facebook ads manager measurement

Measuring Success with Ads Manager

Table of contents

What’s new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Understanding the performance of your campaigns, ads and sponsored stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Advertising Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Responder Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Actions by Impression Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Inline Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Overview

At Facebook, we believe that businesses will be better in a connected world. Ads and sponsored stories

are some of the best ways for businesses to connect with and engage their audiences. It’s important for

businesses of all sizes to understand how their ads and sponsored stories are performing so that they

can achieve their business objectives.

Facebook’s Ads Manager gives businesses visibility into the performance of their ads and sponsored

stories with the ability to drill down into specific metrics.

We’ve recently made significant improvements to the Ads Manager to help businesses understand how

people are engaging with their ads and sponsored stories.

This guide will help you understand how to use Ads Manager to improve your campaign performance

and meet your business goals.

© 2012 Facebook, Inc. All rights reserved. Product specifications subject to change without notice.

© 2012 Facebook, Inc. All rights reserved. Product specifications subject to change without notice. 2

Facebook Ads Manager

What’s new

We’ve made changes to Ads Manager reporting to make it easier for you to understand the performance of your

campaigns and optimize for the actions that are likely to result in the business outcomes you want.

Introducing the new Actions metric

Actions tells you how many people connected with your business after seeing your ads, even if they didn’t click, so you

know you’re driving results.

The Actions metric replaces the Connections metric. Similar to Connections, Actions tracks Page Likes, App Installs, and

Event RSVPs that originate from your ads. But Actions allows you to track a much more robust set of measurements.

If you’re promoting a Page, Actions measures the number of times people:

• liked your Page

• liked posts on your Page

• commented on your Page posts

• @mentioned your Page in a status update

• checked into your Place

• tagged your Page in a photo

• shared your Page posts

If you’re promoting an app, Actions measures the number of times people:

• installed your app

• used your app

• spent credits in your app

If you’re promoting an event, Actions measures:

• RSVPs to your event (maybe and yes)

Facebook attributes these actions back to the originating ad based a 24-hour view-through and 28-day click-through

window, so that you get a better picture of the overall value of your ad campaign.

• claimed your offer

• answered your question

• followed your question

• clicked on the Page post link

• viewed the Page post photo

• viewed the Page post video

• viewed a tab on your Page



You can see a breakdown of all of the actions users took by navigating to Ads Manager (facebook.com/ads/manage),

clicking an account, a campaign, and then the ad for which you want to view metrics. Actions will be broken down by

type in the pie chart for each ad.

You can also view aggregated actions for multiple ads or campaigns in the Advertising Performance Report. In

Ads Manager, you can access this report by clicking Reports in the left navigation bar, and following the on-screen

instructions to generate the Advertising Performance report.

http://facebook.com/ads/manage



The most detailed breakdown of actions is available through the “Actions by Impression Time” report. This report

replaces the “Conversions by Impression Time” Report and includes a wider range of actions broken down by each

attribution window.

By measuring the actions you want people to take on Facebook, you can make informed decisions on how to optimize

the content you are promoting.



Getting started

Type https://facebook.com/ads/manage into your browser. You will be able to see all of your current ad accounts, their

status, and how much you have spent in the All Accounts view.

Clicking on an account will bring you to the All Campaigns view. You can easily pause, delete, or reactivate campaigns,

track start and end dates, view your total budget, see how much of it remains and how much you have spent as a total or

broken out by date. You will also see notifications here when campaigns are created, rejected, or approved by Facebook.

https://facebook.com/ads/manage



Use the dropdowns to change the date range you want to use to view results, view active or deleted campaigns, or

view a full Advertising Performance report, summarized by campaign.

Once you click on a campaign, you can see information about its performance and either pause, delete it, or activate

ads within that campaign.

Click on any ad or sponsored story in your campaign to access individual performance metrics for it.



Understanding the performance of your campaigns, ads and sponsored stories

We designed Ads Manager to provide real-time metrics that enable you to quickly

understand how people are responding to your ads and sponsored stories.

The Audience graph shows you how much of your targeted audience your

campaign reaches compared to how many it could reach. If you find you’re not

reaching enough of your targeted audience, try raising your bids or budget.

• Targeted: The approximate number of people your ads or sponsored

stories can reach, based on your targeting criteria

• Reach: The number of unique people who saw this campaign. This is different from impressions, which includes

people seeing your ads multiple times

• Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads with the names of their friends who

liked your Page, installed your app, or RSVPed to your event

The Response graph allows you to track performance of your campaign by clicks and actions over time.



