As part of the work to migrate Facebook profile pages from "Classic" to the "New Page Experience", Meta will again deprecate a number of metrics by September 16, 2024. See Meta's announcement of the changes.
This will impact the Supermetrics Facebook Insights data source and requires that we sunset or change some of the fields we support based on these upcoming deprecations.
This article describes all the updates and what you need to do to prevent any possible issues.
As announced, some fields will be replaced. Our team is working on releasing the replacement fields as soon as possible before the actual field deprecation takes place.
Note for data warehouse users
Due to the extensive changes, we'll be updating the standard table group for this data to source. The current STANDARD will be renamed to STANDARD_ARCHIVE_20240916 in September 16, 2024. All transfers currently using the standard table group will continue to work as the renamed version, but please note that any deprecated fields from this round of changes or previous ones will return empty values. Backfilling data after the sunset date will also overwrite data with empty values and should be avoided.
We'll then make available a new standard table group that removes the deprecated fields, as well as other improvements, optimizations, and new functionality, such as support for Reels. New transfers created after September 16, 2024, will use the new standard table group instead.
Keep in mind that removing fields from your custom tables can lead to that field being removed from your tables in the data warehouse, in particular, if you're using our BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Synapse, Azure SQL DB, or AlloyDB integrations listed in your storage destinations on the Supermetrics Hub.
For other destinations, such as our direct BigQuery integration on Google Cloud, AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Storage, and SFTP, only shards and files are overwritten for the dates you're backfilling and transferring daily within your refresh window.
If you want to preserve the historical data of those fields in your destination, you have two options:
- Keep the affected fields in the custom table, and they will start returning empty values after September 16. If there are replacement fields available, you can add them to the custom table and continue using your custom table as before in your reports.
Note that if you run a backfill after September 16, 2024 for such custom tables to fetch historical data, such as for year 2023, this might also overwrite your historical data for the affected fields with empty values. - Rename your custom tables in the Table Manager and make the necessary changes to the custom table according to the information in this article in case your custom table contains combinations of fields that will lead to transfer failures after September 16, 2024. Renaming custom tables in the Table Manager will lead to new tables or files being generated in your destination.
- If any of your reporting is dependent on the affected custom tables, you'll either need to point the reports to the new tables, or combine the data of the new tables with the tables that contain your historical data (using SQL, ETL tool, or by combining the data inside a BI tool), so that your reports contain both the historical and the latest data.
- Note that you need to rename the custom tables, not the table group. Renaming the table group won't have any impact on the transfer, and this scenario would lead to you losing data for the fields you removed or replaced in your custom tables.
Deprecated fields with no replacements
The following Facebook Insights fields will be deprecated on September 16, 2024, and will no longer return results after that date. While including these in queries won't break them, we recommend you remove the fields as they will no longer provide value.
Field name | Field ID | Notes |
|---|---|---|
People clicking your content | page_consumptions_unique | |
Post consumers | post_consumptions_unique | This is "People clicking your content" used with any post dimension, field is otherwise hidden |
Content click type | consumption_type | |
All clicks | page_all_clicks | |
Negative actions | page_negative_feedback | |
Post negative feedback | post_negative_feedback | This is "Negative actions" used with any post dimension, field is otherwise hidden |
People taking negative actions | page_negative_feedback_unique | |
Post negative feedback givers | post_negative_feedback_unique | This is "People taking negative actions" used with any post dimension, field is otherwise hidden |
Negative action rate | NegativeActionRate | |
Action type | feedback_type | |
Page likers (fans) online per day | page_fans_online_per_day | |
Check-ins | page_places_checkin_total | This also affects the Facebook Public Data field “Checkins” |
People checking in | page_places_checkin_total_unique | |
Age | age | |
Gender | gender | |
Gender & Age | genderage | |
Story type | story_type | |
Organic reach | page_impressions_organic_unique | |
Organic reach of posts | page_posts_impressions_organic_unique | |
Organic impressions | page_impressions_organic | |
Organic impressions of posts | page_posts_impressions_organic | |
Post unique link clicks | post_link_clicks_unique | |
Post unique other clicks | post_other_clicks_unique | |
Post unique photo views | post_photo_views_unique | |
Total page views | page_views | |
Post engaged users | post_engaged_users | |
Post engagement rate | PostEngagedUserPerc |
Deprecated fields with replacements
The following Facebook Insights fields will be deprecated on September 16, 2024, and will no longer return results. While including these in queries won't break them, we recommend you update your queries to use the replacements to continue to get data.
- Link clicks → Use "Post link clicks" with post dimensions instead
- Other clicks → Use "Post other clicks" with post dimensions instead
- Photo view clicks → Use "Post photo views" with post dimensions instead
- Video play clicks → Use "Post link clicks" instead, as this has the same link clicks value as Facebook Insights reporting. Note that Meta is also planning a “Plays” type metric for videos in the future that may be a better replacement for this. We’ll add it once it becomes available in the API
- Organic reach of posts → Will expose existing "Post organic reach" field to use instead
- Organic impressions of posts → Will add new "Post organic impressions" field to use instead
- % of reach from organic with post dimensions → Will add new “% of post reach from organic” field to use instead
New fields will be added sometime before September 16, 2024.
Fields with behavior changes
The Facebook Insights data source will no longer support the following metric and dimension pairs. Depending on the change, there may be behavior changes and actions you may need to take.
Total reach with Demographics dimensions
The "Age", "Gender", "Gender & Age", "Country", “City”, and "Language" dimensions will no longer work with the "Total reach" metric. Using these combinations will result in empty results.
Sadly, there is no replacement for these combinations. However, the metric "Total reach" itself isn't deprecated and will still work in other combinations.
What you need to do: Please remove this combination from your queries.
Total reach with Story type dimension
The "Story type" dimension will no longer work with the "Total reach" metric as it's deprecated. Using this combination will result in empty results.
Sadly, there is no replacement for this combination. However, the metric "Total reach" itself isn't deprecated and will still work in other combinations.
What you need to do: Please remove this combination from your queries.
Total impressions with Story type dimension
The "Story type" dimension will no longer work with the "Total impressions" metric as it is deprecated. Using this combination will result in empty results.
Sadly, there is no replacement for this combination. However, the metric "Total impressions" itself isn't deprecated and will still work in other combinations.
What you need to do: Please remove this combination from your queries.
We're here for you
If you have any questions or concerns about this change, contact our support team.