Reporting

Why are hourly, device and frequency breakdowns missing from my Meta ads reports?

By The Tofu team ·

Since August 6, 2026, Meta makes some ad accounts turn on three breakdowns before they return data: impression device, time of day in the viewer's time zone, and frequency value. Until an account does, Meta says requests for them "may return no results," so dashboards and connectors show blank rows. An ad account admin can request access in Ads Manager, or a developer can enable them through the API, and data shows up within about 24 hours. Meanwhile, hourly stats in your ad account's time zone and the mobile or desktop breakdown still work.

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As of October 2026.

What did Meta change on August 6, 2026?

Meta announced it in its Marketing API changelog on May 8, 2026. From August 6, three Ads Insights API breakdowns "will require enablement for certain Ad Accounts." The change applies to every API version. For accounts that haven't enabled them, requests "may return no results."

BreakdownAPI nameNeeds enabling?
Impression device, on its own or combined with others (such as platform or placement and device)impression_deviceYes, feature impression_device
Time of day (viewer's time zone)hourly_stats_aggregated_by_audience_time_zoneYes, feature time_of_day_viewer_tz
Frequency value: how many times an ad in a Reservation campaign was served to each personfrequency_valueYes, feature frequency_value
Time of day (ad account time zone)hourly_stats_aggregated_by_advertiser_time_zoneNo
Mobile or desktopdevice_platformNo

Meta doesn't say which accounts are affected. Its breakdown docs say only that these "may be unavailable for some ad accounts." Some third-party write-ups, such as Adligator's, say both hourly breakdowns were restricted. Meta's own changelog and docs list only the viewer's time zone version.

Why does my dashboard show blanks but no error?

Meta describes the result as "no results," not as an error, and tells developers to "handle the case where requests return no results." So reporting connectors, BI tools and agency dashboards that pull Meta data through the API can show empty rows or charts for those breakdowns.

Connector vendors have flagged this to their customers. Improvado, for example, says the change "must be done per ad account and requires account-admin access on your side." If you manage several accounts, check each one.

Does this change Ads Manager itself?

Meta announced it as an API change. Its help pages on Ads Manager and Ads Reporting breakdowns still list Impression device and both Time of day options under By delivery in the Breakdown menu, with no note about enabling them. Meta's changelog says account administrators "can request access to these breakdowns directly in Ads Manager," but its help articles on breakdowns don't describe that request yet. Improvado tells its customers to enable each breakdown from the Breakdown menu in Ads Manager. If the breakdowns are blank in Ads Manager too, that is where your admin should start.

How do I turn the breakdowns back on?

There are two ways. Whichever you use, it has to be done for each ad account.

  1. In Ads Manager: an account admin requests access to the breakdowns. Meta says synchronous API calls then "continue to work as expected from that day onwards."
  2. Through the API: a developer sends a POST to /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/insights/feature-settings with feature_name set to impression_device, time_of_day_viewer_tz or frequency_value. A GET to the same endpoint lists the features that are on; features that don't appear count as off.

Meta says data becomes available "within ~24 hours, on a go-forward basis." There's no API to turn a feature off again, and enabling one that's already on does nothing.

Will my missing history come back?

Maybe. Meta's two pages describe it differently. The changelog says that once a breakdown is enabled, asynchronous report jobs "return your full history." The feature settings docs say data arrives "on a go-forward basis," and that an insights_effective_date field shows the first date with data. When that field is missing, data is available for all dates.

The pages also disagree on whether async jobs help before you enable anything. The breakdown table says that if a synchronous request returns nothing, "you can retrieve the data through an asynchronous report job." The changelog says requests may return no results "whether synchronous or asynchronous" until the account enables the breakdown. The safe order, and the one Meta's changelog recommends, is to enable first, then backfill with an async job. Async jobs count against a quota of min(10, number_of_ad_groups) per 24 hours. Hourly data only goes back 13 months in any case.

Which breakdowns can I use in the meantime?

The ones Meta didn't list. For business-hours analysis, use Time of day (ad account time zone): in Ads Manager, click Breakdown, select By delivery, then pick it. For mobile versus desktop, the device_platform breakdown still returns data in the API.

The ad account time zone version has one catch. If you target several time zones, say the whole US, an ad delivered at 9 AM your time reached people at different local hours. For national B2B campaigns, the viewer's time zone version is the one worth enabling.

Frequency value only covers Reservation campaigns. If you buy through the auction rather than Reservation, losing it changes little. The Frequency metric itself isn't on Meta's list.

What should I do now?

  1. Run a device or viewer time zone breakdown on a recent date range with spend. Blank rows while other breakdowns fill in point to this change.
  2. Ask the admin of each ad account to request access in Ads Manager, or have a developer enable the features through the API. Agencies need to do this in every client account.
  3. After about 24 hours, rerun the report. Backfill older dates with an async report job if your tool supports it.
  4. Tell anyone who reads your dashboards that device and hourly numbers from the blank period aren't zero results; they're missing data.

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