Seven metrics allow you to quickly understand the size and engagement of your audience. You should monitor these

metrics closely to assess the success of your advertising campaigns.

1. Campaign Reach: The number of unique people who saw this campaign. This is different from impressions, which

includes people seeing your ads multiple times

2. Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your campaign’s ads or sponsored stories

3. Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads with the names of your friends who

liked your Page, installed your app, or RSVPed to your event

4. Actions: All the people who took an action within 24 hours of seeing—or within 28 days of clicking—on your ad or

sponsored story. You’ll only see data here if you’re promoting a Page, app, or event or running Page post ads.

5. Clicks: The number of clicks this campaign’s ads or sponsored stories have received

6. CTR: Click-through rate. The number of times people have clicked on ads or sponsored stories in your campaign,

divided by the number of times they were shown on the site during the dates selected.

7. Spent: The amount you’ve spent on your campaign during the dates selected

Inline reporting shows your bid and price for each ad or sponsored story. You can click on any ad to see a preview of

how it will look on Facebook, and a summary of your targeting. There’s also a graph of your performance with a drop-

down that lets you see trends about Clicks, CTR, Impressions, and Actions at a glance. Use the information in this area

to track whether your ads and sponsored stories are becoming more effective over time, or whether you need to make

changes to keep your messaging fresh.



Reports

The Reports tab gives you access to four reports—Advertising Performance, Responder Demographics, Actions by

Impression Time, and Inline Interactions—that give you in-depth performance and demographic information on your

accounts, campaigns, ads, and sponsored stories. Use these reports to understand at a granular level what messaging

is most effective.

You can view these reports summarized at the account, campaign, or ad level. You can

also see data aggregated by the month, week, day, or a custom timeframe; specify a date

range for which you want to view data, and choose whether you want your performance

information displayed in a webpage or in .csv formats.

If you choose webpage display, you can click the column headers in any report to sort

by that metric. You can also schedule reports and export them to a .csv file to use the

performance data in other applications.

To get started, navigate to facebook.com/ads/manage and click on the Reports tab on

the left-hand side of the page.

http://facebook.com/ads/manage



Advertising Performance

The Advertising Performance report includes statistics like impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), spend and

actions so that you can see how cost-effective your campaigns, ads, and sponsored stories are.

You can also use Advertising Performance to get an in-depth understanding of how your accounts, campaigns, and ads

are performing against each other so that you can focus your spending on the ones that achieve your business goals at

the lowest cost.

For instance, in the example below, we can quickly see that the Ads Manager Guide Account has outperformed the

Facebook Marketing Solutions account over the accounts’ lifetimes. Although we spent ~5x on Ads Manager Guide versus

Facebook Marketing Solutions, we received over 83x the actions, which suggests that we should dedicate a greater

proportion of our media budget to the Ads Manager Guide Account in the future because it is much more effective.



Responder Demographics

Responder Demographics shows you who’s responding to your messaging broken out by country, region, gender

and age ranges. Use this information to confirm that your ads and sponsored stories are interesting to your desired

audience and find information that can help you optimize your targeting criteria and content.

For example, the following report shows that women aged 45-54 are far more likely to engage with our recent Facebook

Marketing Solutions campaign than men aged 18-24. Depending on our business goals, this suggests that we should

either consider optimizing our spend on this audience for similar campaigns in the future so that we can maximize our

return on advertising spend, or change our messaging to appeal more to young men.



Actions by Impression Time

The Actions by Impression Time report shows the number of actions organized by the impression time of the Facebook

Ad or sponsored story. An action is attributed to an ad or sponsored story based on the length of time between a user’s

view of or click on the ad or sponsored story and the action (i.e., 0-24 hours, 1-7 days, 8-28 days). Use this report to

understand how users are engaged with your ads over time.

For instance, in the example below, we can see in the report below that both our Facebook Marketing Solutions and

FBV ads drove credit spend in-app. However, we may have more confidence in the Facebook Marketing Solutions ad’s

ability to drive credit spend because more people took immediate action on the ad.



Inline Interactions

The Inline Interactions report will help you understand immediate user engagement on ads and sponsored stories. It

includes metrics like impressions, clicks, and detailed actions such as likes, photo views, and video plays that happened

directly on your ads.

You can use this information to understand which of your campaigns or ads inspire immediate action, so you can

optimize for impact.

