Connect Facebook Ads to Looker Studio for free (2026 guide)

You don’t need a paid connector to display your Facebook/Meta Ads data in Looker Studio. A free Google Apps Script can query Meta’s Marketing API every morning, write the results to a Google Sheet, and Looker Studio connects to that Sheet. It’s the set-up we use for our clients’ daily dashboards — here it is step by step, code included.

This article is the 2026 update of our original guide: the principle hasn’t changed, but the API version and a few fields have.

The principle in one picture

Meta Marketing API  →  Google Apps Script (triggered every morning)  →  Google Sheet  →  Looker Studio

Cost: zero. Maintenance: update the API version roughly once a year and renew the token. In return, you own the pipeline — no monthly subscription to a third-party connector just to display three charts.

Step 1 — Get a long-lived access token

1. In Business Manager, create a system user (Business settings → Users → System users).
2. Give it access to the relevant ad account (read access is enough: ads_read).
3. Generate a system user token — it doesn’t expire the way a personal token does, which is the whole point.
4. Note the ad account ID in the format act_XXXXXXXXX.

The token gives read access to your advertising data: treat it like a password. It goes in the script properties, never in plain text in shared code.

Step 2 — The Google Sheet and the script

Create a Google Sheet with a data tab, then open Extensions → Apps Script and paste:

// Script properties (Project Settings → Script properties):
// META_TOKEN = your system user token
// ACCOUNT_ID = act_XXXXXXXXX
const API_VERSION = 'v26.0'; // check the current Marketing API version

function fetchMetaInsights() {
  const props = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties();
  const token = props.getProperty('META_TOKEN');
  const account = props.getProperty('ACCOUNT_ID');
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('data');

  const fields = 'date_start,campaign_name,spend,impressions,clicks,actions,action_values';
  let url = 'https://graph.facebook.com/' + API_VERSION + '/' + account +
    '/insights?level=campaign&time_increment=1&date_preset=yesterday' +
    '&fields=' + fields + '&access_token=' + token;

  const rows = [];
  while (url) {
    const res = JSON.parse(UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText());
    (res.data || []).forEach(function (d) {
      rows.push([
        d.date_start,
        d.campaign_name,
        Number(d.spend || 0),
        Number(d.impressions || 0),
        Number(d.clicks || 0),
        pickAction(d.actions, 'purchase'),
        pickAction(d.action_values, 'purchase')
      ]);
    });
    url = res.paging && res.paging.next ? res.paging.next : null;
  }

  if (sheet.getLastRow() === 0) {
    sheet.appendRow(['date', 'campagne', 'depense', 'impressions', 'clics', 'achats', 'valeur_achats']);
  }
  if (rows.length) {
    sheet.getRange(sheet.getLastRow() + 1, 1, rows.length, rows[0].length).setValues(rows);
  }
}

function pickAction(list, type) {
  if (!list) return 0;
  const hit = list.find(function (a) { return a.action_type === type; });
  return hit ? Number(hit.value) : 0;
}

Fill in META_TOKEN and ACCOUNT_ID in the script properties, run fetchMetaInsights once (authorise the script), and check that the previous day is written to the data tab.

Step 3 — The daily trigger

In Apps Script: Triggers → Add Trigger → function fetchMetaInsights, event “Time-driven”, every day between 6am and 7am. Every morning, the previous day is added to the Sheet. To load your history once, temporarily replace date_preset=yesterday with time_range={'since':'2026-01-01','until':'2026-10-28'}.

Step 4 — Connect Looker Studio

In Looker Studio: Create → Data source → Google Sheets, choose the Sheet and the data tab. Then create two calculated fields:

• CPC = depense / clics
• ROAS = valeur_achats / depense

And bear in mind what this ROAS is: the one attributed by Meta, with its limitations — we have written about why it shouldn’t steer your budget on its own.

The honest limitations of this set-up

This set-up powers some of the dashboards we deliver with our campaign management — automatic, updated every morning, and with no connector licence to pay for.

Frequently asked questions

Is it really free?

Yes: the Meta API, Apps Script, Google Sheets and Looker Studio are free for this use. The only cost is the half-hour of set-up and one intervention a year for the API version.

Can I add Google Ads to the same dashboard?

Yes — Looker Studio has a free, native Google Ads connector. In fact, that’s the typical complete set-up: Meta via the Sheet, Google Ads directly, and both sources combined in a single report.

What should I do if the script returns a permission error?

Check that the system user actually has access to the ad account (not just to Business Manager) and that the token includes ads_read. That’s the cause of 90% of failures on the first run.