Meta Ads and paying customers
Meta Ads reports results for Facebook and Instagram campaigns inside the attribution setting you choose, which can include people who only saw an ad. A paying customer is someone whose payment reached you and stayed. Here is where the two part ways.
What does Meta Ads report?
Impressions, clicks, cost and results. A result is the event the campaign optimises for, such as a lead or a sign-up, counted inside the attribution setting of the ad set. That setting can include a view window, so people who saw an ad and converted later without clicking can count.
How can Meta Ads numbers mislead?
- View-through results count people who never clicked. Datarithms gives credit to clicks only.
- Campaigns optimised for sign-ups find people who sign up. Whether they pay is invisible to the platform.
- The same customer can also be claimed by Google, TikTok or LinkedIn.
Sources, Meta for Developers: the 1-day view attribution window and the fbclid click identifier.
Which Meta Ads export do we need today?
During early access we work from export files you choose to send. From Meta Ads we need one campaign report. From your own systems we need the records that connect a click to a payment.
| File | Columns | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads campaign report | Day, campaign name, campaign ID, cost, clicks, platform-reported conversions | A report exported from Meta Ads as CSV, covering the last 90 days |
| Sign-up or lead records | Date, email or customer ID, UTM tags, and the fbclid click identifier if you store it | Your product database, form tool or CRM |
| Payments | Customer email or ID, payment date, amount, refunds | A Stripe payments export, or closed-won deals from HubSpot |
Direct read-only connections are being built. They need Meta Ads's approval before we can offer them, so today everything runs on exports. Step by step: matching payments to ad clicks with exports.
Is Datarithms an official Meta partner?
No. Datarithms has no partnership with Meta and no special access to its data. We read the same reports you can export from your own account, and only the ones you send us.
Related pages
- TikTok Ads and paying customersTikTok conversions, view-through windows, in-app browsing, and the export we need.
- Why platform conversions add up to more customers than you haveWhy Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn together report more customers than you have.
- How many customers you need before judging a campaignWhy Datarithms gives no verdict below 30 paying customers, with an example.
- How it worksThe matching rules behind the weekly table: last ad click within 90 days, refunds within 14 days excluded, no verdict under 30 paying customers.
Want your own table?
Tell us which ad platforms you use and roughly what you spend. We reply by email within two working days.
Early access: we prepare your weekly table with you from your own exports while the direct connections are built.