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I'm working on a report building tool that pulls data from Facebook Graph Api to display metrics on ads in an ad account. When I pull all the Insights from the account level the pixels purchases value is significant less than what is displayed in the Facebook Business Manager.

The query:

{act_id}/insights?fields=spend,action_values,website_purchase_roas&date_preset=this_month

Which returns the following data:

"spend": "5037.47",
  "action_values": [
    {
      "action_type": "offsite_conversion.custom",
      "value": "16049.98"
    }
  ],
  "website_purchase_roas": [
    {
      "action_type": "offsite_conversion.fb_pixel_purchase",
      "value": "3.186119"
    }
  ]

But the Business manager displays the Pixel Purchase value to be $17,315.53 and the Website roas to be 3.44. The Spend value seems to update in real time, sometimes even faster than the Business Manager page updates.

Is there some other value fields in the Insights edge that displays more purchases or is this a bug in Facebook's api?

David
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  • I ran this query against about 10 other accounts and all the data lined up with business manager except this single account. My best guess is either some discrepancy with timezone conversions between the website/online store/facebook/my server not recording purchases at the correct time, or a bug on the part of facebook. Unfortunately I don't have access to the server where the website/store is hosted so I don't know how I'm going to test my theory. – David Nov 26 '18 at 23:24

1 Answers1

7

You probably already checked but just for the sake of completeness, did you check if the attribution window in your business manager is set to FBs standard 28d post-click, 1d post-view window?

As you did not specify it in your API query, the API returns data in FB's standard attribution window and is represented under value.

You could add action_attribution_windows to your query &action_attribution_windows=['1d_click','1d_view'] to check these values as well.

This was the only times when we saw a difference in API pulled data and business manager data.

Nils Ole
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  • I have the attribute window set to 7d_click and 1d_view which is what I have set up in business manager and that doesn't seem to be the issue. – David Nov 26 '18 at 23:20
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    Did you add the attribution window to your API query? If you do not provide a specific attribution window, the API returns you 28d_click, 1d_view data. You could check in the Business Manager --> Events Manager --> Your Pixel --> Custom Event XYZ --> View Details for the value your pixel returns to FB. This could be an indicator if the data returned to FB is correct in the beginning and FB screws the data in the process – Nils Ole Nov 27 '18 at 08:57
  • This actually was the issue. I was running the query with the matching attribution window set on the adset level (7d_click, 1d_view) but the account was set up with its own custom attribution window (28d_click, 7day_view) that seems to be overriding the adset attribution window when viewed in business manager. When I added that to the query all the numbers seem to add up. – David Nov 27 '18 at 17:14