It’s a common problem. As Meta advertisers, we’re constantly on a quest for good results. But there’s a situation we’ve all encountered that will make any great advertiser uneasy. The results are good. Really good. But are they too good to be true?

There must be something wrong. I created a great campaign, and I’m proud of it, but this just doesn’t seem possible.

Unfortunately, sometimes your instinct is proven correct. Those results were, indeed, too good to be true. There was an explanation that lowers your excitement about the perceived accomplishment.

Learning that Ads Manager results are too good to be true usually comes down to one of the following:

1. Over Reporting: This tends to be because you set up something wrong that leads to double or over counting.

2. Low Quality: Typically related to low-quality leads or engagement of some kind.

3. Mistaken Interpretation: You took the results at face value, but there are layers to them that help explain what you’re getting.

On one hand, I understand how this is an uncomfortable situation. You feel really good about yourself. Maybe a client feels great about the results. It may be a matter of “ignorance is bliss.” But, eventually, you’ll need to face reality.

If you’re ever in the situation where you fear your Ads Manager results are too good to be true, follow these steps to check for common explanations…

1. Real-World Validation

This is the most obvious example of Ads Manager results that are too good to be true. If Ads Manager is reporting more results than happened, regardless of the source, that’s a problem.

Understand that this isn’t about validating that a secondary source confirms the number of conversions that came from your ads. There is a long list of reasons why Ads Manager can report results and other sources won’t credit your ads. That’s not necessarily a problem.

The issue would be that Ads Manager says you have 100 new purchases and only 40 happened — total, regardless of the perceived source. That’s a sign that something is wrong with your reporting.

Keep in mind, however, that how Ads Manager reports your results could also throw off your ability to match them up with real-world sales. Meta reports conversions based on the date of impression, not the date of conversion. So, the following could happen…

Ads Manager: 10 Purchases on Monday and no purchases on Tuesday through Friday.

Real World: No purchases on Monday, 5 purchases on Thursday and 5 purchases on Friday.

The default attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view, so an ad can get credit for a conversion that happened seven days after clicking. But the date of that conversion will be the date of the impression.

That’s a bit in the weeds, but keep it in mind when lining up Ads Manager with real-world results.

2. Compare Attribution Settings

This is how to uncover one of the most common and easiest explanations for results that seem too good to be true.

The problem isn’t that Ads Manager results results don’t match up with real-world results. You just don’t believe that your ads have been responsible for the number that Ads Manager reports.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of understanding context and not taking your results at face value. The conversions may have happened (as defined by the attribution setting), but not all of them may be considered equally valuable. Let’s use a couple of examples.

Purchases.

You have a campaign that has generated 38 purchases. Let’s compare attribution settings to see how those purchases are broken down. Select every attribution setting.

You’ll then get separate columns for each attribution setting.

There’s a lot happening here…

1. First, 14 of the 38 purchases are 1-day view. It’s not that view-through is completely worthless (especially for purchases), but they are less valuable than a 1-day click. Especially if you emailed many of the same people you were targeting, it’s possible that some of these 14 were simply people who had an impression they didn’t see and converted later that day due to the email.

2. Second, 13 of the purchases happened within a day of clicking. These are the results that you may have the most confidence in because it started with a click and the purchase completed either immediately or within 24 hours.

3. Another 11 (24 minus 13) happened from days 2 to 7 after clicking. I have no issue with these. But someone might make the argument that it’s possible something else was responsible for the eventual purchase.

4. Another 10 (34 minus 24) conversions weren’t even included in the default reporting! These happened between days 8 and 28 after clicking. Meta knows that these people clicked and that they eventually converted. Once again, I have no issues with counting these. But you may place less value on them than 1-day click or 7-day click.

It’s not that 38 (or 48) purchases didn’t happen. But you have differing levels of confidence that your ad is fully responsible.

Registrations and other lighter-touch conversions.

I dug up a campaign that I ran that promoted a blog post, and it led to 257 registrations. Seems crazy! Or maybe too good to be true. Let’s compare attribution settings…

You may not be surprised that this was a remarketing campaign. Of the 257 reported registrations, 142 (55%!) were 1-day view. While you can make the argument for view-through conversions when running a purchases campaign, you can’t here.

Why? Because 142 people didn’t click my ad to read a blog post. But they eventually registered for something within a day. It’s an enormous stretch to suggest that those 142 people were so inspired by the mere appearance of my ad that they googled or went directly to my website to register for something different.

More than likely, this was a case of targeting the same people who were visiting my website anyway.

You can make the argument that the 72 people who clicked this ad to a blog post eventually registered for something. It could have been my newsletter. I have popups and cross promotions. I consider those legit.

But beyond that, I wouldn’t give this ad any credit for the 115 7-day or 104 8-28 day click registrations. Maybe my ads resulted in 72 registrations, but anything beyond that is a stretch.

You may also be interested to know that this ad was also credited with 17 total purchases. But 8 of them were 1-day view (worthless in this situation) and none of them were 1-day click.

Too good to be true? Confirmed.

3. First Conversion Reporting

By default, all conversions will be reported. When comparing attribution settings, you have the option of viewing only First Conversions.

If someone who engages with your ads performs multiple purchase events within the attribution window, for example, all of those purchases will be reported by default. But, you can choose to have Meta only report the first purchase event.

This may not be particularly necessary for purchases (personally, I’d love to see a list of all purchases that result from my ads), but you may want to view both All and First in that case for comparison. Even so, if you have discrepancies with third-party reporting, this may be why.

Where this is most relevant is when the optimized conversion event is likely to happen multiple times. This is most common with custom events that are based on website engagement, but it may also be more common for leads and registrations.

If you ever feel that the Results column is inflated, check the First Conversion box and see if it makes a difference.

The example above is extreme, but it shows how much your default reporting can be inflated by an event that is performed multiple times.

4. Check for Duplication or Overcounting of Events

It’s possible that the reporting in Ads Manager is completely legit. Meta’s reporting conversions credited to your ads. But that relies on you properly defining these conversions.

Here are some things to check…

1. Event Deduplication. Are you passing events via both the Meta pixel and Conversions API? You should be. But, hopefully those events are properly deduplicated. If they aren’t, Meta may count each conversion twice — once from the pixel and once from the API.

If you ever spend any time in Events Manager, it should be obvious if deduplication is an issue. Meta should have alerts all over the place. Unfortunately (or luckily), I don’t have an example of that to show you.

Go to Data Sources and select your pixel. Then expand an event you want to check for deduplication that is working with both the pixel and API. Click “View Details.”

Then click “Event Deduplication” and you will get a review of whether there are any issues.

2. Check Event Location. Well, there was a time when this was possible. Within the same View Details screen from the Event Overview tab, go to Event Breakdown and select URLs.

This should technically list specific URLs where these events are happening. For whatever reason, I’m only seeing domains. I’m still including this step because this appears to be a bug and hopefully it will be fixed.

Ideally, you’ll be able to easily see where your events are happening. You may fire purchase and registration events on the confirmation pages after that action is completed. But this may help you spot a problem if those events are happening on other locations that may lead to overcounting — like the landing page.

3. Test Your Events. Go to the Test Events tab in Events Manager.

Select the channel (probably website) and select whether you’re confirming server or website events.

Assuming you haven’t seen a weird spike in one or the other, let’s use website events as the example.

You will want to go through each step of a conversion. Don’t simply test the confirmation page. Do your best to mimic the user experience.

Paste the URL for the landing page (or whatever starting point you want to use) and click “Open Website.”

The events will dynamically appear within this section of Events Manager as you walk through a conversion on your website.

Look for duplicate events or cases where the events are firing before they should be.

If you spot a problem, of course, you’ll need to fix it. That would require using whatever tool you currently use to create and add events to your website.

5. Check the Assigned Value

A common source of Ads Manager results that are too good to be true is an inflated conversion value that drives the ROAS and Conversion Value columns.

Here are a couple of specific steps to take…

1. Compare Attribution Settings. You would have done this before when checking the total number of conversions and cost per conversion, but it applies to ROAS and conversion values, too.

That ROAS and Conversion Value in the screen shot above? That’s too good to be true…

This was another example of promoting a blog post, but it “led to” purchases. The entire $10,548 in conversion value came from view-through conversions. This is also what drove the ROAS.

Once again, view-through conversions aren’t necessarily a problem. But they have to make sense. If you’re promoting a blog post and people end up buying something unrelated without even clicking the blog post link, you can assume your ad had nothing to do with those purchases.

2. Confirm Assigned Value. The ROAS and conversion value columns are dependent on how you’ve defined the value of these conversions. It may be dynamic or you may have added values manually with event code and parameters.

First, don’t assume that the product purchased is what you were promoting in the ad. As outlined multiple times here, that’s not always the case.

Second, do the math on the product you were promoting. Is the number of purchases multiplied by purchase value in line?

And finally, add custom conversions for specific products. There was a time when Ads Manager would display all of the conversions that happened when hovering over the Results column, but that no longer seems to be the case. So, now it requires that you would have set up custom conversions for your products so that you can view how many of them were purchased.

If a value is off, you’ll need to update it wherever it is set.

6. Double Check a Second Tracking Source

Now, let’s be careful about this one. It’s easy to get carried away with discrepancies.

It’s helpful if you use UTM parameters with your ad links so that you can double check results in GA4 or another reporting software. This is so that you can spot big problems. But ignore any somewhat minor differences.

Ads Manager and GA4 will not report the same. I’ve said it before in this post and I’ll repeat it as often as I need to. The most likely scenario is that Ads Manager will report more conversions than GA4 will give credit to your ads.

I hope the reasons are rather obvious:

1. Only Ads Manager can report on view-through conversions. If someone doesn’t click your ad, the URL with UTM parameters will never be loaded. You can’t even rely on Facebook as a source in GA4 since a link wasn’t clicked.

2. Ads Manager is better equipped to track 7-day and 28-day click. The conversions that should match up most closely are those that happened within one day of clicking. But even then, Ads Manager’s numbers may be a little higher than GA4 since those are unlikely to all be immediate purchases.

3. Ads Manager is better equipped to track across devices. This is getting more difficult for any tracking, but someone clicks an ad from their phone while in their Facebook app. That’s a lot of data. That same person moves to their desktop and opens their browser, which is already logged into Facebook. They go to your website and complete a purchase.

4. GA4 may report organic conversions and Ads Manager won’t. Google has no idea whether you paid to reach someone. While UTM’s might be stripped out when an ad is shared, it won’t necessarily be. That could lead to more conversions reported from Google.

I realize I’ve spent a bunch of words explaining how these numbers won’t add up. But this is intended to provide context for expectations. The 1-day click numbers should be reasonably close to what GA4 reports from Facebook, assuming you’ve properly set up UTM parameters.

One area I’ve found GA4 (which I hate, by the way — LONG LIVE UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS) useful here is for reporting of quality metrics like time spent and other events performed. Here’s an example…

I ran a traffic campaign as an experiment, and I was seeing really good results in Ads Manager — even from my custom events that track quality traffic activity like time spent and scroll. But when I cross-referenced those results with GA4 using UTM parameters, I was given a completely different picture. GA4 said that the average time spent on the page was 4 seconds.

Now, maybe there’s a reason why GA4 may provide suppressed results for time spent. But it at least made me doubt the Ads Manager results enough to think about digging deeper.

7. Breakdown by Placement

Up until now, the focus has been on conversion results that are too good to be true. But this is also extremely common when optimizing for actions further up the funnel.

If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views and get an insanely good Cost Per Action, be skeptical. Use the breakdown feature and take a closer look at the performance by placement.

Check this out as an extreme example…

Nearly every link click was from Audience Network. It’s a placement with a bad reputation as a source of bots, accidental clicks, click fraud, and overall low-quality results.

Amazingly, Audience Network can also be a problem when optimizing for ThruPlays. In particular, the culprit is Audience Network Rewarded Video.

Here’s another crazy example…

The Audience Network Rewarded Video was driving more ThruPlays than actual people reached — by a lot.

This is because Rewarded Video is a way for apps to monetize themselves with ads. Users of those apps are given the ability to view videos in exchange for virtual currency or something else that can be used in the app.

In other words, they likely have no interest in the video at all. They’re just trying to get that reward. And this is almost always reflected in the results — beyond the ThruPlay, these people rarely do anything else.

