If you aren't monitoring your Facebook analytics in 2025, we have 3.3 billion reasons to start. At the beginning of this year, Mark Zuckerberg said that's how many people use one of Meta's programs each day.

As business-friendly as Facebook is, Meta still focuses on interpersonal engagement. If you don't monitor your Facebook page performance, you'll miss out on key moments to reach new followers.

How do you start monitoring Facebook analytics? What does all that Facebook data mean? Where do Facebook ads come into play? We have the latest answers and guidance to get started measuring your Facebook content and turning it into actionable insights. 

What is Facebook analytics?

As a general term, analytics means collecting and analyzing data to spot patterns that help make more informed decisions with social media content. Data visualizations help display specific metrics like page performance, post reach, and page views.

The native Facebook analytics tools are formally known as Facebook Page Insights. Anyone with a business account can closely watch their Facebook performance on multiple devices. 

Why is Facebook analytics data important?

You wouldn't even think about driving a car blind or setting a pile of money on fire. Failing to monitor your Facebook performance can lead to lost revenue, lower content engagement, and fewer link clicks to your website.

Facebook analytics is a secret weapon for success. It shows who engaged with your content, what Facebook ads are resonating, and when your audience is most active, just to name a few reasons.

As an example, you might easily be able to see that you gained 100 followers in a week. However, does it really sound like something to celebrate when the Facebook analytics data shows that you lost 75 followers, too?

All of those data visualizations aren't just numbers — they are your guide to staying relevant, being profitable, and giving your audience demographics what they want. 

Facebook Insights vs. Analytics: Is there a difference?

The terms used for measuring Facebook performance have changed over the years. Facebook Analytics used to be the proper noun name for the tool that provided Facebook data. That system went away in 2021.

It was replaced with the Meta Business Suite and the term Facebook Page Insights. In this series of dashboards and categories, you can see Facebook analytics tools as well as Instagram data.

Both Analytics and Insights monitor the big picture down to individual posts, but the transition to Meta Business Suite added the full Meta collection of properties. We're hoping Threads will become part of Insights in 2025, since it's growing at about one million sign-ups daily. 

How to use Meta Business Suite for Facebook analytics

Meta Business Suite's tools are robust and can be overwhelming at first glance. However, the more you use the tools with your marketing strategy, the faster you'll be able to reap the rewards.

Managing and monitoring ads

Facebook Ads Manager is now part of Meta Business Suite. Through this system, you can define advertising objectives, target demos, content types, ad locations, and advertising budgets.

Beyond what you can glean from Insights, the Ads tool lets you see exactly how your advertising resonated. This data is provided in real-time, allowing for subtle shifts or major changes if needed.

Those using Facebook's Pixel tool will also be able to see how those ads connected to your website. 

Accessing Insights for Facebook page and post performance

Click Insights from your Meta Business Suite to see key metrics for your Facebook page. Social media users share a lot more demographic and interest information than you might realize. All of this data is crunched and displayed in easy-to-read formats across the business suite.

Beyond just giving data about your page and Facebook posts, the Facebook analytics dashboard offers ways to grow or improve what you've created.

Meta Business Suite does a great job of showing how people interact with your Facebook posts, videos, and ads. However, all that data is confined to Meta properties.

That's where Facebook Pixel, formally known as Meta Pixel, becomes important for businesses and brands with a website. By taking a small piece of code and putting it into the backend of your website, you'll be able to see which Facebook posts, ads, or videos were responsible for driving the most traffic back to your site.

Meta Pixel also gives Instagram and WhatsApp data. 

Inbox management and customer information

When a user interacts with a business page, they should feel like they are a priority. Without tracking tools like Facebook analytics, you might have inbox messages rotting away, along with potential customers or sales.

When customers feel valued, they're more likely to interact with and share your social media content. That's one of the best ways to boost post reach and get more followers and customers.

From your Meta Business Suite, select Insights and then Messaging. For Ad messaging analysis, go to the Ads Manager Summary.

Messaging performance details new contacts, returning/new contacts, response rate, and lead generation.

This tool also allows you to set up automated responses or FAQs. A key tip with automated responses is to be authentic, not robotic.

Instead of writing, "Thanks for your interest. We'll get back to you soon," consider "Your message is important and we're slammed during the day. We check this inbox at 5 pm ET daily and respond to all messages within 24 hours. Until then, here are the FAQs that might help answer your question."   

Customizing your dashboard

Meta Business Suite gives you control over how the dashboard appears.

