Facebook Ads integration

When you connect to your Facebook business account, you will be able to choose Facebook as a data destination for your Ortto audiences, and update your Facebook audiences from Ortto.


Facebook prerequisites

This integration process requires having a Facebook business account for which you have access to the Facebook Ads Manager.

Use of the journey and playbook actions associated with Facebook is determined by your Ortto plan.


Connect from Ortto

To connect to Facebook Ads:

  1. On the Data sources page, click New data source.
  2. Under Advertising or All data sources, select Facebook, then Get started.
  3. On Connect to Facebook, select your Data retention period, then click Connect.
  4. On Configure, select:
    1. One or more Advertising accounts.
    2. The Facebook page you wish to use.
  5. Click Sync to proceed.
  6. Click Done to exit the setup.

NOTE: When you've connected Facebook Ads to Ortto, in your Facebook Ads Manager, ensure you enable Ortto's system user permission to access lead data.


Enable the Autopilot System User for Lead Access

When you connect your Facebook Ads account to Ortto, the integration adds a system user called “Autopilot System User” to your Facebook business account.

The Autopilot System User represents the Ortto app and enables Ortto to retrieve data from your Facebook Business Manager or Ads Manager (i.e. to capture lead ad submission data).

While the Autopilot System User is added automatically, it is not automatically granted permission to access lead data. As such, you need to add the Autopilot System User in your Business Manager (or Ads Manager) Lead Access settings.

NOTE: You need to have full administrative access to the Facebook Business Manager to make changes to the Lead Access settings.

To do so:

  1. In your Facebook Business Manager or Ads Manager, navigate to Business settings > Integrations > Leads Access.
  2. On the Leads Access page, at the People tab, select the option to Assign People.
  3. In the Add People and set permissions popup, select the Autopilot System User, then click Assign to confirm.

NOTE: If you have an existing Facebook Ads connection with Ortto, you will need to disconnect and reconnect the Facebook Ads data source (in Ortto) for the changes to take effect.


How is the data synced from Ortto?

Once your Facebook business account is connected, you can select Facebook Ads as a destination for your Ortto audiences. This will send your Ortto audience to be added to the list of audiences in your Facebook Ads Manager, as long as Destinations is enabled.

NOTE: Your Facebook business account must have write permissions (not read-only) to be able to select Facebook Ads as a destination.

To sync your Ortto audiences to Facebook:

  1. On the Audiences page, click on the audience you wish to sync to Facebook.
  2. In the left-hand details panel, under Destinations, click Edit.
  3. Select Facebook Ads. If you have more than 1 Facebook advertising account connected, you can select the account/s you want to send the audience data to.
  4. Click Save.

Ortto audiences synced to your Facebook Ads Manager will be added as Custom Audiences and will be named with the prefix Ortto:.

Learn more about Facebook’s custom audiences in the Facebook help documentation.

NOTE: If an audience synced to Facebook Ads appears small, it may be due to Facebook Ads being unable to match customer data sent from Ortto, or the audience has not finished syncing. Learn more under Troubleshooting Facebook Ads.

Connecting Facebook Ads as a data source will not send any Facebook data to Ortto.

Ongoing data sync

When an audience that you have configured to send to Facebook Ads is updated (people are added or removed), the updates are synced from Ortto to Facebook.

Resynchronizing data

Audience updates are sent to Facebook Ads:

  • when the data source is reconnected after being disconnected, or
  • if Destinations is re-enabled after being disabled.

What does the data source add to my account?

Connecting Facebook Ads as a data source adds:

  • Facebook Ads as an audience destination,
  • Templates for:
    • A playbook and journey, to get in touch with a contact immediately after they submit an enquiry.
    • Reports, to capture lead ad submissions.
  • Playbook and journey actions, and
  • Activity: Facebook lead ad submitted for lead form submissions:

Learn more about using Facebook in Ortto under Using Facebook.


Access the Facebook data source view

When a data source is connected, you are provided with a data source view. On the Data sources page, click the data source you wish to view.

A data source’s view is the administration page, where you can:

  • give the data source a new name (this will not affect your Facebook account settings). To do so, hover over the name and click the pencil icon, then type the new name and click on a blank area of the page to save the name.
  • disconnect the data source. To do so, click Actions > Disconnect.
  • configure the data retention period for activity data.

Learn more about the data source view under Managing data sources.


Using Facebook

This section describes a few ways you can make the most of your Facebook Ads integration.

