In my last blog post, I discussed what KPIs are relevant to specific campaigns that you have running. However, if you are unfamiliar with Facebook Ads Manager, these KPIs could not mean too much to you! Let’s break down some of the most important KPIs and what they actually mean.
Link Click
Definition: The number of clicks on links within the ad that led to advertiser-specified destinations, on or off Facebook.
How It’s Used: Link Clicks are often the first start to seeing how your campaign is doing to generate traffic. It is calculated if someone clicks on the ad, clicks on a form, the map/destination, and much more. If your pixel is installed, then this metric should be used to compare against others, such as landing page views.
Landing Page View
Definition: The number of times a person clicked on an ad link and then successfully loaded the destination webpage or Instant Experience. To report on landing page views, you must have created a Facebook pixel.
How It’s Used: Landing page view is a good determinant to whether a customer purposefully clicked on your ad. Often, people can perform a “link click” on accident because of a quick finger touch and realize it was a mistake. Landing page view means they waited for the page to load to see the product(s). Landing page view can be website traffic, loading an Instant Experience, or opening of a lead form.
Reach
Definition: The number of people who saw your ads at least once.
How it is Used: This KPI indicates the number of people who were exposed to your message for the duration of the ad. This does not suggest that people are clicking on the ad, but it can lead to individuals engaging with your business when they see your message!
Frequency
Definition: The average number of times each person saw your ad.
How it’s Used: This ad can assist with overall brand awareness and recall. This tends to average between 1-2 per view, but it can be higher for various factors such as budget, audience size, and schedule.
Impressions
Definition: The number of times your ads were on screen.
How it’s Used: This common metric can measure how often your ads were on screen for your target audience. Use this number to compare across all metrics, whether it be video-based or graphic-based. If you multiply frequency and reach, you will get your impressions this way as well. It’s important to note that video impressions are counted whether the video ad started playing or not.
ThruPlay
Definition:ThruPlay is an optimization and billing option for video ads through the Video Views objective.
How it’s Used: ThruPlay allows advertisers to optimize and choose to pay only for ads that are played to completion for videos shorter than 15 seconds. For longer videos, ThruPlay optimizes and bills for ads that are played for at least 15 seconds. This can apply to a single video, slideshow, or an Instant Experience.
Cost Per Result
Definition: The average cost per result from your ads.
How it’s Used: This will determine how cost-efficient the ad is performing. The CPR will be different for all campaigns, depending on what it is optimized for. Some examples include, cost per click, cost per landing page, cost per view, etc. It includes many factors like your auction bid, target audience, creative, message, and schedule.
Estimated Ad Recall Lift (People)
Definition: An estimate of the number of additional people who may remember seeing your ads, if asked, within 2 days.
How it’s Used: This KPI can be useful for understanding the effectiveness of the ad, including audience and ad creative. This metric is only available for assets in the Brand awareness, Post engagement and Video views Objectives.
But What About View Contents, Purchases, Add to Wishlist and Others?
Definition: The number of *insert event name here* events tracked by the pixel on your website and attributed to your ads.
How it’s Used: These types of KPIs are not set in stone with definitions because you can define them to be anything. For example, at PCG, we define “view content” as any view of a client’s inventory through an ad. These are pixel events that Facebook provides for you to track how you see fit (or if you even want to).
It’s important that you define these KPIs correctly in the pixel and pick the specific events that make sense for your business to analyze.