How to connect an ad account

Connect an ad account to see paid results next to organic ones in Analytics — ad spend, boosted posts, and ads that never appeared on your page — and to answer comments on your ads in Social Inbox. One connection covers both.

→ Why you need to connect an ad account
→ Before you start
→ Connect an ad account
→ Connect more than one ad account
→ Platform requirements
→ What changes in Analytics once you're connected
→ Replying to comments on your ads
→ Troubleshooting

Why you need to connect an ad account

Connecting an ad account brings the paid half of your social activity into Planable. It unlocks two things:

• In Analytics — your results split into organic and paid at page level and in your reports, along with ad spend and the ads that never appeared on your page. How much of that split reaches individual posts depends on the platform.
• In Social Inbox — the comments left on your ads and boosted posts land in the same inbox as your organic ones, so nobody goes unanswered (Facebook and Instagram).

Neither appears until you connect the ad account, and connecting the page or profile is not enough. Page data and ads data come from two different places on every platform, and Planable needs permission to both. Until an ad account is connected, Analytics shows a Connect your Ad account card in the row of metric cards at the top, in the slot where Ad spend will live, and Social Inbox only shows comments on content published to the page.

It's one connection for both. Connect the ad account once, and it serves Analytics and Social Inbox together — you don't set it up twice.

Before you start

• The page itself is already connected to Planable. If it isn't, start with Connect a page.
• You have Analytics for paid metrics, or Social Inbox for ad comments, in this workspace. The connection is the same either way — your add-ons decide what you can do with it.
• The person connecting needs access to the ad account itself, not just to the page. In practice that's whoever manages the ads — which may not be the person who normally uses Planable Analytics.

Connect an ad account

There are a few ways in, and they all create the same connection — you only need to do this once per ad account, whichever route you take.

From the Analytics promo card

1. Open Analytics for the page you want paid data on.
2. In the row of metric cards at the top, click the Connect your Ad account card.
3. Authenticate with the platform and pick the ad account you want to link to this page.
4. Return to Analytics. Paid data appears once the platform starts reporting it.

From the connect pages modal

Ad accounts also have their own card in the same modal you use to connect pages, so you can add one without going through Analytics.

1. Open the Channels area and start connecting a page as you normally would.
2. Pick the ad account card for the platform you need.
3. Authenticate and select the ad account.
   

From Social Inbox (Facebook and Instagram)

If you're setting up ad comments rather than reporting, you can connect from Social Inbox → Add page → Add Meta Ads Account. It's the same connection, so your paid metrics will show up in Analytics too — see Replying to comments on your ads below.

Connect more than one ad account

A page can have several ad accounts connected to it. Once you've added more than one, a dropdown appears next to the date picker in Analytics so you can switch between All ad accounts and a single account.

Platform requirements

What changes in Analytics once you're connected

• An Ad spend card joins the metric cards at the top of Analytics, alongside CPM, CPC and CPE. These only ever apply to boosted and paid content, never organic.
• Charts gain a Both / Organic / Paid toggle. On Both, bars are stacked in two colours with an Organic / Paid legend.
• Recent days are drawn as hatched Incomplete data bars. Platforms report ad data with a lag, so the last day or two is still filling in — judge trends on data that's at least a few days old.
• Your own promoted posts get a Boosted tag in the Content table, and expand to show From organic and From paid rows.
• A separate Ads table lists advertised content that was never published to your page — often called dark posts. These rows aren't clickable, because there's no Planable post behind them.
• Reports built on a single page, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, gain a Data breakdown selector — Total / Organic / Paid — which sets what data the whole report is built from, plus a Report ad account dropdown below it that scopes the paid figures to all ad accounts or a single one. Cross-channel reports show blended data.
• The Content CSV export includes the paid columns and advertised rows, plus a Source column marking each row Organic or Advertised.

For what each metric means and how the split behaves platform by platform, see Planable Analytics.

Replying to comments on your ads

Analytics isn't the only thing an ad account unlocks. On Facebook and Instagram, the same Meta Ads Account connection also brings the comments left on your ads and boosted posts into Social Inbox, so paid and organic community management happen in the same place. Without it, you only see comments on content published to the page.

You only connect once. It doesn't matter whether you start from the Analytics promo card, the connect pages modal, or Social Inbox — it's one connection, and it serves both paid analytics and ad comments. If you already connected a Meta Ads Account for Social Inbox, your paid data will appear in Analytics without any extra setup, and the other way round.

For how comments are organised and answered once they arrive, plus which platforms and account types support ad comments, see Reply to comments (Social Inbox).

Troubleshooting

I'm asked to reconnect an ad account

Ad account tokens expire, just like page connections. When that happens Analytics shows a reconnect prompt rather than quietly serving stale spend figures — reconnect and the numbers catch up. For page-level connection problems, see Page disconnected & troubleshooting.