Meta Ads is Meta's advertising system, the place where ads on Facebook and Instagram are managed and paid for. In Meta, an ad account is the account under which campaigns run and from which they are paid. Once you connect it to gas, you will see spend, reach, clicks and other campaign results in the application, and you can compare them with the results of your pages and profiles.
Connecting has two parts, and these are the ones people mix up most often. First you log in to Meta, which links the service and gives gas access to what you manage in Meta. Only then do you select the specific ad account and decide which customer accounts in gas will see its data. This article covers the second part, selecting the ad account.
Before you start
You need a linked Meta account. If you do not have one yet, go through the article Connecting a Meta account first. You can tell you have the link when Settings → Connected services shows at least one linked account on the Meta accounts tile.
You need access to the ad account on Meta's side. The list will only show the ad accounts that Meta returns as available for the account you logged in with. Access to an ad account is granted by its administrator in Meta's business account management (Business Manager), the tool where Meta records who may work with company pages and ad accounts. Meta distinguishes three access levels for an ad account: the highest manages the whole account including billing and permissions, the middle one allows creating and editing ads, and the lowest allows viewing ad results. The lowest is enough for gas, because it only reads results from the ad account and changes nothing in it. If you do not have access, someone there has to grant it to you. It cannot be set up from gas.
When logging in to Meta, leave all permissions ticked. During login, Meta shows a screen listing pages, profiles and ad accounts. Anything you untick there will not be visible to gas and will not appear in the list of ad accounts.
In gas you need the Administrator or User role. A user account with the Viewer role cannot make the connection. Only an Administrator may remove a customer account from an ad account that is already connected.
Meta Ads must be part of the customer account's subscription. This is a paid part of gas. If the customer account does not have it, you will not find the Meta ads item in the left menu, and when connecting, such a customer account will be marked as unavailable in the list with the note Feature not in plan.
Linking a service belongs to the user account of the person who logged in, whereas a connected ad account belongs to the customer account. That is why it happens that you see nothing in Settings → Connected services and yet there is data in gas: someone else on the team connected the account. You will find the full overview in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts, where the Who links the account column shows the email of the person the link belongs to. Before you create a new link, talk to the administrator of the customer account. They can see what is connected, who connected it and what state it is in, so they can tell you whether a new link is needed at all. There is more detail in the article Who linked the account.
Steps
- In the left menu, click Settings. A dashboard opens with three cards: User profile, Connected services and Customer account.
- On the Connected services card, click the I want to set up button. An overview of platforms opens, where each tile states how many accounts you have linked on it.
- Click the Meta accounts tile. A table of your Meta links appears.
- In the Account name column, click the name of the link under which you manage the ad account. Its detail opens with three tabs: Meta Ads, Facebook and Instagram. The Meta Ads tab is open right away.
- Above the table, click Connect Meta Ads account. The Meta Ads connection window opens.
- Expand the Account field and select the ad account. The list loads directly from Meta, so it may take a moment to appear. Ad accounts that are already connected are inactive in the list and cannot be selected.
- The Account name field is optional. Type the name under which you want to see the account in gas (3 to 100 characters). If you leave the field empty, the name from Meta is used.
- Tick the Agency account option only if you run campaigns for several customers under a single ad account. Data is then filtered by the labels set on campaigns in gas, so each customer account only sees its own campaigns. In all other cases, leave the option unticked.
- In the Customer account field, select the customer accounts that should see the data. The field looks different depending on how many customer accounts you manage: a single account is filled in automatically, two to four are shown as checkboxes, and a larger number is shown as a list with two columns, Accounts to select and Assigned accounts, between which items are moved by clicking. Filling this in is mandatory, without it the form will not save.
- Click Connect account. The window closes and a new row appears in the table.
What happens next
There are three ways to tell that the connection worked. A new row appears in the table on the Meta Ads tab. Under the bell in the top bar, a notification New account added appears confirming that the account was linked successfully. And if you have regular reports set up, gas asks straight away Add profile to report?, where you select the reports and confirm with the Add to selected button, or decline with the Not now button.
The table has the columns Name, Currency and Agency account. If you manage several customer accounts, a Customers column is added showing who the data is displayed to. The last column, Actions, contains icons for editing the row and for deleting the account. The connected ad account also appears in the summary in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts.
The first data will not arrive immediately. Campaigns and their daily results are downloaded from Meta several times a day, so expect the Meta ads section in the left menu and the ad cards on the overview to fill up in a matter of hours, not minutes. The refresh button in the page header reloads what gas already has, it does not start the download from Meta on its own.
Figures for the last few days are still changing. Meta recalculates ad results roughly every quarter of an hour, and after an ad finishes it keeps computing them for several more days, because part of the results, typically conversions, are attributed retroactively according to the configured window. Meta considers them final only 28 days after they were first reported. Some figures are also marked by Meta as estimated. Treat recent days as preliminary and use closed periods for comparisons.
