All Collections
Facebook
Manuals
Facebook Connection Errors
Facebook Connection Errors

Descriptions and debugging guides to most common connection errors in the Facebook integration

Lari Lehtonen avatar
Written by Lari Lehtonen
Updated over a week ago

In case a connection between Facebook and Nosto has been terminated it is most likely caused by changes in your Facebook ad asset settings. We've covered most common topics and reasons into this article as a checklist.

All Facebook ad assets are managed by a user titled as the Business Manager (BM). Essentially a business manager is a business user role on Facebook, but the service can be accessed with same credentials users access their personal accounts. Read more about business manager here.

Each BM has a unique business manager ID. When a connection between Facebook and Nosto is established a business manager who controls your Facebook Company Page and Ad Account as an administrator needs to connect Nosto and Facebook using the wizard in the Nosto admin.

Typical reasons

  1. If Business Manager access to your Facebook Page, Ad Account or to Facebook tracking pixel is removed or revoked, for example if your business manager leaves the company, and connection between your ad account and BM is revoked, it also terminates the connection between Nosto and Facebook, meaning that you can’t control or create ad campaigns using Nosto’s admin anymore.

  2. In addition, if a BM user changes their password it also might revoke the access to create campaigns using Nosto’s interface and tools.

  3. If the Business Manager's access-level to your ad account or Facebook is changed e.g. downgraded to an analyst, it also revokes the connection.

Regardless of the situation, the only way to re-establish the connection is to re-connect Nosto to your Facebook ad assets by a person who is a business manager and can control your Facebook Page, Facebook Pixel and Facebook Ad Account as an administrator.

Remember that you can always pause or stop campaigns also in your Facebook Ads Manager, but you shouldn’t adjust ongoing campaigns there as these become independent from Nosto and other critical services might become unavailable.

Facebook User Is Not Ad Account Admin

User who connects Facebook’s ad assets to Nosto needs to manage associated ad account as an administrator. If you were shown an error message referring to ad account access, you don’t have administrator access to the ad account and the connection wizard will safely terminate. Ask a person or party managing your Facebook ad account as an admin to escalate your access-level to administrator or to connect Nosto to Facebook on behalf of you. In case you need to add additional user to access Nosto’s admin-panel, read guidelines here.

Ad Account Status Invalid

If ad account’s status is invalid, very likely your ad account’s status is unsettled either due to missing or invalid payment method or if ads on the account have previously violated Facebook’s ad policy. Luckily, based on our experience the most common reason for unsettled-status has been failed payment, which is relatively harmless. For example, Facebook might not been able to charge your credit card if it has been expired. Another billing-related issue is exceeding spend limit set for the ad account.

If you have recently removed or changed the ad account administrator who has connected your ad account to Nosto. In such event, you need to disconnect and reconnect your ad account from Nosto by going to Settings > Integrations > Facebook > Manage > Disconnect. However, billing related issues are more common so review first that for example your credit card is not expired and that it has balance left.

Occasionally if ads featured content violating Facebook’s ad policy e.g. pornographic content, guns & ammo, drugs or similar. You can review and configure the settings under Facebook’s business pages. In case your store sells for example lingerie wore by sexually suggestive models or items where explicit content might be highlighted, your ads and ad account might be banned. Read Facebook’s ad policy and guidelines for further details. With Nosto, you can exclude these products from the automatic feed by using Nosto's product blacklist.

Review your ad account’s status in your Facebook Business Manager and follow Facebook’s guidelines on how to re-enable it. If ad account is not actively used, you might want to consider creating a new one and connecting that to Nosto.

User Is Not Facebook Page’s Admin

A user who connects Facebook’s ad assets to Nosto needs to manage company’s Facebook Page as an administrator. If you were shown this error message, you don’t have administrator access to the Facebook page and the connection wizard will safely terminate. Ask a person or party managing your Facebook page as an admin to escalate your access-level to administrator or to connect Nosto to Facebook on behalf of you. In case you need to add additional users to access Nosto’s admin-panel, read guidelines here.

Ad Account Doesn’t Have Tracking Pixel

If you get shown this error message, your ad account doesn’t have tracking pixel or the ad account doesn’t manage this as an admin.

Business Manager Not A Pixel Admin

A business manager on Facebook who manages and creates campaigns also needs to be a Pixel Admin for the selected tracking pixel. If you come across an issue where a business manager is not the admin, follow the steps in the video and ask the person or party who administrates your tracking pixel to invite you as an admin based on your Business Manager ID.

User Is Not Business Manager

The user who tried to connect is not an admin for business manager. Make sure that user on Facebook can access and control the selected business manager as an administrator.

While Connecting: Manage Apps Permissions And Missing Permissions

In order to enable Nosto’s integration with Facebook, we need to ask you to accept necessary permissions.

Accepting manage_business permission controls how Nosto can operate and provide Facebook ad service to you by listing ad accounts managed by the business manager. Essentially it’s needed to link your existing business manager profile to ad accounts which are then connected Nosto account.

Note that you also need to be an administrator of following Facebook ad assets in order to approve Nosto’s app

  • Business Manager

  • Ad Account

  • Facebook Pixel (associated with your ad account)

  • Facebook Page

Nosto will not publish posts on my Facebook business page as this is not even technically possible as our integration app doesn’t have publish_pages access to your Facebook business page. Further technical reference here. Manage_pages is required technical access-level to associate your Facebook page and Instagram profile with each other. Ad account access is required in order to manage your ad assets whereas pixel access is needed for pixel management.

While Connecting: Unexpected Permission Errors

Any unexpected error while connecting Nosto to Facebook ad assets is likely due to a temporary error in the connection attempt between Nosto and Facebook. In the event of seeing an unexpected error message, please try again after a few minutes and again after an hour and if the issue still occurs, the error might be an actual system error requiring further review. If the error persistently occurs after a while, please contact Nosto’s support and report the incident. Screencapture of Nosto’s user interface where the error message is visible always helps us to understand the nature of the issue better and when it occurred, so if possible please share one!

Did this answer your question?