We have already launched our Facebook advertising campaign but now, what data are the most relevant? What should I look for? There are dozens of different metrics that can be extracted from campaign reports, but not all of them are useful. Learn how to filter and interpret your campaign data in the best possible way with this small guide.
Campaign metrics by objectives in Facebook
The first thing to consider before choosing which metrics to use is the objective of the campaign. Before downloading a report, Facebook offers several types of predefined reports with the most useful metrics for that objective and that allow us to extract the data quickly. This pre-selection is enough for a user who does not campaign regularly, but sometimes it may be interesting to add some more.
Traffic
In these campaigns you have to look at the number of clicks on the link. This is when a user clicks somewhere in our post that redirects to an external link. Be careful not to confuse it with the number of total clicks, which can be in any area of the ad, but are not relevant for our traffic report. The relevant cost metric is the CPLC(Cost per Link Click), which is the ratio between the total investment and the number of clicks on the link. Not to be confused in this case either with the CPC, which measures the ratio between the total investment and any clicks on the ad. We should also consider working with the CTR(Click Through Rate) which measures the ratio between people who have seen the ad (impressions) and clicked on the link. A higher CTR is better.
Video
In a targeted video campaign, the important thing is the views, i.e. any user who watches our video. What counts as a view? If a video is played and displayed on screen for more than three seconds or 97% of the total duration is reached, then we can start measuring views. However, Facebook only charges for views of 10 seconds (or 97%), so despite having all these metrics in the report, we will have to take this detail into account when valuing it. The CPV(Cost per View) is the ratio between the investment and the number of views. In the case of video we can use the VTR metric, the same as CTR but counting views instead of clicks.
Lead
Leads are the registrations we get in our Facebook form when we launch campaigns with this objective. The total number of leads tells us how many people have registered and the CPL(Cost per Lead) is the ratio between the total budget of the campaign and the total number of registrations. It is very difficult to estimate a CPL since it depends a lot on the type of product or service we are promoting, the segmentation, etc. An acceptable CPL will be the one we consider good based on the value we give to that registration.
Conversions
A conversion can be a sale, a registration, a registration, an app download…. It will depend on what event we are measuring, although Facebook will always optimize based on what we have indicated. The cost per result is the ratio between the investment in the campaign and the number of total conversions we have had. In this case an acceptable cost depends on what we are promoting. A cost of 20€ for a sale of a high-end smartphone is very good, but not if we are talking about a registration on the website.
Generic metrics
There are some metrics that are common to all types of campaigns and that we should always take into account when reporting on the campaign:
Scope
Indicates the number of unique users that we have managed to impact with our ad. It is useful to compare the same ad launched in campaigns with different audience segmentations, since we can see with which segmentation we are reaching more users.
Prints
This metric provides us with information on the number of times our ad has appeared on a user’s screen. It will always be higher than the reach since sometimes a user can be impacted with an ad several times and therefore increase the total number of impressions of the campaign.
CPM
The Cost per Thousand Impressions tells us how expensive the impressions are costing us and as it is a metric common to all campaigns, it allows us to compare the cost of different campaigns even if they have different objectives. The objective of the campaign and the format of the ad modify the CPM in different ways so it will have to be taken into consideration when comparing.
Frequency
It is the number of times an ad appears per user. An ad with frequency one means that each user has seen that publication a maximum of one time. We can only control the frequency in the Reach campaigns. In this case what we can set is the maximum frequency, the maximum number of times we want a user to be impacted with our ad. By downloading a report we will be able to see the final frequency of the ads.
Interactions
All ads can produce interactions, which are any action that the user performs on the post. Sharing, commenting, clicking, playing a video…. Each action is an added value to our campaign because it means that the user has shown enough interest to provoke a reaction and not ignore our ad. In all campaigns we can measure interactions (engagement) and it is a particularly relevant metric as it allows us to compare campaigns with different objectives and it is also important from a performance point of view as a high rate of interactions always benefits the ad.
Relevance score
This metric is a bit special as it only refers to the ad (post) individually. It is a number from one to ten (the higher the better) that indicates how the audience is responding to the ad and gives us an idea of the acceptance of that post in our target audience. If the score is high it is considered a relevant ad and will be more likely to be shown than other similar ads of the same type. Thanks to this metric we can compare different ads within the same campaign or have a reference of how relevant it is in terms of other advertisers.
