Facebook ends support for Facebook Analytics: what is known at the moment

In the first week of April, Facebook announced that the Facebook Analytics tool would be unavailable after June 30, 2021.

The news was not particularly advertised. When entering Facebook Analytics, a plate appeared with information about the upcoming shutdown of the tool.

And also the relevant information appeared in help

What is known at the moment

  • Until June 30, the tool can be used as before: all data and reports will be available for viewing and interaction.

  • After June 30, the tool will no longer be available. Until that time, you can export the desired data in CSV format.

  • There is no information yet on whether there will be an alternative tool release with similar functionality.

In Help, Facebook suggests focusing on other business tools:

Why Facebook turns off Analytics

So far, there have been no statements or clarifications from Facebook about this: the tool is simply turned off without explanation. There are different opinions on this matter, which boil down to two main versions:

  • the outage is somehow related to the iOS 14 update, which made it harder to track user actions and has already caused significant changes in the work of Facebook services. For example, the number of events that can be used for optimization in ad groups has decreased;

  • support for the instrument is terminated due to its unpopularity. In the West, most businesses use services such as Amplitude or Mixpanel, in Runet they are mostly used to Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics.

A few words about Facebook Analytics

Facebook Analytics is a free analytics service with which it was possible (and still possible, but not for long) to analyze the activity of users of a website, application, Facebook group or Instagram account. This is not to say that the service had some unique features, but a couple of handy features are still worth noting.

Convenient dashboard with key information

The main page (Overview section) contains all the most important statistics:

  • aggregate data on the number of visitors, revenue,% conversion, LTV, etc .;

  • data on main traffic sources and new users;

  • time activity graph, bounce rate and top pages by traffic;

  • average LTV of paying users, total revenue, distribution of conversions by device type, repeat purchases.

There seems to be nothing unique here (all this data can be found in Google Analytics), but if you work only with traffic from Facebook, this is really convenient: on one page you can quickly assess how campaigns performed over a period of growth or drawdowns.

Funnels

The funnel report is a convenient way to quickly assess the conversion rate of each stage of the sales funnel. In this section, you can create a custom funnel (select the necessary steps, for example, “View content” → “Add to cart” → “Start checkout” → “Purchase”) or use an automatically defined funnel (which Facebook itself determines based on data from the site) …

Filters and custom audiences

Well, one of the main features of Facebook Analytics is filters. With their help, you can create separate audience segments based on certain criteria:

  • by actions performed on the site (triggered events);

  • by demographic characteristics;

  • by visits to certain pages;

  • by UTM tags in the referral URL, etc.

For the filtered audience, you can view detailed activity statistics and, most importantly, use the filter to create a custom audience that will be created in the Audiences section and available for selection in the ad group targeting settings.

What is the alternative?

Since Facebook does not plan to roll out an alternative tool (at least, there were no such statements), you will have to use what is (and third-party services):

  • Create custom audiences – in the “Audiences” section. Fortunately, there are enough parameters for filtering (by the time spent on the site, by views of certain pages, by events, etc.).

  • Analyze user behavior on the site, data on conversions, revenue and funnels – in analytics systems (Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica).

In the meantime, Facebook Analytics is still working: you can continue to generate reports and download important data.

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