Note that the total interactions column in this report does not include actions taken on the photo viewer or video player.



Best Practices

A/B test your ads and use the Advertising Performance report to identify which campaigns help you achieve your

business objectives most cost-effectively. For instance, an app developer would use the Advertising Performance

report to measure the Actions to Spend ratios on different versions of their ads. That way, they could understand

which version drives the highest number of app installs, shares and instances of credit spend at the lowest cost

and allocate more of their marketing spend to that version.

Monitor the seven metrics in your inline Ads Manager reports to keep track of the performance of your campaigns

or ads and sponsored stories. For example, a regional retailer could watch the Campaign Reach and CTR metrics

and know whether they were reaching enough people to meet their business objectives, or whether they should

expand their targeting criteria.

Watch the Response graph to see whether your campaigns inspire an increasing number of actions over time,

or whether they have reached their peak effectiveness. For example, a consumer packaged goods advertiser

marketing an evergreen product such as soap would watch for the Response graph to climb up and to the right.

When the graph levels off, they should take that as an opportunity to recapture their audience’s attention with

new messaging.

Check the Responder Demographics report to confirm that your campaigns are interesting to your target audience.

For instance, a cellular phone carrier who wants to target specific geographic regions with its advertising should

check the Responder Demographics report to make sure that people in those areas are taking actions based on its

ads and sponsored stories.

Use view-through and click-through conversion information to understand how people interact with your ads over

time. Since you have visibility into multiple attribution windows for each ad, you can understand which ads drive

immediate action and which ads drive latent action. Using this information, you can more accurately assess the

value of each ad.



Glossary for Ads Manager and Full Report

ACTIONS: For ads and sponsored stories pointing to

Pages: the number of times people liked your Page,

liked posts on your Page, commented, @ mentioned,

checked into your place, tagged your brand in a photo,

shared your Page posts, redeemed your offer, clicked

on the Page post link, viewed the Page post photo,

viewed the Page post video, or viewed a tab on your

Page within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored

story, or within 28 days of clicking on it. For ads and

sponsored stories pointing to apps: the number of

times people installed, used, or spent credits in your

app within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored

story, or within 28 days of clicking on it. For events:

the number of times people RSVPed within 24 hours of

seeing your ad or sponsored story, or within 28 days of

clicking on it.

AD: A marketing message in the voice of the brand. It

can appear in the right-hand side of every Facebook

page

BID: The maximum amount you’ve indicated

you’re willing to pay for each click (CPC) or per 1000

impressions (CPM)

CLICKS: The number of clicks your ads have received.

If you’re advertising a Page, Event, or app, Clicks also

include Page likes, event RSVPs, or app installs directly

from the ad

CPC: The average cost per click, calculated as the

amount spent divided by the number of clicks received

CPM: The average cost per thousand impressions,

calculated as the amount spent divided by the

thousands of impressions received

CTR: Click-through rate, or the number of clicks your ad

received divided by the number of times it was shown

on the site

FREQUENCY: The average number of times each person

saw your ads

IMPRESSIONS: The number of times your ads have been

shown on the site

PRICE: The average amount you’re paying per click

(CPC) or 1000 impressions (CPM)

REACH: The number of individual people who saw this

ad during the dates selected. This is different than

impressions, which includes people seeing your ad

multiple times

SOCIAL CLICKS: Clicks on ads that were shown with

the names of the viewer’s friends who liked your Page,

RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you’re not

advertising a Page, event, or app, you won’t see social

data

SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS: Impressions that were shown

with the names of the viewer’s friends who liked your

Page, RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you’re

not advertising a Page, event, or app, you won’t see

social data

SOCIAL REACH: People who saw your ad with the

names of their friends who liked your Page, RSVPed to

your event, or used your app. If you’re not advertising a

Page, event, or app, your ad won’t have social reach

SOCIAL %: The percentage of impressions where your

ad was shown with the names of the viewer’s friends

who liked your Page, RSVPed to your event, or used

your app. If you’re not advertising a Page, event, or app,

you won’t see social data

SPENT: The amount you spent during the selected time

period

SPONSORED STORY: Marketing message that comes

from a Page post, or stories about a friend interacting

with a brand through actions such as check-ins, app

use, or Page likes. The core message is controlled by

the advertiser, but sponsored stories will also show

social context, such as people interacting with what’s

being promoted to their friends. Sponsored stories can

appear on the right hand side of Facebook or in the

news feed on the web or mobile.

facebook ads manager measurement

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