  • Overview widgets - The system will display the most viewed metrics based on your recent activity. You can also select from the drop down menu of customized views.
  • Rearranging sections - The Meta Business Suite dashboard's flexibility lets you re-arrange the most relevant analytics while hiding sections that might not be important at the time.
  • Custom dates - The Facebook page analytics display for the past 28 days by default, but you can narrow that down to a day, week, quarter, year, or lifetime if you'd prefer.

Most Facebook analytics displays can be downloaded as photos or spreadsheets right from your Facebook page. 

Which Facebook metrics should your business focus on?

All the data available from Facebook analytics isn't helpful if you don't have objectives to match the metrics. The focus points for your ads or organic posts will be determined by what you are trying to accomplish.

That could be awareness if you're a new brand, engagement if you have a solid Facebook audience insights base, or trying to reach new target audience demographics. All of these are housed in the Insights section of your business suite. 

Audience metrics

Every good marketing campaign starts with a target audience. That's the people you believe are most likely to be interested in your brand or business. Facebook analytics help keep you on point and maybe show a new audience you haven't considered.

Facebook page analytics have a separate tab for Audience in Meta Business Suite. This category is broken down into three sections.

  1. Demographics - Displays lifetime follower growth, age, gender, city, and country.
  2. Trends - Shows new followers, returning fans, engaged followers, message contacts, and unfollows. Plus, 28 days of the most active time of day data dashboard helps you plan the best time to post on your Facebook business page.
  3. Potential audience - Using historical data from users and your page insights, Meta will estimate the potential crowd available.

All this information helps you spot anomalies in your target audience while learning more about your ideal customer and unique users. 

Engagement metrics

Once you know who you're talking to, you can then focus on what you'd like them to do. Key features of Facebook analytics include sharing, liking, or commenting.

Track Facebook engagement analytics through the Meta Business Suite, with categories like Overview, Results, and Content. You'll see how users interact with your brand.

Overview paints an analytical picture with broad strokes. It's a nice snapshot of your progress. Views, reach, and interactions display with raw numbers and the percentage increase or decrease. The algorithm knows which Facebook page insights your team has viewed the most and adapts to the most popular.

Under the Content tab, this Overview shows post engagement. When you create content, it goes into a category like posts, stories, reels, videos, or live. Sort through each content type to see which posts help boost page performance.

From there, the Content category displays in a grid with the most recent Facebook page posts. Customize the column displays to focus on your objective. You can also boost a post from this grid, immediately turning a post into an ad. 

Follower growth rate

The more followers you have, the better chance you have to reach new user demographics through engagement. You'll see follower counts in the Overviews, Results, and Benchmarking sections.

On the Results tab, create a goal to expand reach or focus on follower growth, and the dashboard will track progress. Using the native Facebook analytics free tool, you can turn raw data into actionable insights.

Plus, you'll learn what percentage of engagement came from current followers or non-followers. 

Reach and mentions

There's a secret sauce simmering behind Facebook called the algorithm. When people interact with your Facebook page, the algorithm shares that with the person's connections who might like the same content. Because of that, reach and mentions become more important when you track Facebook analytics.

Third-party tools offer far more expansive Facebook analytics tools for mentions and tagging than you'll find in Meta Business Suite. 

Competitor analytics

No matter how good your Facebook page performs, you should always know what your competition is up to.

Meta Business Suite offers basic competitive analytics tools, but you'll need a third-party program to really maximize the intel — page views, post reactions, post engagement — about those in your niche.

A good competitive analysis will also display if your rival is losing followers and why, giving you a chance to improve performance and possibly reach unique users.

How to analyze your competitors on Facebook

Crunching and interpreting Facebook analytics is more than just monitoring your progress; it's about keeping a watchful eye on your competitors. Just take a look at examples like Kodak and Blockbuster to see what happens when you don't pay attention to what other companies are doing and how consumers respond.

When considering competitive analytics tools, it's helpful to know where they thrive and what the limits are.

For example, Insights offers a Benchmarking tool with two dashboards. First, the Business Comparison screen highlights the category you chose when creating your Facebook page. While it's a bird's eye view of the industry and how you compare. Displays include comparisons of content, followers, new followers, and interactions.

To get more specific with your top competition, tap the Businesses to Watch tab. You can put in up to 100 competitors. From your Meta Business Suite landing page, go to benchmarking < businesses to watch.

Data displays here are at a glance, and you won't get in-depth insights, but you'll see how many likes the page received, follower growth or loss, and how much content was published in the past 28 days.

A third option for competitive analysis is checking out the ads posted in the Meta Ad Library. While the library doesn't show valuable insights like how users react to the ads, you will get to see the creative, CTAs, and content types used.

