Build your first Facebook Ads report on Google Data Studio

Reporting is essential when it come down to analyse your metrics.

You have to build a report to dig in your data and get the most of it for your business.

Google Data Studio let you build custom automated report, with powerful filter and sorting method to help you understand your ads campaign on Facebook.

How to create my first report for Facebook Ads ?

At first, this can be a bit confusing so here is the step to follow to build your first reports :

1. Create a data sources and create a report.
2. Add your first card and table.
3. Working with a date range selector.
4. Using control fields to explore your data.
5. Add filter to focus on the right things.
6. How to share your report.

Let's begin !

1. Create a data sources and create a report.

First thing, you need to create a data source. It will be the link between your Facebook Ads account and your Google Data Studio report.

Create a data source

From the Google Data Studio homepage, click on "Create" then "Data Sources" :

You are now on the connectors list. The fist part are the Google connector, those are free to use. The second part (scroll down a little) are the official partners connectors.

Type "Catchr" in the search box or follow this link. Here are all the connector available for Facebook Ads.

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Select the Facebook Ads connector to create your data sources from your Facebook Ads account.

There is a 2 authorization steps to pass through :

• The first one will authorize the connector provider to access the data to bring it to Google Data Studio.
• The second one will authorize Google Data Studio to access the data in order to use it in a report.

You only need the access to the Facebook Ads account to pass through those steps.

You do not need to use the same Gmail account as the one you log in Facebook Ads, but I strongly advise to centralize your email and always use the same on Google Data Studio. Otherwise, all your reports will be dispatch in different account, it's a real pain to search for.

Once it is done, you are now on the select ads account page :

Select your network (it should be facebook-ads, if you didn't rename it on our app). Click on next.

Select the account you wants to use as data sources. You can select multiple account and you will have agglomerate data of all the account.

For our new connector, there is no Select your network step.

You can now choose the setting of the data sources.

I advise you to select the ones on the right column. It will allow you to modify the parameters for each component of your report. And you might don't even need it, so only allow the settings to be modified in the report.

Uncheck the Use report template for new reports if you don't want to use the template and start from a blank canvas. This is what I will do for this tutorial.

Click on Connect on the top right of the page to create your data sources.

Congratulations ! You just created your Facebook Ads data sources. You are now on the available field list for the data sources. You can check on it now, this is a useful page where you can define the name, type and default aggregation method for all field. Once you change it here, it will update all the report containing this data sources.

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Tips : Rename your data sources on the top left of the page. It should be wrote Facebook Ads, this is an editable field. Give it a name you will reconize :

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Create a report

Click on Create Report on the top right of the page to create a report with this data source associated. You should land on a blank canvas, if you uncheck the template box on the previous step. If you didn't, you can still do it by clicking on Edit connexion on the top left of the page.

So here is the report interface for Google Data Studio :

You can divide it by 3 big parts :

1. The canvas, you will add element here. You can drag and drop almost everything in this.
2. The configuration panel. Either data or style, this is where you will find the settings for every components you selected on the canvas.
3. The menu/component. This where you will find different charts, control panel, access configuration for data sources, pages...

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2. Add your first card and table.

You can now add your first component on the canvas, click on Add a chart in the top of the page, select a Scorecard and place it on the canvas :

As long as it is selected, you have the configuration panel of this score card on the right of your window.You can see that it wait for a metrics, by default it should be the Account Id. You can change it thanks to the Metric parts on the configuration panel :

Scorecard are made to display metrics. If you try to put a dimension in, it will only show a number.

Table works the same way, except, you can breakdown by dimensions :

That is the way to display table with your campaign, adset... with multiple metrics.

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3. Working with a date range selector.

You can add a date range selector on your report. This is essential if you want to display data from a custom period of time.

Find the Add a control menu and select Date range control, then place it on the canvas :

Every component depends on the date range selector if it's configure to, like this :

If not, the date of the data display is fixed by the date range selector in the settings.

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4. Using control fields to explore your data.

Control fields let the viewer use filter in the reports to explore the data. It can be very usefull to only display data from a specific campaign or group of campaign. You'll find them in the same menu as the date range selector.

2 control fields are really usefull for this :

• The dropdown list (select entitie(s) to filter by clicking on a list)

• the advanced filter (use keyword to filter metrics)

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The filter will apply on every component that share the same data sources as its data source. Meaning you can use multiple control field on one page with multiple data sources.

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5. Add filter to focus on the right things.

You can add non -dynamic filter, applied on report, pages or component. This will allow you to fix data visualistation and create a focus view. It's can come in handy when you want to have filtered view on a page, for example, when you wants to debrief a marketing funnel, you can create one filter by level on the funnel.

On the menu Resource, click on Manage Filters to see all the filters and create new ones.

When creating a new one, you will have to choose either if you wants to include or exclude data based on a condition like this :

This filter will include data only if it from a campaign containing the word TOFU.

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Once the filter is created, you can associate it at 3 differents levels :

• At the report level :

Click on File, then Report settings. On the right panel find the Add filter section, and select one.

• At Page level :

Click on Page, then Current Page Settings. On the right panel find the Add filter section, and select one.

• On a component :

Select a component, then scroll down the configuration panel and find the Add filter section, and select one :

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6. Share your report !

There is 5 ways of sharing your report thanks to the blue button at the top right of the page :

• Invite people to view or edit your report.
• Schedule an email delivery with a generated pdf.
• Get a report link.
• Embed the report
• Download a pdf of the report.

Invite people to view or edit your report :

You can manage edition and view mode for every user.

Thanks to the sharing settings, you can allow either each person to edit or view, or everyone in a predefined group (your domain name, everyone with the link or everyone).

If you create a report with sensitive data, this is the best way to ensure who can visualise your report and who can edit it. You will choose who as which right through their gmail account.

Schedule an email delivery :

Thanks to the arrow down on the right of the blue button, you can schedule your report to be send as a pdf at the email address of your choice.

It can be a one time sends or a planned delivery at a the moment you schedule (every day, week, month...) :

This method let you pass through the access right as anyone can see the pdf if they get it.

Get a report link :

Click on Get a report to obtain a sharable link of your report (shorter than the usual url). You will still need to manage access for the person to see the report thanks to the options to invit people to view and edit.

Embed report :

You can get a link to an ifram with your report. It will allow you to display it in view mode on a web pages.

Download a pdf of the report :

At any time, you can download a pdf of your report. The full report or only the selected pages.

You now know the basics to create a custom report, explore data using filters and control fields and share your report with someone.

If you need advice for a custom needs, feel free to ask on our chat and we will gladly help you =)

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