8. A Note on Small Sample Sizes

And finally, it’s important to drop the reminder that sample size matters. It matters a whole lot.

You may get some amazing results for a day that could be driven by a handful of conversions. And if you’re running a remarketing ad, your potential audience may be seriously limited.

Those results may be legit. But if they’re a small sample size without the ability to scale, you shouldn’t expect those results to continue.

Ultimately, we want scalability, consistency, and predictability. You’re not going to get that with small sample sizes.

Your Turn

I’m sure I forgot something. Is there another source of results that are too good to be true?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Are Ads Manager Results Too Good to Be True? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Conditional Formatting is a feature found in Facebook ad reports that can be super useful for quick evaluations of performance. In this post, we’ll talk about where you can find this and how it works.

Let’s go…

Custom Ad Reports

First, know that this feature is only in custom ad reports right now, not the main Ads Manager. To access your custom ad reports, click the “Reports” drop-down at the far right of Ads Manager.

Then click ‘Create custom report.”

There’s technically another way there, though it’s more complicated. Click the hamburger menu at the top left and select “Ads Reporting” within the Analyze and Report section (assuming it’s not in your shortcuts).

Click “Create Report” and select your ad account.

You should end up in a similar place. I prefer the first method. Not only is it easier, but it will use all of the columns I had saved within Ads Manager. Less set-up.

Add Formatting

Within a column that you want to add conditional formatting, click the down arrow button in the header row. Then select “format.”

From there, create a condition to set the color of the cell.

In the example above, I’ll make any cells with at least a 2.0% CTR green. Note that there are several options for conditions.

We can add more rules to include more colors for that column.

When we’re done, it looks like this…

You’ll need to repeat this process for any important columns that you’ll want to focus on.

When you’re done, you’ll have a visual representation to help you quickly understand whether your ads are performing at, under, or above expectations.

The Problem With This

This is a really great addition. I have one big problem with it, though: I rarely ever use custom ad reports. I find it a duplication of efforts since I view performance within the main Ads Manager interface. I create saved columns to show everything that I need there.

Why can’t Facebook apply this to the main Ads Manager interface? Maybe (hopefully) this is just a testing ground. Many more advertisers would use it if it were in Ads Manager. It would be a valuable tool to have!

Your Turn

Do you use custom ad reports and conditional formatting? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Use Conditional Formatting to Add Value to Your Facebook Ad Reports appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You should be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true traffic results coming from Facebook ads. Don’t just trust that those clicks and landing page views are highly-engaged users. There are ways to check.

We’ve discussed the pitfalls of optimization before. When you optimize for engagement, links clicks, landing page views, or any other surface-level actions, Facebook doesn’t care about quality. Not one bit.

If you tell Facebook you want link clicks, the algorithm will do everything it can to get as many of them as possible for the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter whether they are accidental clicks or three-second views. The optimization, in Facebook’s eyes, did its job.

But you care about quality. You know that a quality visitor is someone who has the potential to return to your website. A quality visitor may want to join your email list. And, of course, a quality visitor may actually buy from you. If not today, one day.

So, how do we verify the quality of your traffic results? Let’s discuss a couple of primary ways…

Add Columns to Your Reports

When you run a traffic campaign, Facebook will report on the metrics that are related to traffic, by default. But, is that all that matters?

Customize the columns of your report.

Then you can add or remove any columns that you want.

Think about what you consider a quality website visitor:

1. What do they do?
2. What might they do?
3. What do you hope they’ll do?

A good place to start will be any standard events that you may have created so that you can track all registrations, searches, leads, purchases, and more that result from your campaign. If possible, start with ranked events, as data is more likely to be complete.

Have you created custom events for quality web activity? This is certainly one solution.

Here are some events I use:

• 2-Minute Time on Page
• 70% Scroll Depth
• Viewed 2+ Pages in a Session
• Viewed an Embedded YouTube Video
• Started my Audio Player

All of these actions are indicators of a quality website visit. Compare the results of these quality actions in this campaign to other campaigns.

URL Parameters and Google Analytics

I’ve written before about how to use URL parameters and Google Analytics to check your results. I’ve also provided an example of how doing so uncovered conversions that Facebook wasn’t reporting.

Set up your URL parameters however you’d like, but I prefer the Dynamic URL Builder that Facebook provides within ad creation. You can have it automatically pull information like the campaign name, ad set name, placement, ad name, and more.

And then, you can check the traffic that comes from people arriving from that link within Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns, and you can then view information like bounce rate, average session duration, and the number of goals completed (assuming you have set goals up).

Once again, compare this information to your typical traffic — or maybe even typical referral traffic, or referral traffic from Facebook. What do you expect for bounce rate, average session duration, and conversion rate on goals? How does this campaign compare?

Example

This post was actually inspired by an eye-opening discovery that I made with one of my campaigns. Allow me to explain what happened and how I detected the problem.

My goal was to drive website traffic to my blog. I started with a traffic campaign that optimized for landing page views and would ultimately try several variations that were conversions campaigns optimized for quality traffic metrics (based on custom events for scroll depth, for example).

The campaign would send close to 4,200 people to my website. The cost per landing page view was pretty good, but something didn’t feel right.

After determining that the average conversion rate (any conversion) on my website for all traffic was about 3%, I set a low bar expectation for this traffic to drive 1% of those 4,200 users — which would have been 42 conversions.

I added columns to my report in Ads Manager. No purchases. No registrations. Only three searches.

Since I was using URL parameters, I then checked the campaign in Google Analytics. Not a single conversion. Nothing. Nada. Facebook didn’t even luck into sending me someone who would convert.

It raised some red flags, to be honest. But, that’s a whole different conversation. The main point here is that I didn’t rely only on Facebook’s default reporting. If I had, that campaign would still be spending.

Make sure that you know what metrics you’re looking for and have multiple ways to check the quality of your results.

Your Turn

Have you had issues with the quality of traffic sent by Facebook ads? What did you do?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Check the Quality of Facebook Ad Traffic appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the biggest complaints during the past year since Facebook implemented changes related to iOS 14 updates is a drop in reporting. While it may not be accurately represented, Facebook is reporting fewer conversions.

I have a simple tip for you that may help, and it’s related to the Facebook ads reporting window.

Understanding Aggregated Event Measurement

One of the changes that Facebook implemented in response to iOS 14+ relates to how to handle events performed by users who have opted out of tracking.

Aggregated Event Measurement allows Facebook to receive such a user’s highest-ranking event during the attribution window. After clicking your ad, for example, that user may perform four web events. Facebook will receive one.

But, an important and often forgotten point is that this data will be delayed. Unlike other event data that will be received immediately, it may take up to 72 hours for Facebook to receive it.

How This Impacts Your Reporting Window

If your targeted audience is likely to use an iOS device, this means that much of your conversion reporting is likely to be delayed. It means that any same-day or recent reporting is bound to be incomplete.

It will look worse than it actually is.

Your reporting in Ads Manager won’t technically be complete (or be as complete as it’s going to be) for 72 hours. That impact will be most significant if your audience is more likely to use iOS devices.

You should understand how this impacts you. Before you make any big decisions based on the performance of your ads, change the reporting window to end four days ago.

It doesn’t mean everyone will see a drastic difference. Only about 12% of my traffic comes from iOS devices, so that’s the most impact I will see. But make sure to use an adjusted reporting window before you make any rash decisions related to the campaign.

Impact on Automated Rules

Keep this in mind when it comes to the Automated Rules you use, as well. If you have determined that your reporting is delayed, your rules shouldn’t execute based on recent data. Base it on wider reporting windows, where the impact of the most recent three days will be watered down. Or adjust the rule to accept a slightly worse result.

Facebook also includes custom date ranges that may be a solution here as well. They don’t omit the most recent three days, but they can go up to the most recent 7.

Your Turn

Have you noticed a delay in your reporting? How do you handle it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Tip: Facebook Ads Reporting Window appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The best advertisers are organized. They can easily and efficiently find any campaign, ad set, or ad that they want. And they can easily and efficiently uncover little hidden gems about their advertising to isolate what works and what doesn’t.

The secret to accomplishing this — to becoming an organized and efficient Facebook advertiser — is found within the naming convention of your advertising campaign.

If you don’t have a naming convention, forget about it. You’re just flying from the seat of your pants.

But if the right information exists within the name of your campaigns, ad sets, and ads, Facebook Ads Manager reporting becomes infinitely more valuable. The purpose of this post is to help you understand the qualifiers that need to exist within your naming convention so that you can become a more efficient advertiser.

[Tweet “The secret to being an efficient Facebook advertiser is found within your naming convention…”]

Understanding Why Naming Convention is Important

Let’s say that you’re running a Facebook ads report for the past 30 days to determine how well your campaigns have driven traffic to a particular client’s website (they have three websites). In order to do this, you’d need to focus only on the following:

• Campaigns associated with that particular client
• Ads associated with that particular client’s single website
• Ad sets that are optimized for landing page views

You don’t care about other clients. You don’t care about that client’s other two websites. And you don’t care about campaigns with ad sets optimized for anything other than landing page views.

But when you load that report for the past 30 days, it includes a whole bunch of stuff. Following are the things that you don’t want to see:

• Campaigns for other clients
• Ads for this client’s other websites
• Campaigns with ad sets optimized for anything other than landing page views

To limit what you see in this report, you’ll need to do some filtering. That’s done by clicking on the “Search” and “Filter” dropdowns…

The search filters are going to be based on the name or ID of the campaign, ad set, or ad (or tag, if you use them).

The filters have improved drastically over the years. They now include delivery, objective, placement, metrics, audience details, and more.

All of this is great, but what about the client name, client website, and optimization? None of that is here. Unless, of course, you use strong naming conventions.

You can isolate the information we’re looking for with some search filtering…

Of course, this won’t work unless you’re using a proper naming convention. Here’s an example of a campaign name, ad set name, and ad name using poor naming conventions:

Campaign Name: “Purchases”
Ad Set Name: “New Ad Set”
Ad Name: “New Ad”

That may look crazy, but the defaults are simply “New [campaign, ad set, or ad].” That’s not helpful.

Campaign Name

The ideal campaign name will include the following qualifiers:

• Client Name
• Page Name
• Item Promoted
• Objective
• Other Variations

It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):

[Client Name] – [Page Name] – [Item Promoted] – [Objective]

Note that a qualifier is only necessary if you create campaigns with variations of that item. For example, if you don’t take on clients, there’s no need to reserve a spot for the client name. And if you only manage one page, that may not be necessary either (though you may want to plan for expansion).

Here’s a real-life example of a name of a campaign that is selling the Facebook Pixel Masterclass, using the Reach objective:

Facebook Pixel Masterclass Video Series – Reach

[NOTE: A whole separate topic here, but this is remarketing to those who visited the landing page during the past 7 days but didn’t convert. Read this post on using Reach for purchases.]

In this case, the name of my campaign is very simple. If I were running multiple campaigns for this course using the same objective, it may be necessary to include the “Other Variations” qualifier as well to isolate the difference between this campaign and the others.

Ad Set Name

Quite a bit of variation can occur within an ad set, so expect the name of your ad sets to be more descriptive.

Your ad set name could include details about any of the following:

• Daily/Lifetime Budget
• Scheduling
• Audience Targeted
• Placement
• Optimization
• Pricing
• Other Variations

It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):

[Daily/Lifetime Budget] – [Scheduling] – [Audience Targeted] – [Placement] – [Optimization] – [Pricing] – [Other Variations]

Once again, you’d only need to provide a qualifier if it’s something that is likely to have a variation. For example, if you only use daily budgets, don’t worry about qualifying that.

Here’s a real life example of an ad set name:

All Website Visitors (30 Days) – US/UK/CAN/AUS – News Feed – Conversions

The ad set title should make clear what it is doing.

Ad Name

There are several qualifiers to consider when designing an ad name:

• Existing Post/New Ad
• Ad Format (image, video, collection, carousel)
• Dynamic Formats for Multiple Text Options
• Copy/Imagery Details
• CTA Button Used
• Language Optimization

It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):

[Existing Post/New Ad] – [Ad Format] – [Dynamic Formats/MTO] – [Copy/Imagery Details] – [CTA Button] – [Language]

If you don’t tend to use Language Optimization, there’s no reason to indicate it. Instead, indicate it when it’s the exception.

