Connecting to Meta is a single login that gives gas access to all three Meta services at once: Facebook pages, Instagram profiles and Meta Ads ad accounts. The linked Meta account belongs to your user account, so you can then pick specific pages, profiles and ad accounts from it for individual customer accounts.
Linking has two steps. This article covers the first one, the login to Meta. Only the second step, selecting a specific page, profile or ad account, decides whose data appears in the customer account.
Before you start
Log in with the Facebook account you really use to manage your business pages. gas sees exactly what that account sees, nothing more.
- Facebook page: for pages, Meta does not work with a single role but with tasks, that is partial permissions granted one by one. For Meta to release the page statistics, you need the Insights task on the page, or Full control directly. Tasks meant for content, messages, community activity or ads are not enough for statistics. They are granted by the page administrator on Facebook, it cannot be set up from gas.
- Instagram profile: it has to be a professional profile, either a business or a creator profile, and it has to be connected to a Facebook page. Meta releases Instagram statistics only this way and for the paired page it requires the same access to statistics as for the page itself. Personal Instagram profiles cannot be connected.
- Meta Ads: for an ad account, Meta distinguishes three levels of access. The highest one manages the whole account including billing and permissions, the middle one allows creating and editing ads and the lowest one allows seeing ad results. The lowest one is enough for gas. It is granted by the ad account administrator in Meta's business account management (Business Manager). Without it, the ad account will not appear in the list at all.
Not sure what everything your account manages? Link it anyway. Logging in only loads the list of available pages, profiles and ad accounts, on its own it does not start any data download yet.
Steps
- In Settings, open the Connected services tile. The Dashboard page opens with tiles for the individual platforms.
- Click the Meta accounts tile, or choose it in the left menu.
- Click the Connect Meta account button. gas redirects you to the Meta login.
- Log in with your Facebook account. On the consent screen, select the pages, profiles and ad accounts you want to track in gas and leave all offered permissions switched on.
- After you confirm, Meta returns you to gas. You see the Meta account connection screen with the message "Processing".
- Once processing finishes, gas switches you to the Meta accounts list, where you see the new account under its name.
The most common mistake is unticking items in Meta's dialog. If you switch off a page, profile or permission there, gas does not receive it and it is then missing from the selection lists. You will notice it because after linking you cannot find a page or ad account that you demonstrably manage. The fix is easy: click Connect Meta account again and this time leave everything switched on in Meta's dialog. The new consent overwrites the original one, it does not create a second account.
What happens next
In the Meta accounts list, the linked account is shown under its name. Click the name to open its detail with the Meta Ads, Facebook and Instagram tabs. In each of them you select the specific ad account, page or profile you want to track. These three steps are described in separate articles about connecting a Facebook page, an Instagram profile and a Meta Ads ad account.
Data starts downloading only after this selection, not right after the login. The first figures usually appear within hours, for some overviews only the next day, because Meta itself releases statistics with a delay. It recalculates most daily page data once every 24 hours and refreshes only some of it several times a day. Ad figures are refreshed continuously, roughly every quarter of an hour, but after an ad ends they keep being recalculated for several more days and Meta considers them final only after 28 days.
gas pulls the available history gradually in the background. How far back it gets is decided by Meta and it differs for each of the three services: Facebook page statistics are kept for two years, daily Instagram overviews for about 90 days and ad data for up to 37 months. Cumulative figures, that is the number of page fans and the number of Instagram followers, are not released retroactively by Meta at all and are provided only as today's value. Their series in gas therefore starts on the day of connection and will never contain earlier periods.
In the Actions column next to each account you find the Unlink account option. If you do not log in to gas through Meta yet, the Use for login option is offered here as well, after which you will be able to use Meta as a way of logging in to gas.
Common problems
The account shows the Paused label
Access has expired or was revoked, typically after a password change on Facebook or after permissions were removed. Click the label and then Reconnect in the window. You go through the same login as the first time and gas relinks the previously selected pages and profiles itself. This is described in detail in the article about restoring a connection after access expires.
The profile shows the Missing permission label
Access as a whole works, but you have lost the permission for a specific page or profile. The procedure is the same: Reconnect and allow that profile again in Meta's dialog.
A page or ad account is missing from the list
Check whether you manage them under a different Facebook account and whether you have sufficient access to them. For a page that means the Insights task, for an ad account at least the level that allows seeing ad results. Whatever your Meta account is not allowed to see, Meta will not send to gas for the list at all. After adjusting the permissions on Meta's side, run the linking again.
Linking ended with a cancellation message
gas shows a message that you cancelled the account linking. It means you closed Meta's dialog or refused the consent. Return to the Meta accounts list and start the linking again with the Connect Meta account button.