Are you running Facebook ads?

Do you want to better understand your results?

By knowing these key Facebook advertising metrics, you’ll be able to better interpret your results and improve your campaign performance.

In this article you’ll discover 27 different Facebook advertising metrics, exactly what they are and how to use them.

Categorising Facebook advertising metrics

The metrics defined in this article are broken down into four main categories, based on how they are reported in Ads Manager.

The categories are:

1. Performance (Default)
2. Delivery
3. Engagement
4. Video Engagement

Performance Metrics – Default

1. Results

The number of times that your advert achieved an outcome, based on the objective you selected.

The results metric shows how well your advertising campaign performed based on the business objectives that you chose.

For example, if you are running an Engagement objective using Page posts (Boost post) then your results metric would be Post Engagements. If you are running a Traffic objective, sending people to your website, your results metric would be website clicks.

This one of the core Facebook advertising metrics and can be affected by many factors, such as your auction bid, target audience, optimisation type, advert creative and messaging, and schedule.

2. Reach

The number of people who saw your adverts at least once. Reach is different to impressions, which may include multiple views of your adverts by the same people.

Your reach can be affected by your bid, budget and audience targeting.

3. Cost 

The average cost per result from your adverts.

Keeping with the Traffic objective example, you’d see your cost per website click in the Cost column.

This metric can be affected by many factors, such as your auction bid, target audience, optimisation type, advert creative and messaging, and schedule.

4. Amount Spent

The estimated total amount of money you’ve spent on your campaign, ad set or ad during its schedule.

Amount spent lets you see how much you’ve spent compared to your maximum budget during the time period that you’re looking at.

5. Ends

The date that your campaign ended or is scheduled to end. A campaign’s end date is based on the schedule that you chose in the campaign’s advert set.

If you’ve only ever Boosted your posts, you’ll be familiar with Lifetime budgets, however we suggest using daily budgets instead as they are easier to scale.

Delivery Metrics

6. Frequency

The average number of times each person saw your advert.

Frequency is one of the most under utilised Facebook advertising metrics. It helps to build awareness and recall by showing your message to people in your target audience multiple times.

However, it’s important to monitor frequency along with your results and Relevance Score to make sure that the same people don’t see your adverts too often during a campaign.

 

7. Cost per 1k people reached

The average cost to reach 1,000 people.

On Facebook, reach can be a more insightful metric than impressions, because it gives you a measurement of how many people were exposed to your message and how efficiently you reached them.

 

8. Impressions

The number of times your adverts were viewed.

Impressions is a common metric used by the online marketing industry. Impressions measure how widely and often your adverts were seen amongst your target audience. However, as stated above, Reach metrics are more insightful.

 

9. CPM Cost per 1k impressions

The average cost for 1,000 impressions.

CPM is a common metric used by the online advertising industry to gauge the cost-effectiveness of an advertising campaign. Although CPM is a good starting metric, engagement metrics and end user actions are more important when it comes to measuring your ROI.

Engagement Metrics

10. People taking action

The number of people who took an action that was attributed to your adverts.

The people taking action metric complements reach. This metric shows the number of people who engaged with your business after seeing or engaging with your adverts.

11. Post reactions

The number of reactions on your adverts (or on all posts, in some cases). The reactions button on an advert allows people to share different reactions to its content: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry.

Post reactions indicate that your adverts are relevant to your target audience, which helps your adverts perform better.

 

12. Post comment

The number of comments on your adverts (or all posts, in some cases).

The post comments metric counts all comments that people made on your adverts while they were running.

If you are running a Page likes campaign, this also includes comments on other posts on your Page that were attributed to your adverts.

 

13. Post shares

The number of shares of your adverts (or all posts, in some cases).

People can share your adverts or posts on their own or friends’ Timelines, in groups and on their own Pages.

Shares are weighted more than any other social engagement metric (Reactions and Comments) and act a signal to Facebook that your ad has great audience fit. As a result, Facebook will reward advertisers with lower cost per results.

 

14. Link clicks* **

The number of clicks on advert links to selected destinations or experiences on or off Facebook-owned properties.

The metric counts link clicks attributed to your adverts that lead to selected destinations or experiences. For example, they can include:

• Websites
• App stores or app deep links
• Clicks to call
• Clicks to message
• Map/direction links
• Facebook Canvas
• Facebook lead forms
• Facebook Marketplace
• Videos hosted by another website (including videos embedded in News Feed adverts but hosted on a video platform such as YouTube or Vimeo)

15. CTR (Link)*

The percentage of times people saw your advert and performed a link click.