A real-life example would look like this (you’d replace each qualifier):

WCA Guide Post – Link – Learn More

I didn’t include the items that weren’t relevant in the name.

Name Templates

Now that you know how to use naming conventions, I have good news for you: Facebook offers name templates!

When creating your campaign, click the gear icon to create a name template.

If you’ve previously created a name template, it will look like this…

Click the plus button to add an item to your name template.

So, you can automatically pull in the campaign name, ID, or objective. You can also throw in custom text of your choice.

Click on “Additional Formatting” to determine how you want to separate each field and each item within a field.

Here’s an example…

You can change or alter these names even after you apply the template.

Here are the ad set name template options…

And for ads…

My only issue with all of this is the formatting. I wish you could add a space between the separators. Because of that, I just do it manually, like I always have.

Your Turn

Keep in mind that there isn’t necessarily a right and wrong naming convention. In fact, I used to be even more specific in the past. Previously, I’d include all qualifiers from the campaign within the ad set and ad names as well. I just find that to be overkill since you will always see the name of the campaign when viewing the ad set or ad.

What naming convention do you use for your campaigns? Do you use the name templates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Ideal Naming Convention for Facebook Advertising Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook Ads Manager and Ads Reporting have seemingly every metric possible. But sometimes, there’s a custom metric that isn’t there. What do you do?

If you’re like most advertisers, you export your stats into a spreadsheet, create a new column, and use formulas to generate this new metric. Thanks to an update to Ads Reporting, this is no longer required.

You can now create custom metrics inside Facebook Ads Reporting. Here’s how…

Access Ads Reporting

First, understand that Facebook Ads Reporting is not the same thing as the base reporting in Facebook Ads Manager. It’s often confused. You may not currently use Ads Reporting. You may now with custom metrics.

Within the main Business Manager menu, select Ads Reporting under “Analyze and Report.”

You may have to select an ad account and generate your first report to get started.

Custom Metrics: Getting Started

On the left-hand side of Ads Reporting, click on “Metrics.” You should then see “Custom Metrics.”

Click to create a new one.

You’ll get a pop-over that looks like this…

After naming your custom metric, you’ll need to select a format of numeric, percentage, or currency. You can also add a description of the metric if you’d like.

At the bottom left, you’ll also be able to select whether this new metric appears only in the current report you’re in or in all of your reports.

Create Your Custom Metric

This is the fun part.

On the right are the categories of base metrics that Facebook offers. Click on any of those to expand and view the metrics available.

Over on the left is the formula area.

Press on the +, -, X, /, (, or ) and that symbol will be added to the formula. Click on any of the metrics on the right and that metric will be added to the formula as well.

[NOTE: You could also type out the operator and metric you are looking for within the formula and Facebook will automatically pull up similar metrics.]

Make sense? Let’s imagine we wanted to create a custom metric called Super Engagement that factored engagement levels, conversion value, and amount spent (I’m totally making this up).

It could look like this…

The video below will walk you through from beginning to end…

A Good Start

This is a really good start for advertisers who have been creating custom metrics manually until now when generating reports. Now you can save the metrics you use the most and produce this column in your reports going forward.

But, as far as I can tell, this doesn’t carry over to the metrics and reporting within Ads Manager. Why not? That would be enormously valuable.

Still, it’s a start.

Your Turn

Have you started using the custom metrics feature within Facebook Ads Reporting? Is this something that you’ll find useful?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Custom Metrics in Facebook Ads Reporting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There was a time when Facebook ad reports were a secret among the most knowledgable advertisers. This goldmine was buried behind sublinks and very few advertisers benefited.

But since Facebook redesigned Ads Manager, the ad reports are now front and center. You can no longer avoid them. And it’s imperative you understand how to use them so that you, too, might benefit.

Let’s take a closer look at five of the ways advertisers like you need to be using Facebook ad reports…

[Tweet “Facebook ad reports are powerful, but are you using them in these five ways?”]

1. Filter by Objective

If you’re like me, you’re constantly running multiple campaigns of varying objectives. At minimum, I’m running both “Clicks to Website” and “Website Conversions” campaign objectives.

It’s important to separate the results for the two. If I’m driving traffic for a popular blog post, I can expect to get a very low cost per website click. But if I’m promoting a product, I know that cost to get a website click will be higher — often by multiples.

Similarly, if I want to compare conversion campaigns, I don’t want my results to be diluted by campaigns that were run simply to drive traffic. They need to be separated.

That’s when filtering by objective comes in handy. At the top right of Ads Manager, click “Filters” and expand “Objective.”

For the purpose of this exercise, let’s select “Clicks to Website.” But as you can see, you can do this for any campaign objective — and you should for all that you use.

Next, within filters, expand “Saved Filters” and select “Had Delivery.”

You can also replicate this by expanding the “Metrics” filter, selecting “Impressions” and enter greater than 0.

You should also select a time period that makes sense. Let’s go with “Last 30 Days” for now.

Here is what the filter bar looks like at the top left…

Now let’s make this report a little more useful for tracking website clicks.

Click the “Columns” drop-down on the right and select “Customize Columns…”

Add and remove columns so that you end up with only what we are shown here (on the right side)…

Now it’s time to save this report so that you can use it later. Click the document icon at the top left and select “Save new report…”

Name it something logical based on the campaign objective and click save…

You should repeat this process for all objectives you use. Then you can easily access performance reports based on specific objectives.

2. Breakdown by Placement

Most advertisers make a lot of assumptions around placement. They assume they should only run ads in the news feed, for example. But is this true?

While you could create ad sets based on placement, this isn’t always necessary. You could run ads to all placements but break down results within your ad reports. Here’s how…

Within the “Breakdown” drop-down at the right, expand “By Delivery” and select “Placement.”

Facebook will now break down the performance of each campaign by placement, providing an individual row for the following that apply:

• News Feed on Desktop Computers
• News Feed on Mobile Devices
• Audience Network on Third Party Mobile Apps
• Right Column Ads on Desktop Computers
• Right Column Ads on Home Page for Desktop Computers

Here’s an example…

This campaign was for my 12 Tips ebook, where the objective was a conversion. Anything surprise you here?

While mobile devices have the cheapest cost per website click (other than Audience Network, which is a very small sample size), the cheapest conversions actually came from desktop. In fact, right column was my top performing placement.

Back to the topic of Audience Network, although it’s a small sample size we see that I likely get accidental clicks. While those website clicks are very cheap, the conversions certainly are not.

We can take this information and make some adjustments.

1. Remove Audience Network. It barely ran anyway, and wasn’t particularly effective.

2. Create separate ad sets by placement. While not required, this would allow me to better control ad spend by placement, thereby focusing a bit more on desktop than mobile — without eliminating mobile entirely (which I would not want to do).

3. Breakdown by Country

You may create ad sets that target multiple countries within them. Or you may even target Custom Audiences with no country filtering. So how do you determine which countries perform best?

Within your ad reports, click the “Breakdown” drop-down, expand “By Delivery” and select “Country.”

Here’s an example of performance of that same campaign by four different countries…

Here you can see that it’s a bit more expensive to get conversions in the United States and Canada. Additionally, Australians are more likely to convert after clicking a link (evidenced by the minimal difference between cost per website click and cost per conversion).

I could apply these learnings to either filter the countries I target or create separate ad sets by country and control my spending.

While we won’t go into it today, also note that you can break down performance by region. In the United States, for example, you can see how your advertising is performing by state.

4. Breakdown by Carousel Card

Carousel ads are a great option for advertisers. They provide the ability to feature multiple image links within the same ad, like this…

So, how do you find out which of those links drove the most clicks?

Click that “Breakdown” drop-down on the right, expand “By Action” and select “Carousel Card.”

Make sure that one of the columns in your report is for link clicks. Then you’ll be able to compare the number of clicks on each image/link.

The title represents the headline you used for each link. In the example above, you can see the clear differences in clicks. The top performing link got nearly four times as many clicks as the lowest performer.

What do we do with this? Well, you could then update that carousel ad to only include the top performers. Or you could simply replace the lowest performer with different content.

5. Breakdown by Destination

When I run ads, I like to track all active conversion pixels, no matter the objective. I may promote a blog post, for example, but those who read that post may end up subscribing to my ebook. I’d like to know that!

So, other than tracking those pixels, how do you see this information in your reports?

Within the “Breakdown” drop-down on the right, expand “By Action” and select “Destination.”

You’ll also want to be sure to customize your columns to include columns for link clicks and relevant conversion types.

Back to that 12 Tips ebook campaign example, here is how it breaks down by destination…

Note there are separate entries for “Get the 12 Tips Ebook!” and “12 Tips Ebook.” That’s because there were different ads with these two different headlines. That’s why those are what generated the link clicks.

Everything else represents the conversion pixels I was tracking. While my objective was to drive conversions for an ebook (there were 11,851!), note that I got far more than that. I also got conversions on four other opt-ins (totaling 924) while selling 111 Power Hitters Club memberships (!) and nine Power Editor course bundles.

If we assume even a very conservative average sale price of $300 for those products, that’s $36,000 in revenue for a campaign that was only meant to collect email addresses.

Most advertisers would have focused only on the objective conversion and never would have known the true value of this campaign. Don’t be “most” advertisers!

Learn More About Facebook Ad Reports!

This is just a sampling of some of the powerful things you should be doing with Facebook ad reports. I will be hosting a live, virtual workshop on Monday, October 5 at 5pm EDT to exhaust the topic!

In this two hour event, I will spend one hour talking about ad reports and another hour discussing Audience Insights. There will also be time for Q&A.

Your Turn

Do you use ad reports in these ways? What other filters and settings do you find useful?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 5 Ways You Aren’t Using Facebook Ad Reports appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

One tool that not nearly enough Facebook advertisers are using is the custom ad reports. No, not the default campaign reporting Facebook gives you. And simply clicking on the “Reports” link doesn’t cut it either.

In fact, once you click on that link within Ads Manager, you’ll get a default report that is pretty darn worthless…

It’s a single report for every campaign you’ve been running for the past seven days, consisting of 17 columns worth of data. It’s not helpful.

But once you dig in — and I mean truly dig in — you’ll find gold. This is the information that will help you learn about what actually works and doesn’t work. And it will allow you to optimize your advertising for success.

I’m obsessed with Facebook ad reports, and I’m determined to make sure that other advanced advertisers use it. It’s why I made it one of the focuses of my FB Mastery Workshops.

If you haven’t used these custom ad reports yet, use this checklist to get started. Even if you have, it’s likely you haven’t done each of these 19 things…

[Tweet “Are you using Facebook custom ad reports to their full potential? Use this checklist of 19 tasks to try!”]

1. Edit Columns

To unlock the gold found within Facebook’s custom ad reports, click the “Edit Columns” button on the left…

Then you’ll see a dialog that looks like this…

2. Use Filters

Chances are good that when you run your reports — especially if it’s for more than a few days — they will include data for campaigns that you don’t want to see at that time. For example, if you create a report for website conversions, you won’t want to see results for campaigns that used the Page Likes objective.

This kind of stuff can be cleaned up by using filters. Click the “Add Filters” button next to the “Edit Columns” button…

You can create filters based on the following:

• Campaign Name
• Ad Set Name
• Ad Name

Your filter can be that your campaign name, ad set name or ad name…

• Contains
• Does Not Contain
• Is
• Is Not

In other words, you are entering a name that is or isn’t in the campaign, ad set or ad name so that you can include only specific campaigns within your reports.

For example, I only want to see results for the Jon Loomer Digital page. So I add a filter for contains “Jon Loomer Digital” in the campaign name…

Or maybe I only want to see campaigns that were run for page likes, and I include the objective within my campaign titles (as you should!). I’d add a filter for contains “Page Likes” in the campaign name…

But what if I didn’t want results for any of my ad sets when targeting lookalikes? Well, I include the name of the target audience within the ad set name, so that’s easy. I’d add a filter for does not contain “Lookalikes” in the ad set name…

For any of these filters to work appropriately, you need to have a good naming convention for your campaigns, ad sets and ads. Be descriptive — and be consistent!

3. Save a Report

What can be annoying about Facebook’s ad reports is that you’ll customize a great report, but as soon as you leave that page you’ll lose everything. If you want that information again, you’ll need to completely recreate it.

