Direct Connect vs. Warehousing

Many Looker Studio connectors, like those offered by Supermetrics, provide a "direct API connect" service. This means that they connect directly to the Facebook Insights API and retrieve your data whenever you need it. They never store any data in a server and rely completely on the Facebook API to be available whenever you run a report. This is very efficient, but also very risky.

The risks of Direct Connect

1. When the Facebook API is down, slow to respond, or certain tables are broken, you cannot get any data.
2. Requests over long date ranges or for accounts with a lot of data can take a long time to generate a report in Looker Studio.
3. Some APIs may reach limits if too much data is requested in one report.

The Power My Analytics advantage

1. We backfill data when you initially set up a connector with us and you can backfill more data as needed.
2. We backfill daily so the prior day's updates are available in your reports.
3. Because we backfill and warehouse data, your data is available even when Facebook's and other platforms' APIs are down. You can always be assured you will be able to report data.