Making the Facebook API work for you

If you’re running marketing on Facebook—both paid and organic—you probably rely on the native reports provided by the platforms to keep track of your performance. But let’s say you want to go even more granular with your data and/or combine Facebook Ads data with other data. How should you go about it? This is where the Facebook API comes in handy. 

Here’s where you’ll find all the data about your performance. In this article, I’ll explain what it is and how you can easily get the data you need for reporting and analysis.

Navigate this post:

• What’s the Facebook API?
• Common challenges with the Facebook API
• How to get data from the Facebook API
• Make the most of the Facebook API with Supermetrics

What is the Facebook API?

Facebook API (or Meta Graph API) refers to a group of solutions that move data out of the Facebook platform and into an external application. Examples of this moveable data include performance metrics, audience insights, and engagement rates. You know, the exact types of marketing analytics that determine entire strategies and budget allocations—no big deal. An API connection saves you from manually copying and pasting your data and lets you view your data quickly. But it comes with challenges.

Common struggles with the Facebook API

Complex learning curve 

Working directly with the Facebook API isn’t exactly a marketer-friendly task. To use it, you need an access token from a Facebook Developer account. You may manage to get some data like campaign insights, demographics, etc. But if you want to automate the entire process and have your data updated by the next morning, you’ll need support from your technical team.

Data integration challenges

Rarely do marketers focus on one channel at a time. They usually have ads running on at least two platforms, with Google and Facebook the most common. And while you could debate whether Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads is better for your product, you’ll probably land at the conclusion that you need both. 

One of (if not the) major perks of using an API is to port data into another platform that gives you a holistic view of performance across the channels you’re investing in, like Google Sheets. But with the Facebook API, this takes coding knowledge. 

Let’s continue with the example of Google Sheets to explain. Google Sheets does offer script-writing functionality, so it’s possible to hook up the Facebook API to Google Sheets. But doing so requires coding knowledge, specifically Javascript and OAuth, a common (but not simple) method used in API connections and is not unique to Facebook. This is why many users opt to use third-party software to connect first-party data to their platform of choice.

Build vs. buy: How to get data from the Facebook API 

You can use third-party tools like Supermetrics to pull data from an API without any coding knowledge. Supermetrics empowers marketing teams to pull data from their choice of sources and analyze them in the platform of their choice. Supermetrics translates data and authentication requests into a language that the API can understand.

The question of whether you should build or buy will come with a personal answer, but the following pros and cons will resonate with most users.

The case for building: pros and cons

Pros:

• Full customization
• Complete ownership over updates 
• Potentially less cost-intensive (assuming the development team is already in place) 

Cons:

• Development can take months
• Responsibility to keep up with API changes (which happen almost every quarter)  
• No support team in place for issues 

The case for buying: pros and cons 

Pros:

• Keeps data from multiple sources in one centralized place
• Implementation time is hours, not days, weeks, or months
• No in-house maintenance
• Comes with built-in advanced features 
• Access to a knowledgeable support team 

Cons:

• Monthly subscription cost
• Less personalized than a custom-built solution

How Supermetrics helps automate data integration from Facebook API

With Supermetrics, you can get different data from Facebook API, including:

• Facebook and Instagram Ads: your paid performance data
• Facebook Insights: your organic data from your Facebook Page
• Instagram Insights: your organic data from your Instagram account
• Facebook Business Manager (Facebook Billing) 
• Facebook Public Data: this includes data from other Facebook Pages. It’s great for competitor and industry benchmarking
• Instagram Public Data: data from Business and Creator Instagram accounts. You can use this data to monitor trends and competitors

And you could look at this smorgasbord of beautiful data in the tool of your choice, like:

• Spreadsheets: Google Sheets and Excel
• Data visualization and BI tools: Looker Studio and Power BI
• Data warehouses and lakes: BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Storage, Amazon S3, etc.
• You can also use the Supermetrics API to get Facebook data to any destination that supports JSON or CSV outputs, like Tableau and Qlik.

Check out all the data destinations we support. 

Some of the advantages unique to Supermetrics include: 

Real-time data

The Supermetrics connector allows you to pull data in near real-time, depending on the Facebook API update frequency. Without the connector, you would need to write and run a complex script each time you wanted fresh data, managing API authentication, rate limits, and data formatting manually. 

This painless data fetch is a big part of the reason why organizations using Supermetrics save 4-8 hours weekly on data tasks. That means more time for deeper analysis of trends, better campaign optimization, and stronger strategic planning.

Automatically up-to-date with API updates

Facebook continuously rolls out API updates. In 2024 alone, there were three major updates, according to their changelog. These changes are important as they roll out new features, improve safety and security, and put UI feedback into practice. But – these updates can disrupt integrations and even force rebuilds of data connections. Remember those custom-coded API connections we mentioned above? These are particularly vulnerable. 

Tech teams can get stuck in an endless loop of maintenance and fixes, which means more IT help desk tickets and more frantic Slacks. 

Ready to simplify your Facebook API experience?

The Facebook API shouldn’t require programming expertise to access valuable data. Supermetrics removes technical barriers by enabling teams to:

• Pull comprehensive Facebook data without writing code
• Build automated reports in familiar tools
• Keep data flowing reliably without technical maintenance

Analyze your Facebook data more effectively and unlock revenue-driving insights with Supermetrics. Our connectors make Facebook API integration straightforward and dependable. The Facebook Ads report template for Looker Studio and the Facebook Insights report template for Looker Studio are both great places to start.