Beyond that, you'll need to invest in a third-party social media analytics tool to get a better competitive breakdown. 

Top 5 best Facebook analytics tools for 2025

Brandwatch

At the forefront of Facebook analytics and audience insights is Brandwatch, with a collection of products that get you right to the metrics that matter most.

Keep your ear to the rail with the social listening tool Listen, analyze your ad campaigns with Advertise, track key metrics with Measure, and always know where the competition stands with Benchmark.

Plus, the Brandwach suite of tools includes adding Meta and non-Meta social media platforms for a comprehensive look at where your brand stands in real time.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite boasts hundreds of metrics so that you can drill down as much as you'd like. Create customized reports or build templates for ease of use. AI recommendations are now part of the dashboard, with an additional feature to enhance top-performing posts so they ride the digital wave a little longer.

Sprout Social

Grow your Facebook analytics with Sprout Social. You'll get detailed insights on post reach, page growth, and engagement metrics on a single dashboard. Plus, compare Facebook analytics to your other social platforms to see where you're making the biggest mark.

Sprout Social blends real-time and historical data to make smart social media analytics data decisions.

Brand24

Anyone from entrepreneurs to major brands can harness the power of Brand 24's social media management tool. In addition to reach, engagement, and volume of mentions, you can also track influencers talking about your brand.

Plus, the sentiment analysis gives a quick view of how the audience is vibing with the business.

Keyhole

Key metrics, competitor analysis, and empowering recommendations are all part of Keyhole's Facebook analytics monitoring tool. Hashtag analytics data for any Facebook business page help you see where trends are rising and falling. 

What is the future of Facebook analytics tools?

For this answer, we turn to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

In his end-of-year summary for 2024, Zuckerberg noted, "I expect Reels on Instagram and Facebook to continue growing. I also expect WhatsApp to continue gaining share and making progress towards becoming the leading messaging platform in the US."

Meta is also leaning heavily into AI, and brands should take notice: "People will get to choose how AI works and looks like for them."

  • How are you preparing for the advancement of AI?
  • Are you using Meta's AI tools to see how it can work in your favor?
  • Have you run your business name or a question about it through the Llama 4 program?
  • Do you know where you might fit in the Metaverse?

By reviewing how you've performed in the past and preparing for the future, you'll be better prepared to use Facebook analytics to stay forward-thinking and relevant. 

Conclusion

No matter how many analytics tools you have, don't get overwhelmed or lost in the data. Avoid knee-jerk reactions, but don't hesitate to make changes when something isn't working.

Set a goal and stay focused. There's always another Facebook metric you can crush next week. 

Frequently asked questions

Should you use a social media management tool for your Facebook analytics?

The answer depends on the extent of your social media and digital presence. If you primarily use Meta properties like Instagram and Facebook, then Insights should be plenty. That's especially true for beginners.

However, if you want more data visualizations and recommendations, a third-party tool can help you stand out from the crowd. They tend to offer more specialized key metrics than the Facebook Insights dashboard.

Plus, you can add in platforms like X, TikTok, or LinkedIn.

How can Facebook analytics help improve my ad campaigns?

It all comes down to what content speaks to your audience to get the result that you want. Without analytics data, you might never see the potential of your brand. Facebook ad campaigns aren't like spaghetti, where you can throw it against a wall and see what sticks.

Plus, once those numbers help you see the sweet spot for your product, you can get a better return on investment and value from the ad spend.

How can you track video performance on Facebook?

The Facebook Insights dashboard allows you to sort by media type. Once you select video content, you can drill down to individual posts. Meta recently changed the view metrics from at least three seconds of watch time to one millisecond.

You can also see the reach, interactions, sticker taps (if you used a sticker), reactions, replies, and shares. Audience demographics are displayed on a chart with a summary of how that video did compared to others you've posted. 

How do you track conversions on Facebook?

Tracking conversions on Facebook requires installing Meta Pixel into the code on your website(s). You'll also need a Meta Ads Manager account.

Insights only go as far as to tell you content engagement on Facebook or Instagram. Pixel takes it a step further to see what your Facebook audience did once they got to your landing page.

Does Facebook Pixel improve analytics tracking?

Yes, and it provides a lot more intricate details than you might expect. You don't just get the number of website clicks, but you can also see how users behaved when they arrived. Did they browse your catalog? Put items in a cart? Make a purchase? Sign up for a newsletter? Think of Insights as leading the proverbial horse to water and Pixel as the tool to see if they took a drink.