6 Key Metrics for Measuring Facebook Ads

Facebook is a great place for retailers to build target audiences, generate sales, and grow their businesses. However, with more and more businesses using the social media platform, it’s becoming increasingly competitive to reach potential customers’ news feeds. In fact, if you are starting on Facebook from scratch, you will likely find it challenging to build a following organically. Many marketers fail to go any farther than measuring the number of likes and shares that their Facebook posts receive. That approach will not get you very far. This is where Facebook Ads come in. Using this feature will ensure that your business stands out on consumers’ news feeds and provide you with important data that will help you measure the true performance of your Facebook ad campaigns. If you currently run Facebook Ads, you have probably seen the very long list of 100+ metrics you have access to. How do you know which ones are important? Glew helps you manage your Facebook performance KPI’s. Everything from Impressions and clicks to orders and revenue earned all in one place. To help you get started, we put together a list of the most significant metrics that you should be analyzing to understand just how your Facebook marketing strategy is performing.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Clicks are defined as the number of times your ad is clicked on. The Click-through Rate metric provides you with the percentage of people who see your ad and click through to your website. The average CTR for Facebook Ads (across all industries) is 0.9%. Additionally, when you have a below average CTR percentage but you’re still getting Impressions numbers, Facebook assumes that your ads are not relevant to your audience. This may cause you to pay more per click for your ads.

CTR = # of clicks / # of impressions

If you find that your CTR is low, then you know that even though people are being exposed to your ad, they are not taking any action. When this happens, you may need to change your ad content or image to make it more encouraging to your viewers.

Click Conversion

Click Conversion: Calculated by taking the number of orders and dividing that by the number of total clicks that can be tracked to a conversion during the same time period.

For example, if you had 50 conversions from 1,000 clicks, your conversion rate would be 5%, since 50 ÷ 1,000 = 5%.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS refers to the return on ad spend from website purchases.

ROAS = website purchases conversion value divided by total amount spent.

ROAS allows you to see and understand the effectiveness of your Facebook ad campaigns and represents how many dollars you will make for every one dollar that you spend on the ad campaign. The significance of the ROAS metric is that it allows you to adjust, plan, and forecast revenue based on how your campaign is performing. It also allows you to make informed decisions about your marketing investments. For example, if you see that you have a negative ROAS, then you should discontinue your campaign right away – it’s costing you more than you are making.

Impressions

The Impressions metric is designed to help you understand the visibility of your Facebook ads. This metric tells you how many times your ad was seen. This includes if your ad was seen multiple times by the same Facebook user. Impressions is defined as the number of times your ad is shown. The higher the impressions the higher brand awareness for your company. Particularly if you are trying to reach new customers, brand awareness should be one of your top priorities. [pro_tip]Online shoppers are exposed to a lot of content every day, especially on Facebook. That means that it’s usually necessary for people to see an ad several times before they act on it and click through to a website. You may remember the old “rule of seven” in marketing. It says that a potential customer has to see your marketing ad or message seven times before they take any action. It’s an old concept, but it still holds true today. The impressions metric helps you make sure that your ads are being seen.[/pro_tip]

CPM and CPC

These metrics, Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) and Cost per Click (CPC), help you to understand how efficient your ad spend is. For example, spending $300 for 1000 clicks is far better than paying $300 for 500 clicks (assuming traffic quality is similar). CPM refers to the average cost for 1,000 impressions. CPM measures the total amount spent on an ad campaign, multiplied by 1,000 divided by impressions. (Example: If you spent $50 and got 10,000 impressions, your CPM was $5.) CPM is calculated as:

CPM = ad cost x 1,000 / # of impressions

If you use CPM pricing for your Facebook Ads, you are charged for each thousand impressions your ad gets. If you use CPC pricing, you are charged only when someone clicks on your Facebook ad. Which you choose to use is at your discretion, with CPC being the most common option. There are advantages and disadvantages for both options. CPM is useful when you are testing different variations of an ad. It’s faster and less expensive to determine which variations are most successful. However, with this option, you have to pay whether or not users who see your ad take any action. CPC is the average cost for each click. CPC pricing ensures that you are only paying for instances when your audience actually click through to your website. The average CPC across all industries is $1.72.

Whichever option you choose, CPM or CPC, tracking the metric will help you get the most from your advertising budget. You can easily understand which ads are worth it and where you are wasting money on underperforming advertising.

Tracking Metrics to Understand Your Facebook Ads Analytics

Glew easily integrates with your Facebook Business Manager account and easily provides you with performance KPIs to help you manage your store. Facebook provides you with a ton of metrics you can track for your Facebook Ads campaigns. The above metrics are just a few sample metrics to get you started. It’s really up to you and the needs of your business to decide which others are helpful.