Instagram Business

Instagram Business Setup Guide

Instagram Business is used by both content creators and businesses to publish posts and stories. You need an Instagram Business account to get insights into how these posts, stories, and your account are performing.

Instagram is managed by Facebook. Therefore, each of your Instagram Business accounts must be linked to a Facebook page. However, one Facebook account may be linked to up to five Instagram Business accounts. To fetch your Instagram data, Hevo uses your Facebook login credentials to authenticate the respective Instagram Business account.

You can create Pipelines in Hevo that read your data using the Facebook Marketing API and load it to a Destination system of your choice.

Note: From Release 2.25, Hevo has upgraded to v19.0 of the Marketing API. You may need to reauthorize Hevo for existing Pipelines. Refer to section, Add an Instagram Business account and authorize Hevo for the authorization steps.

Setup

Data Sync

Prerequisites

An active Instagram Business account.
An active Facebook account and Facebook page.
The Instagram Business account is linked to a Facebook page.
Instagram currently supports linking an Instagram Business account to a Facebook page only via the mobile app.
Your personal Facebook account must have an admin role on the Facebook Page you are connecting to.
You are assigned the Team Administrator, Team Collaborator, or Pipeline Administrator role in Hevo to create the Pipeline.

Creating an Instagram Business account

You can convert your personal Instagram profile to a business account to access the features that enable you to grow your business.

NOTE: Skip this section if you already have an Instagram Business account.

To switch your profile to a business account:

Log in to your Instagram profile in your mobile.
Click the hamburger menu in the upper right corner.
Under For professionals, select Account type and tools.
Under Account type, click Switch to Professional Account.
Click Business.
Add your business details, such as, your business category and contact information.
Click Done.

Linking a Facebook Page to your Instagram Business account

You must link a Facebook page to the Instagram Business account as Hevo uses a Facebook login to authenticate your Instagram Business account.

To do this:

Log in to your Instagram profile using your mobile.
Click Edit profile.
Under Public business information (Profile Information), click Page.
Select a page from the list of pages that you want to connect to or select Create a new Facebook Page.
Follow the steps prompted by the application and click Done.

Configuring Instagram Business as a Source

Perform the following steps to configure Instagram Business as a Source in Hevo:

Step 1. Add an Instagram Business account and authorize Hevo

Click PIPELINES in the Navigation Bar.
Click + CREATE PIPELINE in the Pipelines List View.
On the Select Source Type page, select Instagram Business.
On the Configure your Instagram Business account page, do one of the following:
- Select a previously configured account and click CONTINUE.
- Click + ADD INSTAGRAM BUSINESS ACCOUNT and perform the following steps to configure an account:
  1. Log in to Instagram using the Facebook account linked to your Instagram Business account(s), and click Continue as <Company Name> in the pop-up dialog. Hevo uses your Facebook login to connect to the linked Instagram Business account.
  2. Select one of the following options:
    - Opt in to all current and future business (Default): Hevo gets access to all the existing businesses in your Business Manager account(s) and the ones you create in the future.
    - Opt in to current businesses only: Hevo gets access only to the businesses in the Business Manager account(s) you select. You can select the accounts individually or click the Select all option to grant access to all the accounts.
      
      Note: As part of the Facebook Marketing API update to v18.0, Hevo requires business management permission to replicate data from your Instagram Business account(s).
  3. Click Continue.
  4. Select one of the following to choose the Facebook page(s) associated with the Business Manager account(s) selected in the previous step:
    - Opt in to all current and future Pages (Default): Hevo gets access to all the existing pages in the account and the ones you create in the future.
    - Opt in to current Pages only: Hevo gets access only to the pages you select. You can select the page(s) individually or click the Select all option to grant access to all the pages.
  5. Click Continue.
  6. Select one of the following to choose the Instagram Business account(s) from which you want to replicate data:
    - Opt in to all current and future Instagram accounts (Default): Hevo gets access to all your existing Instagram Business account(s) and the ones you create in the future.
    - Opt in to current Instagram accounts only: Hevo gets access only to the Instagram Business account(s) you select. You can select the accounts individually or click the Select all option to grant access to all the accounts.
  7. Click Continue.
  8. Review the permissions requested by Hevo and click Save to authorize Hevo to access the data.
  9. Click Got it in the confirmation dialog.
    
    The Instagram Business account is successfully added in Hevo.

Step 2. Configure the Instagram Business Source settings

On the Configure your Instagram Business Source page, specify the following:
- Pipeline Name: A unique name for the Pipeline, not exceeding 255 characters.
- Instagram Business account: Select the Instagram Business accounts. Default: All.
  
  Note: Only the Instagram Business accounts for which you have selected the linked Facebook pages are available for selection.
- Historical Sync Duration: The duration for which you want to ingest the existing data from the Source. Default duration: 1 Year.
Click TEST & CONTINUE.
Proceed to configuring the data ingestion and setting up the Destination.

Data Replication

For Teams Created	Default Ingestion Frequency	Minimum Ingestion Frequency	Maximum Ingestion Frequency	Custom Frequency Range (in Hrs)
Before Release 2.21	24 Hrs	15 Mins	24 Hrs	1-24
After Release 2.21	6 Hrs	30 Mins	24 Hrs	1-24

Note: The custom frequency must be set in hours as an integer value. For example, 1, 2, or 3 but not 1.5 or 1.75.