That is, assuming you didn’t save it!

Once you’ve created a report that you think you’ll need later, click the “Save” button…

Then name it something descriptive so you’ll remember what it is later…

Then when you want to access it, simply click on the down arrow by “Reports” at the top to get a menu of saved reports (including some default reports that Facebook generates for you)…

4. Share a Report

Now that you’ve saved a report, you can share it with a co-worker or client. Simply click the “Share” button at the top…

You’ll then be given a link that you can copy and share with your colleagues.

5. Schedule a Report

Maybe there is a report that you want emailed to you and your team on an ongoing basis. Click the “Schedule” button on the right…

You can have your report emailed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, starting on a date you determine.

Enter everyone’s email address, and your entire team will receive this report when they need it!

6. View 2 Days Per Row

By default, Facebook will show you results for the past seven days. Each row will show all results by campaign, ad set or ad for that period.

An obscure little option here, though, is to view results by the following:

• 1 day per row
• 2 days per row
• 7 days per row
• All days

By default, Facebook is showing you all days. Click the “All Days” drop-down, though, and you’ll get the other options.

Let’s say that you’re only viewing the results for one campaign (no ad sets or ads) during the past 14 days. By default, you’d see only one row showing you all selected columns of data for that campaign during those 14 days.

But if you select “2 days per row,” each row will cover a different two-day period. You’ll get seven rows in all, helping you spot trends in performance!

7. Add Column for Ad Objective

I typically include the objective (page likes, clicks to website, website conversions, etc.) within the campaign name, but not everyone does that. What if you wanted to see this information within your report?

After clicking the “Edit Columns” button, check the “Ad Objective” box within Data Aggregation.

A column will then be added for your Ad Objective…

8. View Performance by Age

After clicking the “Edit Columns” button, go to Data Breakdowns. This is my favorite information found within Facebook ad reports!

By default, “None” is selected. But instead, select “Age.”

Facebook will now show a column for age so that you will be able to view results based on age group…

Facebook will then give you results for the following age groups (assuming they were reached with your advertising):

• 13-17
• 18-24
• 25-34
• 35-44
• 45-54
• 55-64
• 65+

This can be very useful when determining your cost per conversion, for example, depending on the age of your audience. I know many advertisers will create different ad sets by age to split test, but thanks to Facebook ad reports this isn’t always necessary.

9. View Performance by Gender

You can also have Facebook generate a column for gender…

Facebook will then generate a column for gender…

Your results will now be split up, giving you rows for Male, Female and Other. This can be very useful when determining whether men or women respond more or less favorably to your advertising.

10. View Performance by Age and Gender

Sure, maybe you already determined that women respond best to your ads. And maybe you know that the 25-34 age group is your sweet spot. But that age group also includes men. You can split that out!

Have Facebook generate columns for age and gender…

You’ll then get two new columns, one for age and one for gender…

Your results will now be split up even further, giving you a row for each age group mentioned earlier for each gender (including Other).

11. View Performance by Country

Does performance of your ads differ by country? It’s very likely!

Have Facebook generate a column for country…

In addition to getting a column indicating the country targeted, you will now get a separate row for each country to keep those results separate.

Do you create different ad sets by country? You may not need to!

12. View Performance by Placement

If you don’t manually change your placement within ad sets, Facebook will show your ads across desktop news feed, mobile and right column. But do you ever wonder how your ads performed in each placement?

Some people will create separate ad sets to figure this out. But you don’t need to.

Have Facebook generate a column for placement…

Facebook will then break apart performance depending on where it was shown — one column per placement…

Placements include the following:

• News Feed on Desktop Computers
• News Feed on Mobile Devices
• Right Column Ads on Desktop Computers
• Right Column Ads on Home Page for Desktop Computers

As you can see, Facebook splits apart right column ads to differentiate between when your ads are shown on the home page (next to the news feed) and on all other pages.

13. View Cross-Device Performance

A nice addition that Facebook made recently was for cross-device reporting. Have Facebook add a column for cross-device…

Note that this is mainly for conversion reporting. Some data will not be available for cross-device reports.

Facebook will then generate three new columns for cross-device reporting…

What does this mean? Facebook is helping answer the following questions for you:

1. On what device were users when they saw your ad?
2. On what device were users when they converted?
3. Are these results the same?

It’s quite possible that users are seeing your ad on a mobile device, but later converting from their desktop. This will help you see if that change is being made.

14. View Performance by Destination

You may want to break down performance based on destination. For example, maybe you split tested sending users to different landing pages within the same campaign. For example, maybe one ad went to a Facebook tab and another to your website.

Have Facebook add a column for destination…

Facebook will then show you results based on where users went after clicking your ad…

If they went to a page on your website, Facebook will pull the title from that page. Otherwise, it may be the name of your Facebook page or application.

15. Change the Attribution Window

Most advertisers don’t realize this, but Facebook reports actions (including conversions) as follows:

• 1 day after viewing ad
• 7 days after clicking on ad (previously 28)

So if you are running a campaign that tracks conversions, for example, Facebook will — by default — tell you how many people converted based on those settings. The definition of a “conversion” includes far more than users who clicked and immediately converted.

But this also includes things like page likes and website clicks. I’m fine with this for conversions in particular, but you can change this.

While viewing Actions within Edit Columns, you’ll see at the top that the attribution window is set as described above.

Click the “Change Attribution Window” link.

You’ll now have the following options (image created before removal of 28-day click attribution):

• 1 day after viewing ad
• 7 days after viewing ad
• 28 days after viewing ad
• 1 day after clicking on ad
• 7 days after clicking on ad
• 28 days after clicking on ad

Your results will then be split out depending on how many of the actions were performed within those attribution windows.

One of my page like campaigns broke down as follows:

• 1 day after viewing ad: 5
• 7 days after viewing ad: 5
• 28 days after viewing ad: 5
• 1 day after clicking on ad: 310
• 7 days after clicking on ad: 311
• 28 days after clicking on ad: 311

To help you understand this, note that this campaign generated 316 total page likes. So while 310 people liked my page within 1 day of clicking my ad, 311 did within 7 and 28 days. That just means that one more person liked my page within a day or more following that first click.

[adrotate banner=”43″]

16. Create a Page Likes Report

You should know your way around these ad reports now, so it’s time that you create some saved reports that you can put to good use.

Use the following base settings for a Page Likes report:

• Add Filter: Campaign Name Contains “Page Likes”
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Page Likes
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Page Like

In order for the filter to work, of course, you’ll need to use a naming convention that includes the objective within the campaign name.

Note that this is a base report — it is as basic as can be so that you aren’t distracted unnecessarily by metrics that may not matter.

Of course, you may want to add on data aggregation columns and a few others later. But I like to start with the base and then edit my saved report later.

Some other columns you may need:

• Data Aggregation: Ad Set Name
• Data Aggregation: Ad Name
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions

17. Create a Clicks to Website Report

Use the following base settings for a Clicks to Website report:

• Add Filter: Campaign Name Contains “Clicks to Website”
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Click

Once again, this is very basic to start and the filter will only work if you include the objective within the campaign name. Some other columns you may need:

• Data Aggregation: Ad Set Name
• Data Aggregation: Ad Name
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions
• Actions: Website Conversions

Even though these ads weren’t run with the objective of a website conversion, I often track them anyway.

18. Create a Video Views Report

Use the following base settings for a Video Views report:

• Add Filter: Campaign Name Contains “Video Views”
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Clicks to Play Video
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Clicks to Play Video

Once again, this is very basic to start and the filter will only work if you include the objective within the campaign name. Some other columns you may need:

• Data Aggregation: Ad Set Name
• Data Aggregation: Ad Name
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Actions: Video Views
• Actions: Average Duration of Video Viewed
• Actions: Average Percentage of Video Viewed
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Actions: Website Conversions

When running Facebook video ads, you may be using a CTA button that drives users to a website to perform a conversion. In that case, you may need more columns.

19. Create a Website Conversion Report

Use the following base settings for a Website Conversions report:

• Add Filter: Campaign Name Contains “Website Conversions”
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Conversions
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Conversion
• Revenue: Website Conversion Value

Once again, this is very basic to start and the filter will only work if you include the objective within the campaign name. Some other columns you may need:

• Data Aggregation: Ad Set Name
• Data Aggregation: Ad Name
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions
• Clicks: Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Actions: Website Clicks

I’ll occasionally include CTR and Website Clicks to help me determine if there’s a disconnect between my ad and the landing page.

Your Turn

Note that I’m focusing on the core uses for Facebook ad reports. If you have a mobile app, desktop app, Facebook offer or event, the types of reports will vary.

Any other tasks you’d add to this checklist? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Checklist: 19 Custom Ad Report Tasks for Advanced Facebook Advertisers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

When you analyze your Facebook advertising reports, are you focusing on all of the right metrics? Many aren’t, even when their base metrics are correct.

A prime example of this is with website clicks. Recently I’ve been seeing that I can get a very cheap cost per website click when targeting Lookalikes and interests. In fact, it’s been far lower than the same costs when targeting my fans.

But how could this be? It could mean that either Facebook is doing an insane job assembling Lookalikes and interests. It could also mean that the quality of my fan base is not what I thought.

That’s why it’s important to dig beyond the website click to determine the quality of those actions.

[Want to master Facebook ad reports? It’s one of the featured topics in my 2015 FB Mastery Workshops!]

[Tweet “This experiment shows the importance of digging into the quality of the FB Ad actions reported…”]

The Experiment

During the past few weeks, there were two main posts that were at the center of this experiment:

1) It May Be Time for You to Quit Marketing on Facebook

2) No More Promotional Posts: Facebook Will Penalize More Brand Content

In each case, I created four different ad sets, one for a different audience:

• Fans: 25-49 in US, UK, Canada and Australia who speak English
• WCA 30: Website Visitors (past 30 days) 25-49 in US, UK, Canada and Australia who speak English
• Lookalike Audiences: Based on Fans and Website Visitors 25-49 in US, UK, Canada and Australia who speak English
• Interests: Mari Smith, Amy Porterfield, Facebook for Business or Social Media Examiner 25-49 in US, UK, Canada and Australia who speak English

Ages and countries are based on what I know about my current customers. I based my Lookalike Audiences on groups that I regularly target and who convert. The interests were determined using Audience Insights as those that are most common among my audience.

I also used URL tags so that I could track those who clicked the link from each ad to determine what they did while on my website. For example, the campaign name for the tag may be “quitlookalikes” for the ad reaching those people identified as a Lookalike Audience.

I also excluded people who would have already read the blog post using Website Custom Audiences to eliminate waste.

For each campaign, I created ads that promoted an existing post. I split up spend between each audience as evenly as possible.

Quit Facebook Post (Spend)

• Fans: $136.17
• WCA 30: $135.95
• Lookalikes: $136.28
• Interests: $136.21

No More Promotional Posts (Spend)

• Fans: $71.04
• WCA 30: $71.03
• Lookalikes: $71.04
• Interests: $71.04

For the remainder of this blog post, I will combine results for identical audiences. For example, total spend targeting fans is $207.21 ($136.17 + $71.04).

• Fans: $207.21
• WCA 30: $206.98
• Lookalikes: $207.32
• Interests: $207.25

Cost Per Website Click

The primary purpose of these campaigns was to drive traffic to my website. Here are the total number of website clicks and costs per website click for each audience:

• Fans: 749 Website Clicks ($.28 per Website Click)
• WCA 30: 1,416 Website Clicks ($.15 per Website Click)
• Lookalikes: 1,635 Website Clicks ($.13 per Website Click)
• Interests: 1,242 Website Clicks ($.17 per Website Click)

Since my primary objective was driving website traffic, it would appear on the surface that my most efficient audiences were Lookalikes and WCA 30. Even Interests were in the acceptable range.

On the other hand, it cost me $.28 per website click when targeting fans. This is a group that I target regularly. They are those most likely to engage with my post. Yet, it would appear that targeting them this time was a complete waste of money.

Conversions Generated

Keep in mind that my primary objective here was to drive website traffic to blog posts that were not positioned to convert. I did, however, have both a pop-up and top right widget promoting my ebook. So a percentage of those who visited these posts would undoubtedly convert.

When I created these campaigns, I also tracked pixels associated with this ebook so that I could see how many of those who clicked the ad to read my post ended up converting as well.

