How to track Facebook Ads in Google Analytics 4

What GA4 needs from a Facebook ad

GA4 does not connect to Meta Ads Manager the way it connects to Google Ads. It learns about a click from the landing page URL. An untagged ad click arrives with a referrer such as l.facebook.com, m.facebook.com or lm.facebook.com, or with no referrer at all from the mobile app. GA4 then reports it as a referral or as direct.

UTM parameters fix that. With utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign in the URL, the session is named after your campaign whatever the referrer was.

Step 1. Add UTM parameters in Meta Ads Manager

Meta’s own steps (Add URL parameters to your Meta ads, checked October 2026):

1. Create an ad in Ads Manager, or open a draft, and continue to the Tracking section of the ad.
2. Under Tracking, enter your parameters in the URL parameters field, or click Build a URL parameter.
3. Click Apply.

Enter the parameters without the question mark, separated by ampersands:

utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid_social
&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}
&utm_id={{campaign.id}}
&utm_content={{ad.name}}

The values in double braces are Meta’s dynamic parameters. Meta fills them in when the ad is delivered, so the campaign name in GA4 is the campaign name in Ads Manager and nobody has to type it twice. Google recommends the same approach for GA4: “Use Dynamic UTMs such as utm_campaign={{campaign.name}} whenever possible.”

Three details from Meta’s page that cause most tagging mistakes:

• The URL parameters field wins. If the same parameter is in the Website URL field and in the URL parameters field, only the second one ends up in the final URL.
• No empty values. Remove a parameter you do not fill.
• Meta may add parameters itself. Since January 2024, ad traffic can get a campaign source of Facebook or Instagram and a campaign medium of paid added automatically, along with ad, ad set and campaign IDs. Click one of your own ads and read the landing page URL to see what your account sends.

Which values to use

Choose once and use the same values in every campaign:

With a social source and a paid medium, GA4 puts the sessions into the Paid Social channel. A medium such as fb_ads matches nothing and sends the traffic to Unassigned. The rules are listed in the guide to the GA4 default channel group, and naming conventions in the guide to UTM tags.

Step 2. Find Facebook Ads traffic in GA4

Open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, and switch the first column from Session default channel group to Session source / medium. Your tagged traffic is the row with your values, for example facebook / cpc. Add Session campaign as a second dimension to split it by campaign.

The User acquisition report shows the same for new users, under First user source / medium.

For anything the standard reports do not show, such as key events by campaign and ad, build a free-form exploration with Session campaign and Session manual ad content as dimensions.

Step 3. Import Facebook Ads cost data into GA4

Sessions and revenue are now in GA4. Spend is not. GA4’s campaign data import brings it in, and Meta is one of five platforms with a direct connection: you authorise the account in GA4 and it pulls cost, clicks and impressions daily, with up to 24 months of history (Import campaign data, checked October 2026).

Google sets one condition. All paid traffic from the platform has to carry a single utm_source value and a single utm_medium value. An account where some campaigns say fb / cpc, others Meta / cpc and others facebook / paid cannot use the direct connection. Google’s guidance for that case is to upload the data as CSV, through Google Sheets or from BigQuery instead.

The direct connection is set up in Admin, Product links, Meta links, which opens the campaign data import for Meta. Imports from a file or a sheet go through Admin, Data collection and modification, Data import. The fields, the file route and how to read the match rate are in the guide to GA4 cost data import.

After the import, the Non Google campaign report shows clicks, cost and impressions next to sessions for each tagged campaign.

Why GA4 and Ads Manager show different conversions

They will not match, and that is not a setup error. Meta credits conversions to ad interactions within its own attribution window, which can include people who saw an ad and did not click. GA4 counts sessions that reached your site with your tags and credits key events by its own attribution model. Cookie consent, ad blockers and in-app browsers remove some sessions from GA4 that Meta still counts.

Use Ads Manager to manage delivery, and GA4 to compare Facebook with other channels on one set of rules. The differences are worked through in Facebook Ads vs GA4 conversions.

What GA4 does not give you

• Cost stops at the campaign. The import has no ad set or ad level, so there is no cost per creative.
• Imported cost is not in the GA4 BigQuery Export and cannot be used in audiences or exploration segments.
• Revenue is GA4’s key events only. Orders that were refunded, or deals that closed in a CRM weeks later, are not part of the picture.
• Each platform is its own import with its own naming rules.

If the weekly question is “which channel got the sessions”, GA4 answers it. If it is “which ad set should get next week’s budget, measured on orders that were not returned”, it does not.

Spend and results at ad level, in your warehouse

OWOX Data Marts has Facebook Ads as a data source. It loads the ad-level insights, with spend, impressions and clicks per campaign, ad set and ad, into your warehouse: Google BigQuery, Snowflake, AWS Redshift, AWS Athena or Databricks. GA4 reaches BigQuery through its own export. In the warehouse the two meet in SQL, joined on the campaign ID you put into utm_id and on the date.

An analyst writes that join once and publishes it as a Data Mart. Reports on it go to Google Sheets or Data Studio (the former Looker Studio) on a schedule, so the marketer reads spend, sessions and orders per ad set in one table.

The limits: OWOX Data Marts does not send data into GA4 and does not change what Ads Manager or GA4 report. The join is the analyst’s SQL, and its quality depends on the tagging from step 1. The steps are in loading Facebook Ads into BigQuery and blending GA4 conversions with ad spend.

GA47 Analytics Tactics to Get More Traffic and Sales Using GA4April 30, 2024→GA4Google Analytics 4 in Depth: Capabilities and LimitsFebruary 17, 2025→GA4Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) in Google Analytics 4: Setup GuideOctober 7, 2026→

See all articles →