CTR is one of the most important metrics, as it impacts your Relevance Score and determines how much of your target audience will see your ads and the cost per results you pay.

The average CTR across all industries on Facebook is only 0.9%.

16. CPC (Link)**

The average cost for each link click. 

The cost you pay for a link click will be affected by your CTR. The higher the CTR, the lower the cost per link click you’ll pay. This is because Facebook rewards advertisers that have great audience ad fit shown by having a high CTR.

 

17. Page likes

The number of likes of your Facebook Page attributed to your adverts.

The metric counts Facebook Page Likes attributed to your adverts. It counts both likes that occur directly on the Page and likes that occur via the Page Like button on your advert.

With the introduction of more effective ad objectives such as Conversions and Traffic and the decline in organic reach on Facebook, Page Likes have become a top-line vanity metric.

It’s no longer one of the core Facebook advertising metrics. You’ll find that you pick up additional Page Likes when you run ad campaigns but focusing anymore on them is a waste of time and money.

Video Engagement Metrics

18. Three-second video views

The number of times your video was watched for an aggregate of at least three seconds, or for nearly its total length, whichever occurs first.

For example: If someone watches a two-second video for 1.94 seconds or a three-second video for 2.91 seconds, that counts as a three-second video view. People frequently drop off before the actual end of a video when credits roll or content fades out, so 97% is considered to be the video’s full length.

Three second video views are great to measure watch time on very short videos that are under 15 seconds in length.

 

19. Cost per three-second video views

The average cost for each three-second video view.

This metric is calculated as the total amount spent, divided by the number of three-second video views.

 

20. Ten-second video views

The number of times your video was watched for an aggregate of at least ten seconds, or for nearly its total length, whichever occurred first.

For example: If someone watches a five-second video for 4.85 seconds or a ten-second video for 9.7 seconds, that counts as a ten-second video view.

Like three second video views, ten second video views are an important metric to measure engagement on slightly longer videos of up to 30 seconds.

 

21. Cost per 10 second video views

The average cost for each ten-second video view.

This metric is calculated as the total amount spent, divided by the number of ten-second video views.

 

22. Video percentage watched

The average percentage of your video that people watched.

The metric is calculated as the percentage of your video watched averaged across all watches of your video. You’ll find that the longer the video the lower the video percentage watched, as there is a greater level of drop-off for videos over one minute in length.

Facebook has noticed that shorter videos perform better, however they don’t keep users on Facebook long enough so they’ve adjusted their algorithm to give preference to longer videos.

This metric doesn’t count watches of videos while they were live.

 

23. Video watches at 25%

The number of times your video was watched at 25% of its length, including when viewers skipped to this point.

24. Video watches at 50%

The number of times your video was watched at 50% of its length, including when viewers skipped to this point.

25. Video watches at 75%

The number of times your video was watched at 75% of its length, including when viewers skipped to this point.

26. Video watches at 95%

The number of times your video was watched at 95% of its length, including when viewers skipped to this point.

27. Video watches at 100%

The number of times your video was watched at 100% of its length, including when viewers skipped to this point.

There’s no faster way to build a warm retargeting audience than using video content.

Therefore, we recommend creating a custom audience for each of the video engagement metrics above.

Not only will that allow you to target video viewers with new Facebook ad campaigns but you can also create Lookalike audiences from the different engagement metrics to find new relevant audiences.

Conclusion

What distinguishes a successful Facebook advertisers from a mediocre one is how they interpret the data from their campaigns and use that information to make optimisations that will deliver better results. To do this you first need to understand what the metrics mean.

To recap then, we’ve highlighted 27 key Facebook advertising metrics from basic performance metrics such as Results, Reach, Cost etc to specific engagement metrics and even video metrics. By knowing these key Facebook advertising metrics you’ll be able to better understand your campaign results.

What do you think? What Facebook advertising metrics are you tracking in your campaigns?

Leave a comment below.

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About Charlie Lawrance

Charlie Lawrance is the Founder and CEO of Gecko Squared, a digital marketing agency that specialises in Facebook advertising. His clients include eCommerce companies, professional service businesses and best-selling authors. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Charlie Lawrance).

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