolog. I will show you how to export data
from Facebook Ads Manager and upload it to Google Analytics, so
we can see impression, click (link click), and cost of ads run through
Facebook Ads Manager on Google Analytics and tie them with
sessions, users, and goal completions. By doing it, you can make an
integrated dashboard to analyse the performance of each channel.

Caution: Having structured and same names of campaign,

ad set, and ad on Facebook Ads Manager and UTM is
required! If they are not the same on Google Analytics and
Facebook Ads Manager, you cannot tailor them together. You will
lose the number of sessions, users, and conversions you intend to tie
together as Google Analytics will create new records from data
uploaded, not overwrite the existing data. I will give you tips about
this at the end.

Google Analytics
1. Sign in, select the property.

2. Go to Admin, Property, and select property which you want to

upload the data.

Selecting the Property

3. On Property tab, select Data Import (at the bottom).

Selecting Data Import

4. Click CREATE button.

Click CREATE Button

Caution: If you see “Permission Denied,” you can open an incognito

window on your browser and repeat step 1 to 4.

5. Select Cost Data as Data Set type.

Selecting Cost Data as Data Set Type

6. Type the name of Data Set and select the views that make use of
the data in the Data Set.

Selecting Enabled Views and Naming the Data Set

7. Select Data Set schema. I should remind you that I use keyword as
ad set. I did that by filling in “utm_term” as the name of the ad
set. Eliminate keyword as the column if you don’t have the
same was as I do.

8. Click Done.

9. Back to Data Set list, and click Data Set you just created.

10. Click Get schema button.

Getting Schema

11. We need to download the template we can use to upload the data.

Downloading Schema Template

You can see below the format of data you need to follow.

The Format of Data Set

Facebook Ads Manager
1. Go to Facebook Ads Manager.

2. Select the match date, metrics, and data you would like to upload
to Data Set of Google Analytics. Based on format I selected before,
we will need to have campaign, ad set, ads with impression, link
click, cost (amount spent).

3. Export the view to csv.

Exporting the Suitable View and Metrics

Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, or Numbers

1. Open the template of Data Set we just downloaded and exported
data from Facebook Ads Manager. Here I use Microsoft Excel to
order the columns.

2. Copy the data from Facebook Ads Manager to the template.

ga:adContent is ad name, ga:campaign is campaign, ga:adClicks is
link click, ga:adCost is amount spent, and ga:campaign is campaign.
Make sure that you fill ga:medium and ga:source with the correct
format you use based on utm_medium and utm_source. ga:date
needs to follow “YYYYMMDD” format.

Data from Facebook Ads Manager

Copied Data on Data Set Template

3. Save the template format as csv. We will upload it to Data Set later
on.

Google Analytics
1. Go to Data Set we just created.

New Data Set Created

2. Click UPLOAD FILE button, click Choose file button, then select
the file to be uploaded.
Uploading Succeed

3. Click Upload button.

4. We will check whether the uploaded data display completely right

number and tailored to the correct dimensions on Google Analytics.
I will use a custom report.

5. Go to Custom Reports, select +New Custom Report. You can

follow what I did on the picture below. Adjust the filter to what you
think you can use to filter out unnecessary data and just see data
from Facebook. Here I filter it based on the name of ad set (or
keyword after I imported it to Google Analytics).
Custom Report Content

6. I added Ad Content as secondary dimension. Here is the result

and it is correctly mapped to what I expected. Remember to adjust
the period.

The Result on the Custom Report

I worked as a performance marketer before and I found this tips to

build UTM easier. While you create an ad on Facebook Ads
Manager, choose Build a URL Parameter.
Choosing Build a URL Parameter

Type campaign source with “facebook” or “instagram” and campaign

medium with “paid” or “cpc.” Here is the magic part, you can make
Facebook create parameters dynamically based on the name you
selected for your campaign, ad set, and ad. Type
“{{campaign.name}}” as your campaign name, “{{ad.name}}” as
your campaign content, and “{{adset.name}}” as custom parameter,
utm_term which will be recorded as keyword on Google Analytics. If
you are not comfortable with using keyword as ad set record, you
can create custom dimension on Google Analytics.
That is it! Hope you find it useful. You can contact me if you have
any questions.