If you’re seeing differences between your Instagram Insights data and the results you see in your Supermetrics reports, there are a few steps you can take. These differences – which are often referred to as discrepancies – can occur for different reasons in different types of data. Follow the steps below for the type of query you’re having trouble with.
Data types
Not all Instagram users define their demographic dimensions (country, city, age, or gender, for example) in the account. This means that when you split your followers by these dimensions, the total number of accounts with these dimensions might not equal your total follower count.
Example
Say you have 10 followers. 5 of them have defined their city in their account, and 5 haven’t. Your total follower count will be 10. Your followers split by the demographic dimension “city” will only be 5, as only 5 followers have defined this dimension.
If a query pulls media count data at the same time as data from another media-related field, incorrect data could be displayed in Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) scorecards connected to that query.
To solve this, add a filter that excludes a certain media type. Set the filter to exclude a type that doesn’t exist (or just a random string). Looker Studio will read this as a dimension in the query, which will mean that you get the correct results in your scorecard.
In most cases, the Instagram Insights API only tracks a metric’s organically generated values. With the exception of the Profile reach and Profile impressions metrics, the API doesn’t report interactions on ads that contain media objects.
For that reason, post interaction data can appear incorrectly, as it might be made up of a total value that includes both paid and organic values.
We recommend using Facebook Ads data to track promoted or paid metrics for Instagram.
Created more than 2 years ago
The Instagram Insights API might remove data that’s more than 2 years old. If that happens, it’s no longer possible for Supermetrics to query the removed data.
Generated before an account was converted to a business account
The Instagram Insights API only offers data on posts and content created after an account was converted into a business account.
For this reason, Supermetrics can’t pull data on anything managed by an account before the date when it became a business account.
- Instagram calculates unique impressions insight value independently. For that reason, total reach might not always exactly equal the sum of your organic and paid reach metrics.
- When summing daily reach values, counts are checked for uniqueness daily, but not for the whole period.
- Reach values are only available for 1-day, 7-day, or 28-day date ranges. Date ranges outside of these won’t return data.
Stories are only available in the Instagram Insights API for 24 hours. To access this data more than 24 hours after it was created, you should store Story data as historical data.
Stories are only available for 24 hours, so special steps need to be taken to capture them before they disappear from the system. If you’re using Supermetrics for Google Sheets, storing this data as historical data will let you access it for more than 24 hours.
Additionally, Instagram Insights won’t return any data on Stories that have less than 5 views.