Historical Data: The first run of the Pipeline ingests historical data for the selected objects on the basis of the historical sync duration specified at the time of creating the Pipeline and loads it to the Destination. Default duration: 1 Year.
Incremental Data: Once the historical data ingestion is complete, every subsequent run of the Pipeline fetches new and updated data for the following objects:
- user_insights_rolling_day
- user_insights_rolling_week
- user_insights_rolling_days28
- media_comment_insights. This is available from Release 1.78. For existing Pipelines, Full Load for this object will be stopped and incremental data ingestion be started instead.
The default ingestion frequency is 24 hours.
The object media-comment-insights corresponds to the following Event Types in the Schema Mapper:
- media_detail
- comment
- video_insights_lifetime_v2
- carousel_album_insights_lifetime_v2
- image_insights_lifetime_v2

Note: From Release 1.86, Hevo ingests only new and updated data for Full Load objects to optimize the quota consumption. This feature is currently available on request only. You need to contact Hevo Support to enable it for your team.

Schema and Primary Keys

The date field represents the dates in which data was generated in Instagram. However, for the object user_insights_rolling_week, it represents the last date of the 7-day duration for which the data is aggregated. For example, if the date is 31/03/2021, then the object user_insights_rolling_week contains the aggregated data for the duration 25/03/3021 to 31/03/2021.

Hevo uses the following schema to upload the records in the Destination:

Data Model

The following tables (objects) are created in the Destination when you run the Pipeline:

Objects	Description
user_detail	Contains details about the Instagram Business account.
page_detail	Contains details about the Facebook page linked to the Instagram Business account.
story_detail	Contains details about the stories posted on the Instagram Business account.
user_age_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains insights about the age distribution of followers, aggregated over a lifetime based on available demographic data.
user_gender_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains insights about the gender distribution of followers, aggregated over a lifetime based on available demographic data.
user_country_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains insights about the country distribution of followers, aggregated over a lifetime based on available demographic data.
user_insights_rolling_day	Contains aggregated insights of the account for the last two days.
user_insights_rolling_week	Contains aggregated insights of the account for the last seven days.
user_insights_rolling_days28	Contains aggregated insights of the account for the last 28 days.
media_detail	Contains details about the type of media content posted from your account.
video_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains aggregated insights for the videos posted from your account over a lifetime.
carousel_album_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains aggregated insights for the carousel albums posted from your account over a lifetime.
image_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains aggregated insights for the images posted from your account over a lifetime.
story_insights_lifetime_v2	Contains aggregated insights for the stories posted from your account over a lifetime.
comment	Contains details of all the comments posted on the media posts of the account.

Note: Instagram has deprecated the video_views field in the video_insights_lifetime_v2 object for API v21.0. This field will be deprecated across all API versions on January 8, 2025. Hence, Hevo will no longer ingest data from this field.

Additional Information

Read the detailed Hevo documentation for the following related topics:

Source Considerations

Instagram allows you to fetch data of up to two years from the current date.
Instagram allows you to create a business account and link it to Facebook only via the mobile app.
Instagram Business aggregates the follower_count metric over a rolling window of the last 30 days. It does not capture any data updates made outside of this window.
Hevo fetches only the latest 10,000 media entities each time the media_detail object is ingested due to the constraints imposed by Instagram.

Limitations

Hevo currently does not support the Hashtags object.
Hevo supports ingesting data from the video_views field in the video_insights_lifetime_v2 object only for video posts.

Revision History

Refer to the following table for the list of key updates made to this page:

Date	Release	Description of Change
Dec-16-2024	NA	Updated sections, Limitations and Data Model to add a limitation on data ingestion for the video_insights_lifetime_v2 object.
Nov-05-2024	NA	Updated section, Creating an Instagram Business account as per the latest Instagram Business UI.
Jul-01-2024	2.25	Updated the page overview to: - Remove the warning container about upgrade to Marketing API v18.0, - Add a note about the upgrade to Marketing API v19.0.
Mar-05-2024	2.21	Updated the ingestion frequency table in the Data Replication section.
Jan-29-2024	2.19.3	- Added a warning container at the top of the page to mention the Marketing API v18.0 update. - Updated sections, Data Model, Schema and Primary Keys, and Data Replication to add information about changes to the Instagram ERD with the Marketing API v18.0 update.
Oct-17-2022	NA	Updated the section, Source Considerations to include information about the rolling window imposed by Instagram on the ingestion of the follower_count metric.
Jul-27-2022	NA	Updated Note in section, Data Replication.
Apr-11-2022	1.86	Added a note in section, Data Replication to inform about optimized quota consumption for Full Load objects.
Dec-20-2021	1.78	Added ‘media_comment_insights’ to the list of objects under Data Replication, Incremental Data section.
Oct-25-2021	NA	Added the Pipeline frequency information in the Data Replication section.
Sep-20-2021	1.72	- Replaced media with media_detail in the Data Replication and Data Model sections. - Updated the section, Source Considerations to include information about the constraints imposed by Instagram on the ingestion of the media_detail object.
Jul-26-2021	NA	Added a note in the Overview section about Hevo providing a fully-managed Google BigQuery Destination for Pipelines created with this Source.
Apr-06-2021	1.60	New document

Last updated on Dec 13, 2024