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, on individual posts, and in your reports, along with ad spend and the ads that never appeared on your page.
- 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 banner inviting you to add one, 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.
The banner is dismissible and platform-specific — the LinkedIn one says LinkedIn, the TikTok one says TikTok. Once an ad account is connected, it disappears.
Good to know: The paid vs organic split is available to everyone with access to Analytics — there's no extra add-on and no change to your plan. It's released one platform at a time: LinkedIn is live now, with Facebook, Instagram and TikTok following the week after. If you see the split on LinkedIn but not yet on Facebook, nothing is broken.
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 banner
- Open Analytics for the page you want paid data on.
- In the banner at the top, click the option to connect an ad account.
- Authenticate with the platform and pick the ad account you want to link to this page.
- 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.
- Open the Channels area and start connecting a page as you normally would.
- Pick the ad account card for the platform you need.
- 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.
Good to know: All ad accounts is only offered when every connected account uses the same currency. We won't add dollars to euros, so if your accounts bill in different currencies the view is scoped to one account at a time and labelled as such.
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.
- 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 gain a Data breakdown control, so one report template can show organic only, paid only, or both.
- The Content CSV export includes the paid columns and advertised rows, plus a Source column marking each row Organic or Advertised.
Pro tip: Public share links follow the author's data breakdown choice, not the viewer's. If you build a report on paid data and share the link, whoever holds it sees your ad spend — no Planable account required. Worth checking before you send one outside your team.
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 banner, 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).
Good to know: Comments on ads are supported on Facebook and Instagram only — LinkedIn and TikTok don't allow it for boosted posts or ads. And while the connection is shared, what you can do with it still depends on your add-ons: paid metrics need Analytics, ad comments need Social Inbox.
Troubleshooting
A colleague sees different paid numbers than I do
This is ad account access, not a bug. It's clearest on LinkedIn, where a single Page can be tied to several ad accounts and several ads managers — and Planable connects a user who has access to the Page. Each of you sees the paid data your own account can reach. Fix it by connecting the missing ad accounts explicitly, or by reconnecting with a user who has access to all of them.
I connected an ad account but I don't see paid data
- Check the platform has been released — LinkedIn first, the others the week after.
- Check there was actually ad activity in the date range you're looking at. If spend for the period is zero, the spend section hides itself rather than showing empty cards.
- Older dates show blank gaps in the organic/paid chart. The split only exists from when we started collecting it, and we'd rather show nothing than a misleading zero.
- On LinkedIn, confirm it's a company page and that the connecting user has ad account access.
- Check you have Analytics for the workspace. If you connected the Meta Ads Account for Social Inbox, the connection is already in place — but paid metrics still need Analytics to display them.
My CSV export has no paid columns
Check three things: you have Analytics access for the workspace, it's a company page rather than a personal profile, and at least one ad account is connected. If any one of those is missing, the export falls back to organic-only with no Source, Spend or advertised rows.
Paid columns disappear when I filter to one ad account
Post-level paid metrics aren't stored per ad account, so we can't honestly re-split them by account. We hide the columns rather than show you a wrong number. Paid follower gains stay unchanged for the same reason — filtering them would mislabel another account's paid follows as organic.
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.
My numbers don't match Ads Manager or Campaign Manager
Compare like with like. Platforms report ad data with a lag, so the last day or two shows as hatched Incomplete data bars — judge trends on data that's at least a few days old. Then check you're using the same date range, and whether you're filtered to one ad account or all of them. If a real gap persists on settled data, send us the platform, the metric, the date range and the ad accounts involved.
Good to know: Some numbers look odd but are correct. Reach is never summed across organic and paid, because it counts unique people and summing would double-count anyone who saw both. And organic follower growth shows zero on a day the page lost followers — organic growth is total change minus paid follows, so on a net-loss day both bars sit at zero instead of drawing negative growth. Hover the chart to see the real signed numbers.
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