Following is the number of ebook conversions by audience:

• Fans: 22
• WCA 30: 19
• Lookalikes: 3
• Interests: 9

That’s crazy, right? Before we saw that fans resulted in fewer than half the website clicks of Lookalikes, yet they converted at a far higher rate.

Here’s a look at the percentage of website clicks that resulted in a conversion:

• Fans: 2.9%
• WCA 30: 1.3%
• Lookalikes: 0.2%
• Interests: 0.7%

Something to keep in mind here is that fans and recent website visitors are far more likely than interests and lookalikes to have previously subscribed to my ebook (more than 10,000 people have subscribed). As a result, a percentage of fans and recent website visitors couldn’t have subscribed again.

To summarize: It cost me far more to drive website traffic when targeting fans, but those people ended up being far more likely to convert. On the flip side, I could drive lookalikes to my website very inexpensively, but conversions were virtually non-existent.

Time on Site

Since I was using URL tagging on the links in my ads, I can break down the amount of time people spent on my site who clicked those links with the help of Google Analytics.

Full disclosure: A small percentage of those who clicked the links wouldn’t have viewed my ad. If someone shared my ad to Twitter or somewhere else, the link could have then been clicked by someone not in my target audience. Still, that percentage will be small, so this analysis remains valuable.

Here is a breakdown of average time on site by audience:

• Fans: 1:12
• WCA 30: 0:55
• Lookalikes: 0:26
• Interests: 0:33

Based on conversion results, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Fans spent more than twice as long on my site than Lookalikes and interests. My recent website visitors weren’t far behind, spending more than double the time of Lookalikes and 0:22 more than interests.

[adrotate banner=”43″]

Dig Beyond the Click

This is an example of why you need to dig beyond the click when analyzing your results. I’d typically say that someone focusing on Cost Per Website Click when traffic is the objective is looking at the right metrics, but clearly that’s not always enough.

My instinct has always been to target those who are most closely connected to me first. That’s why I always target fans and WCA 30. I rarely go beyond that since I have less trust in the quality of the audiences when using interests and Lookalikes.

But if I didn’t know any better, I would have stopped my ads that targeted fans. In fact, I may have escalated budget on the ads targeting Lookalikes.

As you can see, that would have been a huge mistake. Interests and Lookalikes were giving me empty clicks while fans and recent website visitors provided quality visits.

In the end, the quality of actions you’re measuring is most important!

Your Turn

Have you broken down your results in a similar way? What are you seeing from these four different audiences?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Reporting: Not All Website Clicks Are Created Equal appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

If you are running Facebook ads that lead to any sort of conversion, directly or indirectly (sales, lead or opt-in), it’s a must that you use conversion tracking. Google tracking isn’t enough.

But even if you use Facebook conversion tracking, do you know when to use it? Do you know the difference between optimizing for and tracking pixels? Do you know how to set the conversion value? And do you know how to track for multiple conversions?

Answering these questions is precisely the purpose of this blog post.

[Tweet “You’re doing it wrong. Here’s how to track and optimize for multiple Facebook conversion pixels…”]

Why Google Tracking Isn’t Enough

Far too many advertisers think that it’s enough to use Google URL parameters, goals and analytics. It’s not.

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t optimizing for a conversion. We’ll get to why that matters in a minute.

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t able to break down Cost Per Conversion based on the following:

• Age
• Gender
• Age & Gender
• Country
• Ad Placement

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t able to break down cross-device performance. Within the custom Facebook ad reports, you can analyze on which devices users saw your ad and on which devices they converted.

How to Create a Conversion Pixel

Within Ads Manager, click the “Conversion Tracking” link on the left…

Then click the green “Create Pixel” button at the far right…

Next you’ll need to choose a category for the conversion you are looking to get. The options are:

• Checkouts
• Registrations
• Leads
• Key Page Views
• Adds to Cart
• Other Website Conversions

Finally, name your pixel and click the blue “Create Pixel” button…

You will then be given your pixel code…

Copy and place that code between the HEAD tags of the “success” page following a conversion (the “Thank you for your purchase!” page). It’s important this goes on the success page — and the page that only someone who just converted will see. That notifies Facebook that a conversion is complete.

Make sure to refresh the page that has the pixel on it. You should then see that the pixel is active…

Facebook will also begin tracking all times that pixel is fired (typically meaning a conversion, but someone — including you — may refresh it), regardless of whether someone reached that page from an ad.

In the example above, that pixel fired 506 times on September 26. That does not mean, however, that my ads led to 506 conversions on that day. I don’t need to run any ads at all for this to track.

When you run ads and connect a conversion pixel to those ads, Facebook will separate the conversions that happened as a result of someone viewing or clicking your ads.

Setting the Conversion Value

When you create your pixel, you’ll have the option of entering a conversion value. This isn’t required, and that value otherwise defaults to $0.00. But it can be very useful for your reporting!

There are two places where you can enter the value and currency for your conversion…

The value should be the cost of your product. This way, you can easily compare the cost of your advertising to the total value of conversions that resulted from those ads.

Tracking for a Conversion Pixel

You’ve created the pixel, but now it’s time to create a Facebook ad that tracks conversions. How else are you going to measure success?

I strongly encourage you to use Power Editor. The reason for this is going to become clearer in a moment. But trust me on this.

You can track for conversions regardless of your objective. Simply click the “Use Existing Pixels” button when creating your ad…

Note that you could have created a pixel at this step as well, but we already created ours!

Now check the conversion pixel you want to track and click the “Select” button…

Optimizing for a Conversion Pixel

Note that in the example above, you can track conversions no matter your objective. However, keep in mind that if your objective isn’t a Website Conversion, Facebook won’t optimize for that action.

Remember that earlier when you created your pixel, you selected the conversion type. Facebook is then able to see which users convert for which conversion type to help optimize accordingly.

When you choose the Website Conversion objective, you’ll be required to select a conversion pixel twice…

The first button is for choosing the conversion(s) you want to track. The second is for choosing the single conversion you want to optimize for.

Note that the same pixel should be selected for both tracking and optimizing. However, while you can select multiple pixels to track (we’ll get to that in a minute!), you can only optimize for one.

Why You Should Track for Multiple Pixels

If you’re driving website traffic, you should seriously consider tracking for conversions. Even if you aren’t leading to a landing page, you should track for any conversion that leads to that content.

For example, I am writing this post about Power Editor. I also link to my Power Editor ebook (there’s that link!). While getting conversions isn’t my main objective, I should still track for it.

In fact, I should consider tracking Power Editor course sales as well. Not that it’s the focus of this blog post, but because a sales funnel is created for it when someone gets the ebook.

So when you click the button to track conversions, you can actually select multiple pixels…

Note that this is only available within Power Editor. The main ads interface only allows you to track a single pixel per ad.

Using the Facebook Ad Reports

Now you need to analyze the success rate of your advertising. Most people use the main campaign dashboard within Ads Manager. That’s fine, but it’s only scratching the surface!

You need to use the custom Ad Reports. Click on “Reports” on the left within Ads Manager…

The ad reports are EXTREMELY valuable. You need to use them! But the default view is pretty worthless. Click the “Edit Columns” button to get access to your gold.

Select whatever columns are important to your report. Make sure you read this post for more info on that.

Since this is a conversion report, you’ll want to select the appropriate conversions within “Actions”…

To add columns for value of your conversions, select the appropriate conversions within “Value”…

And finally, select the appropriate conversion types under “Cost Per Action”…

This will give you a great base report that will show you the number of conversions, total conversion value and cost per conversion for your advertising. But recall that you can also break down performance by things like age, gender, country and placement.

You do that within “Data Breakdowns”…

Some Tips on Tracking for Multiple Pixels

These new reports will be great for breaking down the number of conversions, value of your conversions and the cost per conversion that resulted from your advertising. But you lose some granularity if you track for multiple conversions.

In the earlier example, I tracked opt-ins for my ebook as well as purchases of my Power Editor course. I tracked multiple pixels for conversion since I have different packages that can be purchased.

While I can view total number of conversions, total conversion value and total cost per conversion, it’s not as easy to break this down by product. Instead, Facebook lumps it together.

One way around this is through conversion types. Since I was tracking my ebook opt-ins (Leads) and sales (Checkouts), I can create columns for each of those conversion types (number, value and cost per conversion for each). However, Facebook lumps together all conversions that are of the same type.

Personally, I’m okay with this. But if you really want to isolate what product someone bought and you’re tracking for multiple conversions, consider using different tracking pixel types.

For example, if you’re tracking sales of three different products, consider using the following conversion types:

• Adds to Cart
• Checkouts
• Other Website Conversions

Of course, you should still optimize for the checkout.

Learn More Benefits of Power Editor

Tracking for multiple conversions is just one of the reasons you should be using Power Editor. The rest can be found in my ebook, “The 9 Ways the Pros Are Benefitting from Power Editor — AND YOU AREN’T!”

The post Facebook Power Editor: Track and Optimize for Multiple Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the main struggles that my readers face as consultants is crafting effective Facebook advertising reports that they can send to their clients.

Luckily, Facebook has a powerful, customizable reporting system available. Unfortunately, the vast majority of advertisers don’t use it.

In this post, we’re going to focus on the following:

• What Custom Ad Reports Are
• What Clients Want vs. What They Need
• The Importance of a Campaign Naming Convention
• Page Likes Report for Clients
• Post Engagement Report for Clients
• Website Clicks Report for Clients
• Conversions Report for Clients
• Schedule Reports

[Tweet “If you manage Facebook ads for clients, you need a system for sending monthly reports. Do this…”]

What Custom Ad Reports Are

If you aren’t using Facebook’s custom ad reports, you aren’t the only one. But it’s now been available for well over a year, and you’re running out of excuses!

If you manage your campaigns from the Ads Manager, you very likely use the standard reporting interface to view how you are doing on a campaign, ad set or ad basis. But you only get the stats that Facebook gives you.

What you want is something more customized!

On the left hand side of Ads Manager, there’s a link for “Reports” and you’ll get a very generic report to start…

This report has 17 columns and isn’t particularly useful. But you can customize it by clicking the “Edit Columns” button.

Once you select the stats you want, click “Save Columns.”

What Clients Want vs. What They Need

Most clients don’t know what they want in a report. Or they act like they do and ask for everything. You need to set expectations and provide structure.

Don’t allow them to be distracted by metrics that don’t matter. Create concise reports that are focused on a clear objective.

I recommend only sending reports at the end of each month. Things change quickly. Don’t allow the client to overreact while you are testing early in the process.

Assuming you run multiple campaigns for different objectives, you should also be generating multiple reports. Following is an example of the reports you may provide:

• Page Likes Report
• Post Engagement Report
• Conversions Report
• Overview Report

Of course, if you’re running campaigns for mobile app installs, for example, you’ll want to run that report as well. It all depends on the work you are providing.

The Importance of a Campaign Naming Convention

Before we get started with creating these reports, it’s important that you follow a very important step. It’s critical that you have an effective naming convention for your campaigns.

You’ll soon see why this is so important. But get into the habit of including the following in the name of your campaigns:

• Name of Page
• Objective (Page Likes, Conversions, Post Engagement)
• Any Other Important Info (Product Promoted, Event)

Here’s an example of a campaign name:

Page Likes Campaign – Jon Loomer Digital – September 2014

The page name and objective will be important for filtering. I include the month for recurring campaigns (I always keep a Page Likes campaign running).

Page Likes Report for Clients

This is a basic report that should be run for most clients. It should capture the performance of all ads run for the sole purpose of increasing Page Likes.

After clicking the Edit Columns button, you’ll find that 14 metrics are selected by default:

• Delivery & Spend: Reach
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Impressions
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 People Reached
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Clicks: Clicks
• Clicks: Unique Clicks
• Clicks: Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Clicks: Unique Click-Through Rate (uCTR)
• Clicks: Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Actions: Actions
• Actions: People Taking Action
• Actions: Page Likes

This report includes several metrics that marketers are in love with. Some are much less important than their reputation. And they simply aren’t necessary here.

We need to give your client the bare minimum. Avoid distractions. Check only the following:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Page Likes
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Page Like

While you can break it down by ad set or ad within “Data Aggregation,” I recommend you don’t. All the client needs to know is how efficiently your Page Likes campaign is building Page Likes.

