How to Exclude Actions-Related Secondary Tables From Your Facebook Ads Schema

Fivetran generates secondary tables for fields of type list<AdsActionStats> and list<AdsHistogramStats>, as described in Facebook's field documentation. Some secondary tables associated with prebuilt reports, such as those ending in _ACTIONS or _ACTION_VALUES, may consume a higher amount of monthly active rows (MAR) than others.

However, it's not possible to exclude them from your prebuilt reports while configuring your connection schema. Find out how to avoid excess MAR by excluding this data.

How to avoid syncing action-related data

To avoid syncing action-related data, you must create a custom report in Fivetran that includes only the fields you want to sync.

Field selection

Decide which parent tables and fields you want to sync. Exclude action-related fields and breakdowns. For the full list of fields included in our prebuilt reports, see our Prebuilt Reports documentation.

Create a custom report

1. In Fivetran, go to your Facebook Ads connection page.
2. Select the Setup tab.
3. Click Edit connection.
4. Click + Custom report.
5. Enter the Report name, set an Aggregation, and set the Show Advanced Options toggle to ON if you want to sync the optional fields.
6. Click Next.
7. Select the breakdowns and fields you want to sync. Avoid those related to actions.
8. Click Save.

For more detailed steps, see our Facebook Ads custom report setup guide.

Example

If you want to sync the BASIC_AD table but exclude the secondary tables such as basic_ad_actions, basic_ad_action_values, and basic_ad_cost_per_action_type, create a custom report that excludes the action_values field and any action breakdowns.

Include the custom report to your schema

1. In Fivetran, go to your Facebook connection page.
2. Select the Schema tab.
3. Deselect the checkbox next to the prebuilt report you want to exclude (BASIC_AD for the example above).
4. Select the checkbox next to the custom report.
5. Click Save changes.