Making sense of your key e-comm Facebook ads metrics - and how to act on them

If you’re running your own ads then getting your first campaign up and out is a big woo-hoo moment! 

The first journey through Ads Manager can be a fraught and stressful time, so once you’ve hit ‘Publish’ you’ve definitely earned yourself a pat on the back. 

But, what next…

Terrified? Excited?

The success of your ads depends as much on what you do next as what you’ve already done. So, what to do?

Absolutely nothing.

When a new campaign goes out it will be in ‘Learning’ until Meta has picked up enough data for it to know how best to deliver your campaign. Imagine you’re studying for an exam and every 20 minutes someone knocks on the door to let you know they’ve tweaked the syllabus… if you keep dipping in and making changes you’re hindering Facebook’s ability to get to work. If, for example, you spot an absolute howler of a typo, go in and change it…. if you’re just feeling all twitchy fingers to improve what you’ve written, sit on your hands.

Watching (but not touching) what happens over the first few days is a useful exercise. It’s not uncommon for a campaign to have a flurry of low cost conversions in the early days - this can be the ‘low hanging fruit’ - Facebook has successfully found the people most primed to buy straight away and is banking them and learning from their activity early on. 

Alternatively, Facebook might need a bit of time to feed out and see who is reacting to your ads. If you’re not getting the results you want in the first few days, sit tight, and give the platform time to work.

On the whole we try not to delve into editing and optimising for around two weeks. Going in too early can risk jeopardising a well designed campaign before it’s had chance to properly feed out.

But when you do dive in, apart from checking your purchases ✨, what are the key metrics to look at?

CPM

This is your cost per 1000 impressions.

The CPM is a strong indicator of how expensive your campaign is to feed out.

Alarm bells should be ringing if this is over £10, but for top of funnel campaigns you can hope to be well under this. If the CPM keeps creeping up it may be time to revisit your audience, test new creative and assess the landing page effectiveness.

Expect your CPM to rise at peak times, such as Black Friday.

CPMs can be a bit punchy in the first few days of a campaign, before settling down.

CTR

When looking at your Click Through Rate read the CTR (link click- through rate) for the most valuable metrics.

If you’re running ads to a cold audience at top of funnel you want to aim for 1% or above. You want to keep an eye on this dropping. If you’ve been enjoying a steady CTR and the percentages start to dip you’ll need to look at refreshing your creative and checking that your audiences are big enough to achieve the reach that you need for your campaign (your reach and frequency will impact your CTR).

If you’re feeding out to a warm audience further down the funnel it’s reasonable to aim for a CTR in excess of 3%, but take into account the percentage you achieved with your cold traffic. If your campaign flew out at the top of the funnel and you were smashing those CTRs, then be ambitious when you’re retargeting (and vice versa). 

CPC

Again, when reading the metrics for Cost Per Click take the CPC (cost per link click) option.

The value of a link click will vary depending on the campaign, but as a broad rule aim for less than £1 at the top of funnel. Expect the CPC to rise middle of funnel and be at its highest bottom of funnel. Knowing your average CPC will help you set your budget in the future.

ROAS

Your Return on Ad Spend is simply the total revenue you’ve generated from your ads (Purchase Conversion Value) divided by your total ad spend. For example, if you spend £1000 on ads in a month and generate £3000 in sales you have a 3X ROAS. Understanding what a tolerable ROAS is for your business will help you maintain profitable campaigns - ie if you know you can afford to spend £10 on bringing in a customer who spends £30, if you maintain a ROAS of more than x3 then you’re winning.

Important note on this - always calculate your ROAS tolerences on the average lifetime value of a customer - but that’s one for another article!

Why are we so invested in ads to grow businesses? Because with eyes on the real time metrics we can drive campaigns using knowledge, not guesswork.

And, yes, that gets you the best, most reliable results. 

Understanding the metrics, and acting on them, is fundamental to getting a good return from your campaigns. For more on the metrics that matter, download our guide.