Connect Facebook Ads to Amazon S3 — Raw Data Lake Storage

Log into the Supermetrics Hub, create a new data transfer, select Facebook Ads as the source and Amazon S3 as the destination. Provide your S3 bucket name, region, and AWS credentials (access key + secret key or IAM role ARN). Choose your metrics, set a schedule, and start the transfer. Supermetrics writes structured files directly to your S3 bucket — no custom scripts needed. For optimal downstream analytics, choose Parquet format: it's columnar, compressed, and works natively with Athena, Redshift Spectrum, and AWS Glue crawlers without schema definition.

Supermetrics is SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant. Data transfers are encrypted in transit via TLS. Once in S3, your data inherits AWS-native security controls: server-side encryption (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, or SSE-C), S3 bucket policies to restrict access by IAM principal or IP range, S3 Object Lock for immutable audit trails, and optional VPC endpoints so traffic never leaves the AWS backbone. You can also enable S3 Access Logging and CloudTrail data events to track every read and write to your marketing data. Supermetrics does not retain your data after delivery.

Absolutely. S3 is the standard landing zone for AWS data lakes. Transfer Facebook Ads alongside Google Ads, GA4, CRM exports, and any other data into the same bucket, then query across all sources with Amazon Athena using standard SQL — no loading step required. For automated processing, configure S3 Event Notifications to trigger a Lambda function whenever Supermetrics delivers a new file, or run an AWS Glue crawler to update your Data Catalog automatically. Supermetrics supports 170+ sources, all deliverable to the same S3 prefix structure for a clean, partitioned data lake.

All standard Facebook Ads reporting metrics and dimensions are available, including Impressions, Clicks, Spend, ROAS, CPA, CTR, and many more. You choose exactly which fields to include during transfer setup. Data arrives as clean, structured files in CSV, JSON, or Parquet format. Parquet is especially powerful for S3-based analytics: Athena and Redshift Spectrum can push predicate filters down to the file level, meaning queries scan only the columns and row groups they need — dramatically reducing both query time and per-query cost.

You can schedule transfers hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Most teams use daily transfers for a reliable morning-ready dataset. Supermetrics handles incremental delivery so only new and updated records are written, keeping your S3 costs low and file sizes manageable. For real-time reaction workflows, pair your daily Supermetrics delivery with an S3 Event Notification that triggers a Lambda function — for example, to recalculate budget pacing or fire an alert the moment fresh Facebook Ads data lands in your bucket.

Supermetrics can deliver data to S3 in CSV, JSON, and Parquet formats. CSV is the most universal and easy to inspect. JSON works well for nested data and programmatic processing. Parquet is the best choice for analytics workloads — it is columnar, compressed, and dramatically reduces Athena query costs and Spark processing time.

Supermetrics writes files to the S3 prefix you specify during setup. Files are organized by date so you get a clean, queryable folder structure. This partitioning works natively with Athena and Glue, meaning queries that filter by date only scan the relevant partitions, keeping costs low.

Yes. During initial setup you can trigger a backfill of up to 37 months of historical data from the Facebook Ads API. The backfill uses the same file format and folder structure as ongoing transfers, so your entire dataset is consistent from day one.

Almost nothing. S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB/month, and most Facebook Ads accounts generate less than 1 GB of reporting data per year. Even large agency accounts with dozens of clients rarely exceed 5 GB. At that scale, your annual S3 storage bill for all Facebook Ads data is under $2.

Yes. Amazon Athena lets you run SQL queries directly on files in S3 — no database required. Define a table schema pointing to your S3 prefix (or use Glue Crawler to detect it), and you can immediately run queries like SELECT campaign_name, SUM(spend), SUM(conversions) FROM facebook_ads WHERE date >= current_date - interval 30 day GROUP BY campaign_name.

Supermetrics needs s3:PutObject and s3:ListBucket permissions on the target bucket and prefix. You can provide this via an IAM user access key or an IAM role ARN for cross-account access. Supermetrics only writes to the specific prefix you configure — it cannot read other data in your bucket or access other AWS services.