Guide

The Meta Ads Manager CSV export, column by column

An Ads Manager export is the one piece of ad data you can read without connecting an account to anybody. It is also the place where most reporting goes wrong, because a file can be perfectly valid and still not contain what a number you are about to compute would need. This page lists what has to be in it, what each column buys you, and where a valid-looking export quietly produces a wrong answer.

Two columns decide whether the file can be read at all

Day and Amount spent. Without spend there is no numerator for any unit price. Without a per-day breakdown there is no time window, so nothing can be compared with anything — and spreading a period total back across its days is invention, not arithmetic. In Ads Manager both come from setting the breakdown to Day before exporting. Every other column widens what can be computed; these two decide whether anything can be.

The columns, and the header names that count as them

Ads Manager writes different headers depending on interface language, and appends the currency to the spend column (Amount spent (JPY)). Anything reading these files has to match on a prefix rather than an exact string. The names below are the ones our own CSV check accepts — this table is rendered from the parser itself, so it cannot drift from what the tool does.

Column	Header names accepted	If it is missing
Day required	`day · date · reporting starts · 日 · 日付 · レポート開始`	Without it the file is refused outright. A report already summed over a period carries no time window, so nothing in it can be compared against anything else, and spreading the total back over days would be a guess.
Amount spent required	`amount spent · spend · cost · 消化金額 · 消化した金額 · 費用`	Without it the file is refused outright. Every unit price on the page — cost per result, CPM — has spend as its numerator.
Campaign name optional	`campaign name · campaign · キャンペーン名 · キャンペーン`	Totals still compute, but everything below them disappears: no per-campaign table, no stop candidates, no cause. In Ads Manager this column comes with the Campaigns-tab export.
Impressions optional	`impressions · impr. · インプレッション · 表示回数`	CPM and CTR cannot be computed. They should stay empty; a tool that shows them as 0 is lying to you.
Link clicks optional	`link clicks · clicks (all) · clicks · リンクのクリック · クリック`	CTR cannot be computed. CPM is unaffected — it does not use clicks.
Results / App installs optional	`mobile app installs · app installs · installs · results · conversions · アプリインストール · モバイルアプリのインストール · 結果`	Cost per result and CPI cannot be computed, so the file supports no verdict on pricing at all. Delivery alone tells you what you bought, never what it was worth.
Currency optional	`currency · currency code · 通貨 · 通貨コード`	Read on its own the file still parses, but a mixed-currency export can no longer be detected by column, only by the symbols in the amounts. See “one file, two currencies” below.

Japanese headers are in the list because the same account exported from a Japanese Ads Manager produces them, and a file that a tool cannot read is indistinguishable, to the person holding it, from a tool that does not work.

What each metric actually requires

A missing input does not make a metric smaller. It makes it not exist. Anything showing you 0% CTR on a file with no clicks column has replaced an absence with a number.

Cost per result (CPI, CPA)
Needs: Amount spent + Results
The denominator is the platform's own count of results, under the platform's own attribution window.
CPM
Needs: Amount spent + Impressions
Clicks are not involved. A missing clicks column does not affect it.
CTR
Needs: Impressions + Link clicks
Needs both. With one of the two it is not a smaller number — it does not exist.
Anything about a trend
Needs: A Day breakdown with more than one date
A single-date file has no before and after in it, whatever its date range says.

Having the column is not the same as having enough in it. Whether the window holds enough to read a cost per result at all is a separate three-threshold question.

Four ways a valid export still gives you a wrong number

None of these make the file fail to open. That is what makes them expensive.

One file, two currenciesExporting more than one ad account at a time can put JPY and USD rows in the same file. Every total is then a sum of different units, and no ratio built on it means anything. The honest move is to refuse the file and name the column that says so — not to pick the majority currency and carry on. Export one ad account at a time.
Dates that read both ways03/04/2026 is 3 April or 4 March depending on the locale the export was made in, and the file does not say which. The order can only be settled where a value above 12 appears somewhere in the column. Anywhere else, assuming a convention silently shifts your whole window by up to a month.
Total rows sitting inside the dataAds Manager exports can carry summary rows with no date. Added to the daily rows they double the spend; dropped silently they make the file look smaller than it is. Either way you should be told the count, not shown a total that quietly disagrees with Ads Manager.
A results column that is a claim, not cashThe results column is counted by the party you are paying, inside a window it chose. That is evidence, but it is not the same evidence as a charge on your side. Treat the two as separate numbers that have to be reconciled — a tool that presents platform-reported results as revenue has skipped the only step that matters.

Read your own export

The checks on this page are the ones our own tool runs, and it runs them in your browser: the file is read by the page you already loaded and is not sent anywhere. No sign-up, no account connection, no email address. If it names a column you do not have, that is the column to add to the export.

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