Like with any other digital advertising platform, the only way to ensure you get the best out of your Facebook Ads campaigns is by tracking their performance closely and optimizing them accordingly.
There are hundreds of trackable metrics and terms in your Facebook Ads Manager, which makes it impossible to follow them all.
Hence it’s crucial to identify the most significant ones, so you can avoid getting lost in mountains of not-always-useful information.
In this article, we will discuss what we consider the most fundamental metrics for eCommerce and explain what can be learned from each metric.
In a rough division, we like to split those metrics into two general groups:
Information metrics
all those metrics that give you a clear and straightforward picture of everything that’s going on in your ads account in terms of hard numbers.
You can think of it like your bank account app, which tells you how much money comes in, goes out, and shows you your bank account’s status at any given time.
Performance metrics
based on the information metrics, but their role is to go a little deeper and equip you with insights that allow you to answer questions like “am I making money here or losing”? “Are my creatives/ad copy good”? “What’s the return on the money spent on these ads”? “How much does it cost me to get someone to purchase?” and so on.
Now, let’s dive into the metrics included in these groups, provide a definition for each metric, and clarify it.
Budget
If it’s a CBO campaign – i.e., the budget is set at the campaign level and not at the Ad set level – the budget metric shows you the maximum amount of money your campaign can spend each day.
If, for example, one campaign performs better than another, you may want to increase or decrease its budget accordingly.
Amount Spent/Cost
This metric shows how much money was spent (in total) during the defined period.
For instance, if you have two similar campaigns/ads with the same budget but different creatives (let’s say one uses video and the other image), and the one with video spends more money, it may mean that the FB algorithm thinks this type of creative will outperform for this product.
Impressions
The impression metric is the number of times your ads have appeared on your target audience’s screens.
As defined by Facebook, an impression is when an ad appears on a user’s screen for the first time.
For example, when a user scrolls down an ad while on screen and then scrolls back up to the same ad, it counts as 1 impression. But if he sees the same ad two times is counted as 2 impressions.
Reach
This metric provides you with the number of people who saw your ads at least once.
The definition of reach differs from impressions, which may consist of the same person viewing your ad multiple times
Frequency
This metric represents the average number of times that an ad is shown to one person.
Knowing that detail is vital. If your frequency is too high, it means that people see your ad over and over again, which may cause an adverse reaction.
Link clicks
This metric represents the number of times users have clicked on links within your ads.
It may be a “Shop-Now” button, a link to your website in the ad copy, or the ad’s picture that leads them to your website/landing page.
Landing Page Views
This metric measures how many who clicked on your ad have also made it to your website.
Often, a single user may click the ad multiple times or leave it right away because it takes the page a millisecond longer to load than he is willing to wait.
This metric can help you understand how many link clicks led to actual product page views.
Adds to Cart
The number of times people who came to your website from your ad added a product to their cart.
Checkouts Initiated
The number of times people who came to your website from your ad initiated the checkout process.
Adds of Payment Info
The number of times people who came to your website from your ad added their payment info.
Purchases
The number of times people who came to your website from your ad purchased your product.
The information about each stage of the customer journey is essential, as it can indicate if anything is wrong not only with your campaign/ad but also with your website.
For instance, if you see a high number of Add to Carts but no Checkouts, you may have a technical issue in the checkout stage that causes your audience to abandon.
Purchases Conversion Value (Revenue)
This is the total value of purchases on your website that occurred as a result of your Facebook campaign/ad (or all the purchases on your website that the Facebook algorithm attributes to your campaign/ad). Or, in other words: The revenue from your product sales.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
The calculation behind this metric is: Purchases conversion value / Amount spent.
For example: If your amount spent is $100 and your Purchases conversion value is $200, your ROAS will be 2 (200/100=2).
Cost Per Mile (CPM)
This metric measures the average amount you pay for 1,000 impressions.
As explained by Facebook, CPM measures the total amount spent on an ad campaign, divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000.
For example: If you spent $100 and got 20,000 impressions, your CPM was $5 (100 / 20000 * 1000).
If your CPM is too high, it may indicate that your campaign’s weak for some reason. Maybe you advertise to a not-so-relevant audience, your creatives are boring, etc. (you can learn more about reasons for high CPM here).
It’s important to add that many times the CPM will be high only because there’s a huge demand due to events like Christmas, the holiday season, etc.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR metric measures the percentage of link clicks out of the total number of impressions for each campaign/ad.
It’s calculated by dividing the number of link clicks by the number of impressions. For example: If you have 50000 impressions and 250 link clicks, your CTR is 0.5% (250 / 50000).
The higher the CTR, the better your campaign/ad is.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The CPC (Cost Per Click) is how much, on average, each click costs you.
It’s calculated as the total amount spent divided by the total number of link clicks.
Digital marketers often use this metric as a benchmark for ad/campaign/creative effectiveness by comparing their CPC.
Cost per Add To Cart
The average costs for one add to cart.
It’s calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of add to carts during the time period you chose to measure.
Cost per Checkout Initiated
The average costs for one checkout initiated.
It’s calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of checkout initiated during the time period you chose to measure.
Cost per Add of Payment Info
The average costs for one add of payment info.
It’s calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of payment info added during the time period you chose to measure.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Average order value (AOV) provides the average amount of revenue you make each time a user places an order on your website.
To calculate it, you need to divide the total revenue by the number of purchases in your chosen time period.
For example, assuming your sales were $45,000 this month, that came out of 1500 orders. $45,000 divided by 1,500 = $30, so this month’s AOV is $30.
Conversion Rate
This metric divides the total number of visitors during a specific time period by the number of conversions (usually the number of purchases).
As an example, if your website had 5,000 visitors in a week and 500 sales, the conversion rate for this week is 500 divided by 5000 = 10%.
Say you want to know if sending users from your ad to a product page converts better than sending them to the home page.
Comparing the conversion rates of two identical ads, one leading to the product page and the other to the home page, will give you a clearer picture and allow you to make decisions based on not only gut instincts but actual numbers.
Cost per Purchase (or CPA)
The average costs for one purchase.
It’s calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of purchases that occurred during a specific time period.
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