How far back the history goes. Meta keeps ad data considerably longer than page and profile statistics, up to 37 months back. On first connection, gas pulls in roughly the last two years, and it does so gradually in the background, not within the first hour. Periods older than Meta retains will not be made available to anyone.
The ad account currency. The Currency column shows the currency as Meta records it (for example CZK, EUR or USD). gas does not change it and it cannot be set in the application, it can only be changed on Meta's side. So that spend can be added up and compared across accounts and campaigns, gas converts it into Czech korunas at the rate for the day the spend belongs to. Small differences from what the Meta interface shows are therefore expected. There are details in the article Currency and spend conversion.
You can change the details you entered at any time. In the Actions column, click the edit icon, the row switches to edit mode and you can change the name and the Agency account option. Confirm the change with the save icon in the same column. The assignment of customer accounts is changed with the Change customer action, which opens the same selection as when connecting.
The Delete account action in the Actions column unlinks the ad account and deletes its data from gas. The application asks first and you confirm the action with the Delete button. Data on Meta's servers remains untouched and you can connect the account again at any time.
On a phone, the table is shown as cards stacked one under another and the Actions column is not there. So edit the name, change the customer account and delete the account on a computer or a tablet.
Common problems when selecting an ad account
There is no ad account in the Account field list
The logged-in Meta account has no access to any ad account, or you unticked ad-related permissions when logging in to Meta. Meta only sends the accounts for which your account has at least the lowest access level, the one that allows viewing ad results. First have access granted on Meta's side, then go back to the link in the Meta accounts table, use Reconnect and leave all permissions ticked during login.
It says all accounts are already linked
All ad accounts available under this login are already connected in gas. They may be connected under a different link, or a colleague connected them. Check the summary in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts.
It says another user linked the account
Someone has already connected the ad account to gas. An Take ownership button is offered: this takes the account over under your link, together with its settings and its availability for customer accounts. Historical data is preserved. There is no point in creating a second, parallel link for the same account.
It says you linked the account under another of your Meta accounts
Instead of taking ownership, a Relink button is offered, which transfers the account under the current login. Use it when you have switched to a different account in Meta and no longer use the old one.
Common problems with access and connection state
Data stopped arriving after a colleague left the company
This is the most common cause of numbers suddenly missing. The ad account was once connected by someone whose permissions on Meta's side have since been removed, so the link stopped working even though you still see the account in the application. Do not solve this by deleting it and setting it up again. An active colleague who has access to it on Meta connects the account again and chooses to take ownership of it during selection. This takes the account over under their link, history and settings are preserved, and data starts arriving again.
The selection shows a reason why a customer account cannot be selected
In the Customer account field, an account may be unavailable with one of four notes. Limit reached means the customer account already has the maximum number of profiles for this network connected under its plan. Feature not in plan means its subscription does not include Meta Ads. No permission means your role in this customer account is not high enough. Invalid licence means the subscription is not in order. When no customer account can be selected, a notice appears at the top: This action cannot currently be performed for any of your customer accounts. The fix is on the subscription or role side, and both are set up by the administrator of the customer account.
The account shows the notice Connection paused
Access to Meta has stopped being valid, for example after a password change, after permissions were removed or after the login expired. Next to the account name there is a yellow Paused label, and clicking it shows the date from which data is no longer being downloaded. Click Reconnect, log in to Meta and confirm the permissions. After reconnecting, gas also fills in the period of the outage. With ad data this is usually the whole outage, because Meta provides it retroactively for up to 37 months.
The account shows the notice Some profiles of this connection have lost permission
The Meta login works, but gas has lost permission for a specific ad account. Next to the name there is a Missing permission label, and clicking it shows since when data has been missing. Click Reconnect and re-authorise this account in the Meta dialog. If your access level on Meta has meanwhile been lowered below the one that allows viewing ad results, reconnecting alone is not enough and the administrator of the ad account has to restore access first.
The ad account is connected, but the Meta ads item is missing from the left menu
The customer account you have switched to does not have Meta Ads in its subscription. Use the switch in the top bar to move to the customer account you assigned the data to, or arrange an extension of the subscription with the Administrator.
Common problems with figures and lists
Spend in gas does not match what Meta shows
There are three most common reasons: conversion of a foreign currency into korunas, retroactive recalculation of figures on Meta's side for recent days, and a different definition of the period being tracked. Meta itself considers ad figures final only 28 days after they were first reported, and marks some figures as estimated. So compare closed days and the same period. There is more detail in the articles Currency and spend conversion and Figures differ from Facebook or Google.
Data for older periods is missing after connecting
gas can only show what Meta provides. For ad data that is up to 37 months back, but the history is not downloaded all at once: it is pulled in gradually in the background, so older months keep appearing for several hours after connecting. Periods older than Meta retains will never be filled in.
Campaigns that did not run in the period are not in the lists
In the campaign and ad overview, gas only shows those that actually delivered in the selected period, that is, had spend or impressions. If you cannot see the campaign you are looking for, widen the period in the page header.