By default, your report displays data from the past seven days. I want you to change this to “last month.” There’s a filter at the far right to make this change:

Your current report will now include all of the campaigns you ran last month. Now you’ll need to add a filter or several filters to only pull in the Page Likes campaigns for a specific client.

Click the “Add Filters” button and enter the following two filters:

• Campaign Name > Contains > [Name of Page]
• Campaign Name > Contains > Page Like

You can move the columns so that stats are in the order you prefer by grabbing the top row of a column and dragging it over.

Next, save this report for access later by clicking the “Save” button. Make sure the name of that report is descriptive.

Note that this saved report is now available within the top left drop-down.

Post Engagement Report for Clients

Whether you boost a post through your page or promote it within the main ads interface or Power Editor (PREFERRED!), you should run a report that highlights these efforts.

Your goal here is typically to get some sort of post engagement (comment, post like, share).

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Post Engagement
• Actions: Post Likes
• Actions: Post Comments
• Actions: Post Shares
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Post Engagement

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Post Engagement

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Website Clicks Report for Clients

This is separate from the Post Engagement Reports for a reason. When you share a link, general post engagement is nice, but it’s not the objective. Your focus is on driving website traffic.

So for this report, let’s edit columns as follows:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Click

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Website Click

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Conversions Report for Clients

This report will only work if you use conversion tracking so that Facebook can report on the number of conversions your campaigns are generating (one of the many reasons to use Conversion tracking!).

So for this report, let’s edit columns as follows:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Actions: Website Conversions
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Conversion

If you used multiple conversion types, you can choose those as well. Just be careful not to make this more complicated than is necessary.

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Website Conversion

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Overview Report

Finally, you can create a master report that captures more data, just in case. This would be in the event that a client wants to know how many total page likes your campaigns generated, for example (including those that had objectives that weren’t for page likes).

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Page Likes
• Actions: Post Engagement
• Actions: Post Likes
• Actions: Post Comments
• Actions: Post Shares
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Actions: Website Conversions

Note that we don’t use Cost Per Action here since the results will be watered down and will appear worse than they are.

Make sure to filter by Page Name only.

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Schedule Reports

Finally, let’s schedule these reports to be sent to both you and your client!

While viewing one of your saved reports, click on the “Schedule” button…

Next you’ll want to select “Monthly” for the frequency and pick a start date that is the first of the next month.

Finally, enter all email address of the people who need to receive that report. They’ll be emailed links to the export as well as the page for the report (they will need to have access to that page).

Your Turn

I didn’t cover every objective above (Photo Views, Video Views, Mobile App Installs, Event RSVP, Offer Claims, etc.), but you get the picture.

How do you handle reports for your clients?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Effective Facebook Ad Reports for Clients appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

An example I run into regularly is “Clicks.” Advertisers will follow it along with CTR (Click-Through Rate) and CPC (Cost Per Click) thinking that they are tracking the clicks to their website.

They are usually wrong.

Here’s an example of a question I received recently from Ayush Agrawal:

Hi Jon, hope you are well. I’m noticing a huge difference in the numbers that reflect on Facebook Ads manager dashboard & Facebook Ads report. Are you also experiencing the same?

After I asked Ayush for details, he went on to explain…

Basically (an example) in Ads Manager Dashboard a ad shows 1800 clicks but when I check the Facebook Ads report there are about 2010 clicks for the same ad. The spent number in both the cases are the same. Not sure if I’m only facing this issue. I have seen this happening recently with all my ads (the click numbers dont match). I have also emailed multiple teams in Facebook but no one has bothered replying. So I thought I might ask you!

I suspected the problem wasn’t a misreporting by Facebook, but that Ayush was looking at two different numbers he thought were the same but were not. I suspected correctly.

You can read the entire conversation here:

[Tweet “Are you sure you know the meaning of that Facebook ad click? You may be over reporting…”]

The Facebook Ad “Click”

Within the Ads Manager, Facebook will provide some basic results based on how you’ve optimized your campaign. The typical report will give you results for “Clicks” and “Click-Through Rate” like this:

Understand that the number reported here is the “Total number of clicks the ad received.” If you shared a link, that does include clicks on that link. But it also includes things like:

• Expanding the description
• Clicking to read the comments
• Post Likes
• Post comments
• Post shares
• Page Likes

And there are many more. If you’re tracking the success of an ad that is driving traffic to your website by focusing on Clicks, CTR and CPC (thinking they are focused on website clicks), you are over reporting your success.

The Website Click

If you optimize for website clicks, Facebook will automatically show you the number of website clicks an ad generates within the main Ads Manager report:

But if you optimize for something else (like post engagement), Facebook will not give you these numbers in the main Ads Manager report. This is the main source of confusion.

Viewing Clicks vs. Website Clicks

Of course, you should be using Facebook’s Ad Reports. Do the following…

1) Create a Filter: I created a filter for Campaign Name Contains “Facebook Ad Website Clicks” since the name of the campaign I want to follow has those words in the title.

2) Edit Columns: Make sure to select the “Clicks” checkbox within the Clicks group (confusing, I know). Then check “Website Clicks” within the Actions group.

I also selected Page Like, Post Like, Post Comment and Post Share to provide some perspective on the clicks that are being reported under “Clicks.”

So if I had been reporting Clicks (862) as Website Clicks (642), I would have been over reporting by 34%.

Even if you were to add up Website Clicks, Post Shares, Post Comments, Post Likes and Page Likes that resulted from this campaign, that still only makes up 747 (87%) of the total Clicks.

In other words, there are a lot of invisible clicks that are happening that contribute to total Clicks!

Don’t Focus on Clicks, CPC and CTR

When reporting the results of your ad meant to drive traffic to your website, this is a great example of why you shouldn’t focus on metrics like Clicks, CPC and CTR. You aren’t providing a very clear picture of the actual traffic you are driving.

Clicks: Includes many other clicks that aren’t website clicks (particularly if your ad was in the News Feed).

CPC: Focused on cost per “Click” that includes many clicks that aren’t website clicks.

CTR: Reports the percentage of Total Clicks vs. Total Impressions. Again, many other clicks included in this metric.

That doesn’t mean these metrics are completely worthless. But you should provide an accurate picture when your objective is to drive website traffic. Instead, focus on the following:

• Website Clicks
• Cost Per Website Click

If these don’t come up in your main Ads Manager report, make sure to create a custom ads report to select those metrics.

Your Turn

Did you know the difference between Clicks and Website Clicks? What other metrics are often misunderstood?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ad Clicks vs. Website Clicks: Do You Know the Difference? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

I conduct several one-on-one coaching sessions every week, and each time I ask my 45-minute client whether they use the ad reports. More often than not, the answer is, “Ummmm… what?”

As a result, I regularly take 15 minutes in these sessions to create a saved report that they can use in the future. Time and time again, these people are blown away by the information available to them.

But most advertisers don’t realize this information even exists. When used, you can optimize your ads for age, gender, country and placement.

In other words: Get better results and stop wasting your money on placements and demographics that aren’t working.

[Tweet “Here is how to monitor performance of your Facebook ads by AGE, GENDER, COUNTRY and PLACEMENT.”]

Facebook Ad Reports

If you monitor the performance of your ads diligently, you can limit waste and focus budget on what is most effective. Your results will differ depending on the audience and placement of your ads.

This is done through split testing. In the past, the only way to accomplish this was through creating many different ads for age groups, gender, country and placement. But that’s no longer required.

The magic is found within Facebook’s ad reports. The old version of these reports was more or less worthless. As a result, advertisers ignore them. But an update last year makes them one of the most powerful tools in an advertiser’s tool box.

On the left hand side of your Ads Manager, click on Reports…

The default report isn’t particularly useful, and it’s why most advertisers don’t dig in more. It provides 17 columns of data for all campaigns run during the past seven days:

• Start Date
• End Date
• Campaign
• Reach
• Frequency
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Unique Clicks
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Unique Click-Through Rate (uCTR)
• Spend
• Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
• Cost Per 1,000 People Reached
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Actions
• People Taking Action
• Page Likes

It’s not that this information is all worthless. It has value. But it’s information overload.

I prefer a report with a minimal number of columns focusing on your desired action.

For example, here are the columns I’d recommend for a Page Likes report:

• Start Date
• End Date
• Campaign
• Frequency
• Spend
• Page Likes
• Cost Per Page Like

That’s 10 fewer columns, and it focuses on the metrics that truly matter to the objective of your campaign (Page Likes).

Edit Columns

You can take control of your ad reports with the help of a simple button: Edit Columns.

It’s at the top left of your report, next to the Add Filters button…

Click that beautiful button and you’ll get a dialog that looks like this…

By my count, there are 148 different columns you could choose for your report. That’s a lot!

Of course, you don’t want all of them. You shouldn’t even want 17 of them. But the right data should be available to you depending on the type of report you want to run.

You just need to find it!

Data Breakdowns

The true goldmine — and the motivation behind this blog post — is found in the Data Breakdowns section.

By default, Facebook doesn’t select any of this data. That’s why most advertisers don’t know it exists!

But click on any one (you can only select one at a time) and see how your ad is performing based on…

• Age
• Gender
• Age and Gender
• Country
• Placement
• Destination

Add a column for age…

Facebook will break down performance based on the age of your audience:

• 13-18
• 18-24
• 25-34
• 35-44
• 45-54
• 55-64
• 65+

As you can see in the example above, I was focusing on the ages of 25-44 and getting the most success from the 35-44 age group.

Add a column for gender…

Facebook will break down performance based on the gender of your audience:

• Male
• Female
• Unknown

I was seeing the best results from women, though it’s not a significant difference.

Add a column for age and gender…

Facebook will break down performance based on the age and gender of your audience:

• Male 13-18
• Male 18-24
• Male 25-34
• Male 35-44
• Male 45-54
• Male 55-64
• Male 65+
• Female 13-18
• Female 18-24
• Female 25-34
• Female 35-44
• Female 45-54
• Female 55-64
• Female 65+
• Unknown 13-18
• Unknown 18-24
• Unknown 25-34
• Unknown 35-44
• Unknown 45-54
• Unknown 55-64
• Unknown 65+

In the example above, the unknown and male groups tended to be most expensive, while I was getting the best results from women aged 35-44.

Add a column for country…

Facebook will create a column for countries, generating a row for each country served an impression. In my example above, it’s most expensive to get Page Likes in Canada and US and cheapest in the Netherlands and Ireland.

My favorite option, however, is adding a column for placement…

Facebook will break down performance based on the placement of your ad:

• Right Column Ads on Desktop Computers
• Right Column Ads on Home Page for Desktop Computers
• News Feed on Desktop Computers
• News Feed on Mobile Devices

As you can see in my results above, I’m getting the best Cost Per Page Like in this report on mobile devices. This has not always been the case. It’s why you constantly monitor your results!

Finally, you can add columns for destination. Facebook will highlight where someone went as a result of your ad. This could be your page, a custom tab or a link.

Save Your Reports!

Once you’ve created this awesomely helpful report, it’s important that you save it for later. Otherwise, Facebook won’t keep it for you, and you’ll need to start over every time!

Click the Save button…

Name it something you’re remember later.

Every time you come back to your ad reports, Facebook will show you that same, lame, default report. But your saved reports will be available within the Reports drop-down at the top.

Your Turn

The Edit Columns button within your Facebook ad reports will save you a whole lot of time and money if used appropriately.

Are you using these reports? How are you using them? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Advanced Facebook Ads: View Performance by Placement and Demographics appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

It’s a question I get almost daily. You have a Facebook conversion pixel installed on your site. But the numbers aren’t adding up.

Today I’m going to explore the problem itself before diving into the likely explanations.

[Tweet “Are you using Facebook conversion tracking and the numbers aren’t adding up? Read this…”]

The Problem

The problem tends to be when advertisers compare conversion numbers reported from Facebook to the Facebook referred conversions reported by Google. In most cases, Facebook is reporting more conversions than is Google.

Many incorrectly assume this means Facebook is over reporting conversions. That’s usually not the case.

The Wrong Page is Set as a Conversion

The first potential explanation for this problem is that you placed the conversion pixel on the wrong page, so Facebook is reporting inflated conversion numbers.

When you create a conversion pixel, Facebook instructs you to paste it between the HEAD tags “in the webpage where you want to track conversions.”

