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Question

Facebook reels in FB insights

  • 19 August 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 82 views

Hi, I am struggling with getting data to Facebook insights, especially, I am missing reels data. I got all other post types, like photos, etc, no problem there, but the query simply does not provide me with reels data.

Could anyone give me a hint how to get it there, please?

My dimensions: Post ID, date, post image url, post message, video image url, post type

My metrics: Total reach, Paid reach, Organic reach, Viral reach, Total impressions, Paid impressions, Organic impressions, Viral impressions, Total video views, Likes on post, Shares on post, Comments on post, Likes on post shares, Shares on post shares, Comments on post shares, Reels reach, Reels plays, Reels avg. time watched, Reels comments, Reels total reactions

Hi!

It’s a quirk of the API that the Reels data comes from another endpoint, and isn’t actually compatible with the post dimensions. If you swap those out for the video versions, it should then work! 

Post ID → Video ID
Post image URL → Video image URL
Post message → Video title or Video description
Post type → remove, there’s no video version

Not sure all the metrics selected will get data for videos, but at least this should get you unblocked actually seeing the Reels items.

Hi Jessie, I hope it’s not too late to jump in on this conversation to ask some additional questions.

Would there be a way to create a Supermetrics custom field to aggregate Facebook post fields and reel fields together? For example a custom dimension called post caption that combines post message and video description or a custom metric called post shares that sums shares on post with reel shares?

Is it possible to combine posts and reels in one table in Looker Studio or is the reel endpoint just incompatible?

Sure!

Unfortunately it’s the Reels endpoint that is the incompatible part, so any inclusion of post related data will invalidate the Reels parts.

If only data blending allowed for same data source blending (something I know the team is working on for the future but doesn’t work right now), then you could use that tool to create two separate data pulls from Facebook Insights, which would avoid the issue, and data blending would stitch it together for you.

But without that you really have to make two separate queries and then combined the results after in some way. I don’t know if Looker Studio’s native blending can handle this (it use to be only right join, which definitely doesn’t work, but maybe some of the new join types can get around this?)

This is also something I’d like the data source itself to just handle in the future - it makes little sense from the user perspective why different types of content/posts have to be pulled special ways, it should just come all together. Can’t provide any promises or timelines around this, but just wanted to say its definitely on our minds that this could work better.

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