Facebook Ads Insights API reportstats endpoint

Question

I'm using reportstats edge to download some reports in CSV format. (It probably applies to XLS as well)

What I've noticed:

• headers have different descriptions than the data columns parameters - is there a resource describing the mapping? (eg. adgroup_id -> 'Ad ID', adgroup_name -> 'Ad Name', unique_impressions -> 'Reach'...

• will the order of csv columns be as defined in data_columns param?

• ! some columns are not returned in csv format - two I've identified so far are inline_actions and unique_social_clicks - the column is skipped in csv format but available in json - is it a bug or there is a reason for that?

• general question - does csv format require pagination or I will always get all of the data?

• value mapping - the constant values in csv/xls format have different labels, eg. placement(desktop_feed -> 'News Feed on Desktop Computers'), Is there a resource describing all the possible values?

• asynchronous report requests - it happens quite often that although I'm checking the report_run_id for async_percent_completion the data is still not available when it should . I'm getting a text response No data available.. I need to retry and then it's usually available. Is this expected?

Thanks!

Answer 1

• different names in API and XLS are intentional; API developers prefer naming consistent with the rest of Ads API, but people using XLS exports are often not developers and prefer human-friendly naming

• you can use export_columns to define the order

• inline_actions/unique_social_clicks - not sure, maybe these might be deprecated
• it will give you all of the data
• I don't think there's public resource for mapping between placement values :-(
• you need to check report_run_id for the job status (field "async_status"), that should work reliable; once it's "Job Completed" you should be able to get the data