When a user who was shown your ad on Facebook eventually visits that page that fires the conversion pixel, Facebook is notified. This is how they are able to report the number of conversions resulting from your ad.

Understand that Facebook doesn’t naturally know what a conversion means. You have to define it for them. And if you define it incorrectly, Facebook will report inaccurate results.

The mistake many advertisers make is that they place the pixel on the sales landing page. This is the page a user will visit immediately upon clicking on your ad. If a user visits this page, however, they don’t necessarily convert.

You need to put the pixel on the page a user will see immediately upon completing the conversion. It’s usually a “Thank you for registering” or “Thank you for your purchase” page.

It is a page that only new customers will see, and it notifies Facebook — correctly — that the sale is complete.

Facebook Referrals

The second likely issue is that advertisers are using Google Analytics and incorrectly assume that the number of conversions reported by Facebook should be the same as the number of conversions referred by Facebook, as reported by Google.

These will not add up due to the different ways that Facebook and Google are reporting these numbers.

Facebook Conversions Defined

Your Google Analytics are only reporting conversions that resulted from a direct referral. Even if you created a campaign using URL parameters to track the link used in your ad, Google only reports those conversions that happened in a straight line:

User Clicked Ad > User Converted

Facebook, on the other hand, is much more liberal in their conversion reporting. By default, they count either of the following as a conversion:

• User Viewed Ad and Converted Within 1 Day
• User Clicked Ad and Converted Within 7 Days (previously 28)

Even if you eliminated “view through” conversions where users never clicked your ad, the numbers won’t add up since Facebook will track conversions that weren’t a straight line.

Like this:

User Clicked Ad > User Left Site > User Returned to Site > User Converted

Neither method is necessarily “right” or “wrong.” They’re simply different.

There’s value in knowing whether your ad led to “view through” conversions. And there’s also value in knowing that someone who clicked your ad later converted, even if it wasn’t immediate.

Google ignores these things in their conversion referral reporting.

Changing a Defined Conversion

As mentioned above, Facebook reports a conversion when a user has viewed your ad and converts within a day or clicks your ad and converts within 7 days (previously 28).

However, this may be casting too wide a net. Maybe you want to isolate only those who clicked your ad. And maybe you want to change the number of days to conversion.

First, click “Reports” on the left within your Ads Manager. That will bring up a pretty worthless default report.

You can make the report useful by clicking the “Edit Columns” button. This is also how you can change the definition of a conversion.

When you click the Edit Columns button, you’ll get a dialog like this…

Click on the “Actions” link in the middle menu. At the top you’ll see that the definition of a conversion is set to 1 day after viewing and 28 days after clicking (created prior to the removal of 28-day click attribution).

If you click the “Change Attribution Window” link, you’ll get this…

There, you can choose any of the following to define a conversion (written prior to the removal of 28-day click attribution):

• 1 day after viewing ad
• 7 days after viewing ad
• 28 days after viewing ad
• 1 day after clicking ad
• 7 days after clicking ad
• 28 days after clicking ad

Your Turn

What’s been your experience with tracking conversions between Facebook and Google?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Conversion Tracking: Why Aren’t the Numbers Adding Up? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

We’ve been hearing for quite some time now about the effectiveness of running Facebook ads on mobile devices or in the desktop News Feed. But the sidebar? “Completely worthless!” they shout.

But is it true?

It’s conventional wisdom that it is. And maybe it’s true when applied to the general population. But sometimes you need to double check conventional wisdom to make sure it applies to you.

That’s why I decided to take a closer look. And what I found is likely to surprise you.

[Tweet “Think Facebook’s sidebar ads are a waste of your money? This may shock you…”]

First, Some Perspective

It’s always important to point this out from the start. We’re talking about the results for only one Page during a three month period. Sample size, industry, copy, landing pages, products and a whole lot more factor into these results.

I have decided to focus on all campaigns that I ran with the intention of one of the following things:

• Conversion (Checkout)
• Conversion (Registration)
• Page Like

I eliminated any Promoted Post that was created for the purpose of engagement, but still managed to receive one of these actions.

The four main countries I target in my ads are the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. As a result, cost per action will always be higher.

I know. You can get ridiculously low Cost Per Like. But I’m focusing on quality over quantity here. As a result, costs are higher (but you’ll see results follow).

My total ad spend in this case study is $4,212.30. It is broken down as follows:

• Desktop News Feed: $2,473.92
• Mobile: $1,194.38
• Sidebar: $544.00

Shortly, you are going to see why I believe I should be dedicating far more of my ad spend to the sidebar.

How I Did This

If you aren’t using the new Facebook ad reports, you need to do it now. This is how I’m able to break down what my Cost Per Desired Action is by placement.

No, I didn’t create a different ad for each placement. Facebook breaks all of this down for me, which is incredibly valuable. It now allows me to optimize and spend my money more efficiently based on the results.

Cost Per 1,000 Impressions by Placement

I took all of the ads run during the past 90 days and found the average CPM based on placement.

It is as follows:

• Desktop News Feed: $1.64
• Mobile: $3.95
• Sidebar: $.08

Keep in mind that this is an average covering all targeting. So when I target Fans only, for example, these will be significantly higher. But I also target large pools of non-Fans to bring the average price down.

You probably aren’t surprised that mobile CPM is the highest here, and it really isn’t close. I’ve actually seen sidebar CPM below $.05 in many cases.

Let’s think about what this means. While Mobile or Desktop News Feed may (not confirmed yet) result in more desired actions per impression, the significantly higher CPM means that you are going to pay 20X or more for each impression. So in the end, the sidebar could be most efficient.

And I have a feeling that’s what we’re going to see!

In order to analyze the results for checkouts and registrations, of course, I’ve been using Conversion Tracking. I hope you are, too!

Cost Per Checkout by Placement

Following is a chart showing the Cost Per Conversion of my campaigns that were run for the sole purpose of selling during the past 90 days. I spent a total of $520.29 on these ads.

Here are the actual costs per conversion:

• Desktop News Feed: $9.37
• Mobile: $24.39
• Sidebar: $5.78

You’ve probably heard my story about getting a 35X ROI during the first month of promotion of my Power Editor training course. Facebook ads are pretty darn powerful!

Of course, I haven’t been able to maintain that ROI. But keep in mind that the following CPA numbers are going to be for products that were sold at either $73.50 or $147.

In most cases, I’ve stopped ads that go to mobile devices. While a CPA of $24.39 isn’t a negative ROI by any stretch of the imagination, it’s nowhere near as efficient as desktop.

But sidebar is most efficient? I did not see this coming!

Cost Per Registration by Placement

I’ve also been running ads with the goal of driving registrations to my weekly webinar. I have spent $576.69 on these ads.

Here are the actual costs per registration by placement:

• Desktop News Feed: $.76
• Mobile News Feed: $1.41
• Desktop Sidebar: $.53

Once again, mobile is far more expensive than the other two placements, and the sidebar ends up being most efficient. Unfortunately, I was only putting $25.83 of my budget towards the sidebar (that will change!).

Page Likes

I am constantly running campaigns to increase Page Likes. I have spent $1,788.33 on such ads.

Here are the actual costs per Page Like:

• Desktop News Feed: $.34
• Mobile News Feed: $.53
• Desktop Sidebar: $.38

Mobile isn’t a complete waste this time, but these ads were still most expensive. The desktop News Feed ends up being the slight winner when it comes to generating Page Likes.

Once again, we’ve been led to believe that running Page Like ads on mobile devices is extremely effective. It’s not as effective as desktop for me.

The bulk of my spend here has been going towards Desktop News Feed. I may cut off mobile entirely going forward.

What Are You Seeing?

Clearly, I’m seeing results (sales, registrations and Page Likes) from the sidebar, and at a greater rate overall than I am on either the desktop or mobile News Feeds. But this does not apply universally, and you should check your own stats.

Are you seeing similar results? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Why You Shouldn’t Forget About Facebook’s Sidebar [Research] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You are wasting time and money focusing on metrics that don’t matter.

The following metrics are given far too much attention. When I ask an advertiser whether their campaign was a success, they almost always refer to at least one of the following:

• CTR (Click Through Rate)
• Clicks
• CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)
• CPC (Cost Per Click)
• Reach
• Impressions

Stop basing success or failure on these metrics alone. They may help provide context. But they should not control your pivot.

The reason is simple. You often have one very definitive goal. It’s not general clicks. It’s usually not reach or impressions (though there are some exceptions). You want a specific action.

Therefore, your focus should be on getting as many of those actions as possible for the least amount of money.

None of the stats listed above tell the whole story. In most cases, I recommend you follow only five things:

• Actions (whatever your preferred action is)
• Cost Per Action
• Spend
• Frequency
• Revenue

Of course, you should use the new Facebook ad reports to monitor these stats.

[Tweet “Are you focusing on the wrong Facebook advertising metrics? Here are the five metrics that matter…”]

Actions

Before you even start a campaign, you should know your desired action. It could be any of the following:

• Website Conversion
• Page Like
• Link Click
• Video Play
• Share
• App Install
• Event RSVP
• Something Else

If you don’t know your desired action — and it had better be something concrete — you won’t be able to measure success. And when you can’t measure success, you’ll cling to metrics that don’t matter to tell your story.

For any campaign that has a goal that leads to an offsite conversion, you must use Conversion Tracking. Not only is it how you ultimately measure success, but this allows you to have Facebook optimize for that action.

Otherwise, if your goal is Page Likes, you should be running a Page Like Sponsored Story or a standard Page Like ad. In that case, the general click doesn’t matter. You only care about the Like.

Maybe your goal is to drive traffic to your website without the intent of a specific conversion. I often do this when I share my blog posts. In this case, I monitor link clicks closely.

There is a long list of actions that you can monitor. In fact, the Facebook ad reports provide 45 options to choose from.

Pick one!

Cost Per Action

Of course, the number of actions alone doesn’t provide enough context. If one ad generates 20 actions, is it more successful than an ad that generates 15? Not if the one that generates 15 costs half as much.

That’s why I always monitor Cost Per Action closely. But again, Cost Per Action by itself doesn’t mean much either. I could have a $.03 Cost Per Action on an ad that generated one action covering only three cents in spend.

Obviously, that’s a small sample size!

Spend

Yes, that leads to spend! I love seeing these three metrics together when comparing ad or campaign performance.

Spend will let me know if I need to shift my budget from one ad or campaign to another. Or raise or lower the spend of an effective or underperforming ad.

Frequency

This metric is often ignored.

When I promote posts in the News Feeds of my Fans, I want to be sure that they see it only once. Therefore, my goal is a 1.0 Frequency.

But for other ads that lead to an offsite conversion or Page Like, for example, a greater frequency is required. And that sample size is important when determining whether an ad has run its course.

If an ad isn’t performing, but the Frequency is under 3.0 (depending on the level of underperformance), I’ll typically let it ride for a while. That remains a small sample size.

But if a poorly performing ad has a frequency of 8.0 or more, it’s definitely time to pull the plug.

Likewise, it’s important to put such ads with high frequency under a microscope. The ad may have an efficient overall CPA (Cost Per Action), but it’s likely to become less efficient over time as Frequency rises.

Revenue

Revenue is a metric that can only be monitored within the Facebook ad reports if you utilize Conversion Tracking with Returned Value (learn more about how you can set it up here).

So far, you know which of your ads return the lowest Cost Per Action. You use Spend and Frequency to provide perspective.

But are your ads providing a positive ROI? You won’t know that without following Revenue!

Your Turn

What Facebook ads metrics do you monitor closely? Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Measure Facebook Advertising Success: Monitor These 5 Metrics appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook ads are more powerful than ever, and a big reason for that is Conversion Tracking. But if you use it, do you know what is actually being measured?

Thanks to the new Facebook ads reports — an amazing tool that help advertisers optimize ads with incredible precision — I was recently made aware that the offsite conversions that Facebook reports aren’t always what I thought they were.

Today I’m going to take a look at the following:

• What Conversion Tracking is
• What I discovered in the Facebook ads reports
• How you can use this information

[Tweet “A Facebook conversion might not mean what you think. Here’s what you need to know…”]

What is Conversion Tracking?

First, an explanation is in order.

Conversion Tracking is the ability to track whether your Facebook ads led to offsite conversions.

