Limitations with Meta’s data

⛔

Meta has restrictions on how much post data you can download in one go - the current limit is 92 days. This makes it slow and awkward to download, for example, a full years worth of data.

Set a reminder to download your Facebook and Instagram post data on a frequent basis - once per calendar month works well. You can save all the data and then combine and analyse it later.

Ads do not have the same restrictions and you can download larger chunks of data from Meta’s Ad Manager.

Exporting Facebook Post Data

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHBuYVOFjuE

Exporting Instagram Post Data

https://youtu.be/MGnHNLqFsg4

Meta Ads Data

1. Open your Ads Manager in Meta Business Suite, by going to:
   1. Business Suite > All tools > Ads Manager > Campaigns
2. Select the specific ad campaign that you want to get the results from.
3. Ensure you have the correct date range set in the top right - the dates should cover the time period where the ads were active
4. Click into the Ad Sets tab
5. Under ‘Columns’, choose ‘Performance’. This will give you a set of columns that includes the key metrics - reach, results, cost per result.
6. Under ‘Reports’, choose ‘Export Table Data’ to download a spreadsheet with the data

The Ad Sets tab, Columns dropdown and Reports dropdown are highlighted with red dots here

Calculating ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

You’ll need to calculate this manually in most cases.

To calculate ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), you can use the following formula: