The beauty of advertising through Facebook is that Facebook provides you with a lot of data (more than any other social media platform). All of those Facebook ad metrics are awesome for helping you understand the efficacy and reach of your paid ad campaigns, and giving you clues regarding when and how to pivot or change strategy if needed. But if you’re not sure what they all mean? Or which ones are the most vital to track? It can be overwhelming.
Today, we’re going to walk through the 33 key metrics for Facebook ads so you can understand how to interpret them and which ones to pay the closest attention to (it’ll be like “Facebook advertising metrics Explained”). By tracking the right metrics and understanding what they’re telling you, you can launch truly powerful PPC campaigns that reach the right audiences. And of course, drive serious engagement and conversion!
Your List of 33 Facebook Advertisement Metrics: The Most Important Metric Categories
Performance: There are many performance metrics, and they’re vital to follow and understand. Performance metrics highlight the way your target audience is interacting with your ads. They’ll include things like the number of clicks, number of views, cost per click, and much more.
Cost: There are several cost metrics, many of which show the cost of each ad broken down into different currencies. Cost metrics also include cost per 1,000 people reached, cost per 1,000 impressions, and cost per action.
Clicks: Clicks are also broken down into a large handful of metrics that show where clicks are taking customers (outside of Facebook or within Facebook), and the count and frequency of those clicks.
Clicks cost: It’s in the name: these metrics measure your cost per unique click, unique link click, outbound click, and more.
Engagement, Messaging, and Media Facebook Ad Metrics
Page post engagement: Page post engagement metrics help you understand the way that consumers are interacting with your ads and the landing page that those ads take them to. How many pages or ads are shared? How often are pictures viewed? Our special offers on pages claimed? All of this information helps you get a clear picture of what consumers are doing with your ads, which can help you better design future ads to increase interactions.
Unique page post engagement: This metric tells you how unique customers are interacting with your landing page.
Messaging: The messaging metrics Facebook Ads provides show you how often customers are messaging you after interacting with your ads (and within what timeframe). You can also see the message reply rate and blocked message conversations.
Messaging cost: Per conversation, how much is each message costing you? The messaging cost metric will show you.
Media: The media metrics that Facebook Ads provides offer incredible insight into the efficacy of your video-based advertisements. Media metrics can show you not only the video watch rate but also the exact points at which customers are tuning in (or dropping out of) your videos. These metrics give you an incredible ability to not only understand how customers are interacting with your videos but to be able to make informed, data-backed decisions on editing or enhancing those videos to better suit their viewing habits.
Media cost: How much is it costing you for every 3 seconds of video view? You’ll want to know, and that’s where the media cost metric comes in.
Facebook Ad Awareness Metrics
Awareness: Depending upon your growth goals, you might care very deeply not only about sales made but also about overall brand awareness generated through your Facebook ad campaign. That’s where the awareness metrics will come in handy. These metrics provide an estimate of the number of customers who remember seeing your ads within 2 days (when asked). This metric is only made available to your assets in the Brand Awareness Objective section of Facebook Ads.
Awareness cost: This is the average cost for each estimated ad recall. Again, this is a metric that’s only made available to assets in the Brand Awareness Objective.
Metrics Measured with Facebook Pixel
Website (Facebook Pixel)
First, let’s make sure we understand what Facebook Pixel is.
Facebook Pixel is a pixel made available through Facebook ads. It’s placed on your website so it can collect data (your Facebook Pixel metrics).
Information like adds to a cart, adds to a wishlist, favorites, product searches, product purchases (basically any activity that you might do on an e-commerce site) gets tracked and recorded by Facebook Pixel and then communicated back to you through Facebook Ads. Pretty cool, huh?
Website (Facebook Pz`ixel cost)
We’ll bet you can guess what this metric will tell you. That’s right, it’s the cost of each of those actions taking place on your website (made measurable by Facebook Pixel).
Website conversion value (Pixel)
This metric’s a little complicated… but it’s important.
Basically, Facebook calculates the total value of purchases acquired through conversions by adding the value parameters you set for your purchase conversion standard event. In some cases, if purchase events cannot be counted directly due to partial or missing data, statistical modeling can be used to make up for that missing information.
Standard events
Standard events can be written into Facebook Pixel’s code so that it will track various actions that are occurring on our website. There are a lot of standard events measured by Facebook Ads. You may not want or need to keep tabs on every single one.
Regardless, they’re made available to you if and when you need them. Some of the key ones to watch are ad clicks, ad impressions, product customizations, donations made, trials begun, and applications submitted.
Standard event value
It’s in the name: these metrics measure the total value derived from each of the standard events Facebook Pixel is tracking on your website.
Standard event cost
With every standard event measured, Facebook Pixel will also tell you the cost of that event (derived from conversions).
Facebook Mobile App Metrics and Conversions
Mobile app conversion value: If you have a mobile app, this metric will help you track the value of total purchases made through conversions via the app.
App actions: There are a lot of app actions that Facebook Ads will let you track if needed. Everything from app downloads to views, searches, open sessions, and even app customizations can be measured if you want them to be. If the mobile app is an integral part of your marketing scheme, you’ll want to pay careful attention to app actions.
App actions cost: Each action’s got one… and you probably want to know it.
Unique app actions: These metrics look at the number of individual users who are taking actions with your app (instead of just the raw count of actions taken). So if there’s a lot of activity that’s occurring with your app, but that’s only happening across a small number of users, unique app action metrics will be able to show you that.
Unique app actions costs: Much like standard events on your website, for every app action, there is a cost, and Facebook Ads will track that for you.
App conversion value: Here you’ll see the total value of purchases derived with your mobile app as a result of ad conversions.
Conversions by conversion window: These are the metrics that demonstrate the time that it takes to convert. Facebook Ads lets you look at conversions occurring within one day, seven days, and 28 days of views, both in terms of raw count and when considering unique customers.
These metrics give you a fascinating perspective on how long it is taking your customers to make a purchase decision with you after having viewed your ad.
Facebook Ad Metrics by Location (On or Off Facebook)
On Facebook: These metrics look at actions that are occurring – you guessed it – on Facebook (as opposed to on your own website).
On Facebook cost: Each action that takes place on Facebook as a result of your ads converting will have a cost to you – here’s where that cost can be found.
Offline conversion value: This metric shows you the total purchase value of those offline activities.
On Facebook conversion value: What is the total value of purchases made on Facebook thanks to conversions? This metric lets you know.
Other: There are three “other” metrics, each of which has to do with inline clicks (clicks in your ads that take customers to specific destinations). You’ll refer to these metrics only if your ads contain those particular inline links.
Offline: If your business has brick-and-mortar retail stores as well as an e-commerce site, offline metrics will let you track and compare conversions made offline with what’s happening online. You can measure how much your Facebook ads are creating real-world outcomes like in-store purchases, phone orders, and more.
Omni conversion value: Take a look at the total value of all purchases made through conversions (whether on or offline).
Collaborative ads: If your brand sells through other retailers or merchants, those retailers can run their own campaigns using collaborative ads. Facebook ads then track conversion rates and a host of other metrics. Then, it shows you the success of those campaigns being run by your vendor partners.
Exploring 11 Powerful Facebook Advertising Metrics: Performance
We’ve covered 33 of the most important key metrics for Facebook Ads, including Performance metrics. Now, let’s take a closer look at a few of the principal performance metrics that you’ll likely want to pay the most attention to and a handful of others that are critical in measuring the success of your ad campaign.
Attribution window
The attribution window tracks the number of days between the time that a customer views (or clicks) on your ad and the time that they’re actually converted. Click-through attribution looks at the window of time from the original click of the ad to the conversion. Finally, view-through attribution measures the window of time between when the ad was viewed and when the conversion occurred.
Reach
Whether or not they’re converted, reach lets you know how many customers are actually able to see your ads. Paid reach measures views of ads that are paid (hence the name). Organic reach looks at users who are seeing your free content as they’re scrolling through their News Feed.
Frequency
Just like it sounds, frequency looks at the number of times that an individual user is exposed to your ad. Frequency is an important metric to look at as it compares to your overall ad campaign performance. If frequency remains high but performance overall drops? It means your ads are no longer sticking in viewers’ minds. It also means a pivot or change in strategy is likely in order.
Outbound clicks
If you have links that drive users to the Facebook family of apps and/or services, you’ll measure that movement through the outbound clicks metric.
Cost per result
When you set up your paid ad campaign through Facebook Ads you’ll have determined an overall objective for the campaign. Cost per result tells you how much you’re spending to achieve that objective. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of the value you’re getting from your campaign overall (so pay attention to it).
Amount spent
This one’s not complicated: you’ve got a budget and you need to stick to it, period. So, the amount spent will show you your estimated budget spent on an ad, ad set, or the ad campaign overall.
Result rate
This metric looks at the percentage of results achieved out of all ad views. To calculate just Divide the number of times your ads achieve their ad objective by the total number of impressions. It’s hard to assess what a “good” result rate should look like. So, your best bet is to use this metric comparatively between multiple campaigns to assess which is strongest.
Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
Impressions are the number of times that a user sees your ad on their screen. So, the cost per 1,000 impressions simply calculates that cost to you.
Click-through rate (CTR)
This metric counts the number of times a user clicks the link in your ad that takes them to your landing page.
Cost per click (CPC)
This is perhaps one of the most studied metrics when it comes to assessing campaign value. What does it cost you every time a user follows the link in your ad to your site, thereby generating awareness, interest, and a possible sale? This is how you find out.
Relevance score (ad relevance diagnostic)
Finally, Facebook Ads presents you with an ad relevance score. This is a qualitative assessment of the relevance of your ad to your target audience.
It’s assessed on a scale of one to ten and comprised of three parts:
- The quality ranking (which looks at the quality of ads displayed to the same audience)
- Engagement rate ranking (which compares the expected engagement rate of ads displayed to the same audience)
- Conversion rate ranking (the anticipated conversion rate of ads displayed to the same audience)
This comparative diagnostic isn’t a direct reflection of your campaign’s success. It’s just nice to be able to see how your ads stack up.
3 Ways To Get Better Facebook Ad Performance
Before we wrap up, let’s address three of the key ways that you can leverage Facebook Ads manager metrics and features to get better campaign performance.
First, it’s essential that you’re targeting the right audience. Facebook Ads allow campaigns to be targeted to particular user profiles. This is based on age and gender, location, language, and a handful of other firmographic characteristics. Use them! If your Vancouver-based children’s clothing boutique ads are somehow only being seen by seniors in England? You’ll want to fix that.
Facebook Ads also lets you track customer behavior with Facebook Attribution and Funnels with its Facebook Analytics interface.
You can build your own marketing funnel and determine your own stages of the funnel. Then Facebook provides you with a dashboard of where customers are (or are dropping off) in each stage of the funnel. It’s a pretty handy feature too. It lets you understand exactly where your customers are at in the various stages of their engagement. That is if you’ve got the time and energy to set it up.
Finally, you can optimize ad creative and test different ad versions with Facebook Ads (and you SHOULD). Feel free to A/B test any number of different ads or types of content. Then, let Facebook Ads’ bevy of metrics tell you what’s working, and what isn’t.
Wrapping It Up
We know it’s a lot of metrics. But don’t feel you need to hem and haw over each and every one. Certain metrics will be more applicable to your business and your campaign than others.
The right marketing agency helps you understand which facebook ad metrics will mean the most for your campaign. They present those stats to you in a way that’s clear and allows you to act on the information. At Blue Water Marketing our team of dedicated professionals knows all things Facebook Ads.
We’re here and ready to help! Let’s make the most of your next social campaign so you can generate serious results and meet those growth goals quickly.