Both examples use Ortto audiences synced to Facebook to create campaigns. You can select Facebook Ads as a destination during the audience setup or select it from the audience’s view.

  1. On the Audiences page, click on the audience you wish to edit.
  2. In the audience view's left-hand panel, click Add or Edit under Destinations.
  3. Select Facebook Ads, then click Save.

Create a lookalike audience

One way you can leverage your Facebook integration with Ortto is to use the customer data in your CDP to create a lookalike campaign in your Facebook Ads Manager. A lookalike campaign targets an audience of potential customers based on the characteristics of some of your existing customers.

You can do this by creating an audience of your top-performing customers (if you haven’t already), by setting audience filters that will capture members who meet criteria such as subscribersMRR is above $X or AOV is above $X. Ensure you add Facebook Ads as a destination during the audience setup or in the audience’s view.

With your audience synced to your Facebook account, you can navigate to the Ads Manager from your Meta Business Suite, create the ad, and select the audience synced from Ortto for a lookalike campaign.

Re-target customers who interacted with your content

If you have an audience of customers who downloaded an ebook or attended a webinar, you can sync that audience to Facebook. With Meta Business Suite, use the audience synced from Ortto to create a re-targeting campaign that speaks specifically to how your product or service solves a problem related to the webinar/ebook topic.

For example, let’s say your business is a social media listening tool and you recently ran a webinar about influencer marketing on TikTok. You could create an audience of all webinar registrants and serve them ads around the TikTok insights your listening tool can generate.


Troubleshooting Facebook

This troubleshooting guide is designed to help you with common questions or issues you may encounter when using Facebook as a data source.

For further assistance, please contact our Support team:

  1. In the left-hand navigation drawer of your Ortto account, click Support.
  2. On the How can we help? page:
    • Under Quick links, click Chat with support.
    • Type your message in the Talk messenger widget to start a conversation with our team.

Disconnect and delete the data source

You must disconnect and archive a data source before you can delete it. Disconnecting a data source from Ortto will stop new data from the data source from merging with the CDP.

Learn about disconnectingarchiving and deleting a data source under Managing data sources.

Data source already connected

Disconnect, archive, and delete the existing Facebook connection before attempting to connect again; the existing data source must be deleted.

Connect more than one Facebook account

Ortto can connect to more than one Facebook account at a time. To connect to another Facebook account, follow the steps to connection steps to add the additional account/s. Adding more than one Facebook Ads account will also allow you to send audience data from Ortto to one or more Facebook Ads accounts.

Facebook data source displays as 'syncing' after x minutes/hours

If you have audiences configured with Facebook as a data destination, you may see the data source as "Syncing" if you have a large amount of audience activity (people entering/leaving the audience).

Learn more about data source statuses under Managing data sources.

Ortto audiences are missing from Facebook account

Ensure you have enabled Facebook Ads under Destinations in the Audience you wish to sync to Facebook. Follow the steps outlined under How is the data synced from Ortto?.

Removing Ortto audiences from Facebook account

To stop syncing updates for a particular audience from Ortto to Facebook Ads, deselect the relevant Facebook Ads account (if you have more than 1 connected to Ortto) as a destination for that audience.

Deselecting Facebook Ads as a destination for your audience after it has been synced from Ortto to Facebook will not remove the audience from your Facebook account. You need to edit/delete the audience in your Facebook Ads Manager.

The number of contacts in my Facebook Ads custom audience doesn't match my Ortto audience

When you have enabled audience data to be sent to Facebook Ads as a destination, the audience data is populated in Facebook ads as a custom audience.

Sometimes, the number of contacts in your Ortto audience will be larger than the number of contacts in the Facebook Ads custom audience. This could be for one of two reasons:

  • Difficulty matching Ortto contacts with Facebook contacts. When Ortto sends the data to Facebook, Facebook will try to match the data received with their existing customer data. Customer matching is done using a unique identifier, such as an email address. This may make matching Ortto and Facebook data tricky if, for example, a customer has a different email address in Ortto to the one they have in Facebook Ads (e.g. they are known by their work email address in Ortto, but are known by their personal email address in Facebook Ads).
    Facebook may also remove duplicate customer records, which can contribute to audience numbers differing.
  • Audience data has not finished syncing. Audience data can take 24 hours or more to sync from Ortto to Facebook Ads. If, in Facebook Ads, the audience is marked as "Populating", this means the sync is not complete.