So, let’s assume you’re using Facebook ads to drive people to an offsite landing page that you control. You are selling a product. With the help of an offsite pixel (a piece of code you put on your website), Facebook can track whether your ad led to a conversion.

This is powerful stuff. You can then compare the cost of your ads to the direct revenue that resulted. This is how you measure ROI with Facebook ads!

Even better, Facebook optimizes for these actions. If you are looking to drive leads, Facebook optimizes for that. Looking for sales, Facebook optimizes.

What I Discovered in the Facebook Ads Reports

This is all great — better than great — but I had some basic assumptions regarding what this meant.

Here’s an example of some results I’ve seen from my reports:

I assumed that this means that 40 people clicked on one ad and 17 people clicked on the other, leading directly to conversions. Well, this isn’t entirely true.

If you hover over the Conversions column, you get the following definition:

The number of conversions that happened on your website as a result of your ad. Actions are counted when they occur within 1 day of someone viewing or 7 days after clicking on your ad (previously 28).

There are two keys here:

• Someone who converted doesn’t have to click on your ad, as long as they were shown it; and
• Users have 7 days (previously 28) after clicking your ad to convert.

Now, I’m not going to say that information about users who saw my ad and converted isn’t helpful. Or the same regarding users who clicked and eventually converted. Both are important.

But what I improperly assumed was that these were ad clicks that led directly — almost immediately, or at least within 24 hours — to conversions.

How You Can Use This Information

Like I said, I still think information about conversions that started in an ad view is important. And I still want to know if someone who clicked on an ad converted later on.

But the key here is that not all actions are equal.

If someone clicks on an ad and converts that day, there is little doubt that the ad was why they converted.

If someone was shown your ad and converted that day, there is far less certainty. We don’t even know if they saw it.

The same can be said for someone who clicked and converted 7 days later. That ad was part of the process. But it certainly didn’t push the customer over the edge.

Luckily, you can edit your columns to provide much more clarity on the types of conversions you are seeing.

When you click on “Edit Columns,” there are advanced settings at the bottom. Select “Use a custom action attribution window” and you’ll see the following:

You can select any of the following columns (written prior to the removal of 28-day click attribution):

• 1 Day After Viewing
• 7 Days After Viewing
• 28 Days After Viewing
• 1 Day After Clicking
• 7 Days After Clicking
• 28 Days After Clicking

This provides far more context behind your conversions.

Remember how Facebook reported previously that my ads had resulted in 57 total conversions? Here’s how that’s broken down when you pull in the “1 Day After Viewing” and “28 Days After Clicking” columns:

So, 43 of my conversions were still the direct result of clicking. That’s actually very good to know.

Now, let’s break down those 43 conversions, pulling out those that happened 1 Day, 7 Days and 28 Days after clicking:

You’ll recall that Facebook previously told me that 43 users clicked on my ads and eventually converted. What we see here is that…

• 25 of 43 (58%) converted within one day
• Another 7 of 43 (16%) converted between days 2 and 7
• One person converted after day 7 and within 28 days

This is again encouraging. Most of the conversions Facebook is reporting are actually due to clicks. And a majority of those conversions happened rather quickly.

Context is Important

The problem is that the further you get away from that first day — even from those first few minutes — the less the correlation is between that ad and the conversion. I’m not saying there’s no correlation. It’s just weaker.

I have other efforts going on to get that conversion. I have emails going out. Reminders on my website. Ads away from Facebook.

The other question I have is regarding the multiple ads I have on Facebook. What about the person who saw variations of my ads and eventually converted?

Based on my results, I doubt that the conversion is reported for multiple ads. Some of my ads didn’t perform at all. Some performed incredibly.

What if a user saw four different ads during a 28 day period and eventually converted without clicking? How does Facebook decide which ad led to the conversion? Is it the ad that was shown most recently that gets credit?

In other words, this measurement — for now — is still a bit of an inexact science. But I will focus more on the 1 Day Click to Conversion than the other splits.

How do you measure offsite conversions? Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Hidden Meaning of Offsite Conversions from Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The hot news right now is the update to Facebook’s ads reporting tool. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this was also on the minds of my readers.

The Featured Question

The featured question this week comes from Lenny Goh:

What do you feel are the advantages of the new FB ad reports over the old one?

Most marketers didn’t even know there was a Facebook ads reporting tool to update. I rarely touched it. It was clunky, difficult to use and didn’t provide particularly enlightening information.

The new tool, however? Pretty awesome.

Edit Columns

The biggest reason the new reports are so useful is the ability to edit columns.

Editing columns means you can choose from a long list of items to compare between ads and campaigns.

This sounds very simple. And really, it is. But the difference maker here is that the information you can compare is extremely useful.

View Actual Performance

In the recent past, you may have promoted a post that was optimized for engagement. As a result, Facebook would have shown you Cost Per Engagement.

But what if you wanted to compare other important performance metrics between such ads? You would have had to do it manually.

But now, Facebook gives you a long list of “Cost Per [Action]” metrics to compare. So even if your ad was optimized for Engagement, you can compare things like Cost Per Page Like, Cost Per Link Click, Cost Per Share and other things that resulted from that ad.

Compare by Demographic

Now it gets fun!

Within a single ad, you can compare the performance based on the people it was shown to. Your ad may be more efficient among men or women; among 25-34 year-olds; or among people in the United Kingdom.

You can see these things within the new Facebook ad reports!

Compare Performance by Placement

Does your ad perform better on mobile or desktop News Feed? Are you throwing money away on the sidebar?

You won’t know this for sure without getting some hard results. By choosing Placement when editing columns, you can very easily determine what is leading to results!

Less Split Testing

Since you can get all of this information from one ad now, you no longer need to split test as much as you once did. No need to create ad variations based on placement. No need to create ad variations based on target gender, age or location.

Instead, create one ad and run the Facebook ad reports to determine what works best. Once you figure that out, stop the original ad and then run optimized ads based on your findings.

Of course, this doesn’t completely eliminate the need for split testing. You’ll still need to create ad variations based on copy and imagery, where applicable.

Don’t Forget to Subscribe!

Make sure you watch the video above for all of the details.

That’s it! Hope you found this week’s video blog and separate answers helpful. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!

The post Benefits of the New Facebook Ad Reports appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook has updated the ads reporting tool — a tool most advertisers don’t know even exists — to be incredibly useful.

The new tool allows you to quickly determine how a single ad performed by age, country and placement without having to split test with multiple ads. It also allows you to evaluate the performance of your ad based on Action metrics (conversions, for example) and cost per that action.

Go to facebook.com/ads/manage/reporting.php to access your reports.

If it looks like this…

…it’s your lucky day! You have the new Facebook ad reports.

If it looks like this…

…sorry! You still have the old Facebook ad reports. You’ll need to wait for the new ones to be rolled out to you.

Regardless of whether or not you have the new Facebook ad reports yet, I’ve written this post to help you understand all of the awesome new features available within it.

This will be a top-level overview. I’ll write other posts in the future to provide more hands-on examples of how it can be used.

Edit Columns

One of the most exciting pieces of this new tool is the ability to edit precisely what information you want to be shown in a Facebook ads report.

With the Edit Columns feature, for example, you could compare the performance of ads based on the following:

• Placement of the Ad (News Feed, Desktop, Mobile, Sidebar)
• Gender
• Country
• Cost Per Page Like
• Cost Per Website Conversion

You couldn’t view all of these within the same report, but they are all available and extremely valuable.

Following are all of the various columns that are available to you…

Dimensions – Data Aggregation

This allows you to easily evaluate which campaigns or ads, for example, performed best. Probably best to at least keep the name of the ad within a column.

• Account
• Campaign
• Ad
• Account ID
• Campaign ID
• Ad ID

Dimensions – Data Breakdowns

Possibly the most exciting inclusion in this tool. You can only choose one of these per report, but this allows you to easily compare the Cost Per Action, for example, of ads based on age, gender, country and placement.

For example, you could create one ad that targets all placements. Then create a report to compare your Cost Per Action for Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, All Desktop and the Desktop Sidebar.

With this information, you could then stop that original ad and then start a new one that uses those optimized specs.

I’m most excited about this because I notoriously create dozens of ads in my split testing to help determine this. It’s no longer completely necessary (split testing is still important for copy and imagery, however).

• Age
• Gender
• Age and Gender
• Country
• Placement

Metrics – Delivery & Spend

Include columns for the metrics you feel are important. In my opinion, most important here is Spend to keep other results relative.

• Reach
• Frequency
• Impressions
• Social Reach
• Social Impressions
• Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
• Cost Per 1,000 People Reached
• Spend

Metrics – Clicks

Personally, I’m not particularly concerned about general clicks. You can select as many of these as you want. I tend to keep all unselected.

• Clicks
• Unique Clicks
• Social Clicks
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Unique Click-Through Rate (uCTR)
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Cost Per Unique Click

Metrics – Actions

This is the good stuff! This is what determines success and failure of your campaign. Now, you may, however, want to skip this section and go directly to “Cost Per Action.” But including at least one of these columns could be important for perspective.

In general, you can select columns for:

• Actions
• People Taking Action

These actions can then be broken down by those associated with your Facebook Page, External URL, Application or Event.

If you create ads that drive users to an offsite landing page that drives some sort of conversion with an offsite pixel (purchase, lead, add to cart, etc.), this is extremely useful!

Facebook Page:

• Page Likes
• Page Engagement
• Post Engagement
• Post Likes
• Post Comments
• Post Shares
• Page Photo Views
• Page Video Plays
• Link Clicks
• Offer Claims
• Check-ins
• Page Mentions
• Page Tab Views
• Question Answers
• Question Follows

External URL:

• Website Conversion
• Checkouts (Conversion)
• Registrations (Conversion)
• Leads (Conversion)
• Key Web Page Views (Conversion)
• Add To Carts (Conversion)
• Other Website Conversions

Applications:

• App Installs
• Mobile App Installs
• App Engagement
• App Story Engagement
• App Uses
• Credit Spends
• Mobile Purchases

Events:

• Event Responses

Metrics – Cost per Action

This is where you make and save money. For me, the true measure of success of an ad campaign comes down to Cost per Action.

Once again, this is broken down by actions associated with your Facebook Page, External URL, Application or Event.

Facebook Page:

• Cost per Page Like
• Cost per Page Engagement
• Cost per Post Engagement
• Cost per Post Like
• Cost per Post Comment
• Cost per Post Share
• Cost per Page Photo View
• Cost per Page Video Play
• Cost per Link Click
• Cost per Offer Claim
• Cost per Check-in
• Cost per Page Mention
• Cost per Page Tab View
• Cost per Question Answer
• Cost per Question Follow

External URL:

• Cost per Website Conversion
• Cost per Checkout (Conversion)
• Cost per Registration (Conversion)
• Cost per Lead (Conversion)
• Cost per Key Web Page View (Conversion)
• Cost per Add To Cart (Conversion)
• Cost per Other Website Conversion

Applications:

• Cost per App Install
• Cost per Mobile App Install
• Cost per App Engagement
• Cost per App Story Engagement
• Cost per App Use
• Cost per Credit Spend Action
• Cost per Mobile Purchase

Events:

• Cost per Event Response

Ad Filters

You probably want to view only certain campaigns or certain ads within a campaign to keep any comparison relevant. For example, there’s no reason to compare a campaign aimed at getting Page Likes to one focused on offsite conversions.

So make sure you use your filters to select applicable ads and campaigns. You can create more than one filter if necessary…

Dates

Do you want to view performance only during a specific period of time? Make sure you select the applicable dates to compare here…

You can also determine how many days will apply to each row. Maybe you want all days to apply. But you can also break up an ad’s performance into seven day increments to see if it is trending in a positive or negative direction…

Schedule Reports

This is great for any advertisers who need to provide reports to clients or higher up — or for any advertiser who simply needs regular reminders regarding the performance of their advertising.

Choose how often these reports are generated and have alerts emailed to you when they are ready.

Save Report Settings

Do you have specific filters that you will use later? Save them! This is a great time saver.

More to Come!

Have you tried out the new Facebook Ad Reporting yet? This is an exceptional tool that will only get better. I am still experimenting with it and will provide more posts in the future with specific use cases to leverage these reports for your success.

Let me know how you’re using them in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Reports: A Tour of a Powerful New Tool appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.