Meta Ads

See what your Facebook and Instagram ads really earn. twelvebit puts the spend of each Meta campaign next to the visitors, the customers and the revenue that the campaign brought, and shows the return on ad spend (ROAS).

You connect with an access token that can only read your ad account (ads_read). twelvebit never changes a campaign, a budget or an ad. You need no Meta app review and no Meta Pixel for this report.

What you get

• Spend, clicks and impressions per campaign, for every day, from the first day of the last 120 days.
• Visitors, customers and revenue per campaign from your own twelvebit data.
• ROAS, cost per visitor and cost per customer for each campaign and for the account.
• Meta and Google side by side on the Ads page, with a spend and revenue chart and one tile for each platform.
• Spend in your site currency. twelvebit converts the account currency for you.

Before you start

You need four things:

1. Edit access to the site in twelvebit (owner or member).
2. Access to the ad account in Meta Business Settings, so that you can make a token for it.
3. The ad account ID. In Ads Manager, it shows next to the account name, for example act_1234567890.
4. Payments in twelvebit, so that revenue can count. See Revenue. Without payments, the Ads page shows spend and visitors, but no revenue.

Step 1: make an access token

Best: a system user token. It does not expire.

1. In Meta Business Settings, open Users → System users and click Add. Give the system user a name, for example "twelvebit", and the role Employee.
2. Click Assign assets, select Ad accounts, select your ad account, and turn on View performance.
3. Click Generate new token. Select your app (or make one in Meta for Developers), and select only the permission ads_read.
4. Copy the token. Meta shows it once.

Or: a long-lived user token. It expires after 60 days, so you must connect again then.

1. In the Graph API Explorer, generate a user token with ads_read.
2. In the Access Token Debugger, click Extend Access Token, and copy the long-lived token.

The token gives read access to your ad data. Keep it private, as you keep a password. twelvebit stores it encrypted, and it never goes back to the browser.

Step 2: connect in twelvebit

1. In twelvebit, open your site, then Settings → Integrations → Meta Ads.
2. Paste the token and the ad account ID, and click Connect Meta Ads.

twelvebit checks the token, then reads 120 days of spend. The account then shows on the Ads page.

Step 3: tag your ads

This step is necessary. Meta reports spend per campaign, but it does not tell twelvebit which visitor clicked which ad. The tags in the ad's link do that.

1. Copy this line:

utm_source=meta&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign={{campaign.id}}&utm_content={{ad.id}}

2. In Meta Ads Manager, open the Ads tab (not Campaigns or Ad sets), select an ad and click Edit.
3. Scroll down to the Tracking section at the bottom of the ad. Paste the line into URL parameters, in place of any text that is there.
4. Click Publish. Do the same for each ad, and for each new ad that you make.

Keep the line as it is. Meta puts the real campaign ID and ad ID into each click: you change nothing. The Website URL of the ad stays the same. Meta can review the ad again after you publish; the ad keeps its results.

Do you use your own utm_campaign names? For example utm_campaign=spring_sale. A visit matches a campaign only when its utm_campaign is the campaign ID or the exact campaign name. Your own names do not match, so the Ads page shows 0 visitors for the campaign. Replace them with the line above.

Check it: in Settings → Integrations → Meta Ads, the tagging steps close and show "Your ads are tagged" after the first visit matches a campaign. If visits come from Facebook or Instagram but none matches, the card shows a warning.

How visits match campaigns

A visit belongs to a Meta campaign in two ways:

1. utm_campaign is the campaign ID or the campaign name (in any case).
2. A utm_id property with the campaign ID, sent by your own code.

Revenue counts each payment whose credited visit (the last visit before the payment) belongs to the campaign. Refunds take money off. Customers counts the people whose first payment came from the campaign.

A visit with a Google click or a Google utm_source never counts for Meta, also when a Meta campaign and a Google campaign have the same name.

The Ads page

• Headline. One sentence that says how much revenue each 1 of spend brought back, and which campaign did best.
• Campaigns. Spend, clicks, visitors, customers, revenue and ROAS for each campaign, sorted by spend. Click a campaign name to open the Overview for its visits. Click its visitor count to see those people.
• Spend and revenue chart. Running total shows where revenue stays above spend: there, the ads paid for themselves. Per day shows the spend of each day as bars, and the revenue as a line.

The filter f_ad=meta:<campaign ID> shows the visits of one campaign on every page. See Filters.

Spend days follow the time zone of the ad account. Revenue days follow the time zone of the site.

When the data updates

• twelvebit reads the spend once a day, and again when someone opens the Ads page and the last read is more than 6 hours old. Sync now in Settings reads it at once.
• Each read gets the last 7 days again, because Meta still changes recent numbers.
• Meta reports spend some hours late. A new ad can show visits on the Ads page before it shows spend.

Privacy

• twelvebit reads only campaign names and IDs, and the daily spend, impressions and clicks. It reads no audiences, no ad text and nothing about the people who clicked.
• The token is stored encrypted. It is used only to read spend, and it never shows in the dashboard or the API.

When something is wrong

Disconnect

Click Disconnect in Settings → Integrations → Meta Ads. twelvebit deletes the token and the stored spend. To stop the token in Meta too, remove it from the system user in Meta Business Settings.

API and MCP

get_integrations (MCP) and GET /api/v1/integrations (REST) show meta_ads with the account name, the currency and the days with spend. disconnect_integration (MCP) and DELETE /api/v1/integrations/meta_ads (REST) disconnect it. A token never shows in the API.