Unlocking the Power of Facebook Ads Analytics 

Facebook Ads is a powerful tool for any business. With it, you can reach more potential customers and give your service a huge boost. Many businesses are already crushing it with Facebook Ads and its targeting options that allow them to reach their target audience effectively.

However, with so many different advertising options available these days, it can be challenging to know which campaigns are working and which ones are not. You can get this understanding with the help of Facebook Ads analytics. In this guide, we will take a deep dive into analyzing Facebook Ads data and show you how you can track the performance of your ads to make informed decisions about your advertising strategy and improve your results over time. 

What is Facebook Ad analytics? 

Facebook Ads analytics is a suite of tools and approaches to help businesses track the performance of their Facebook Ads campaigns. The main idea of analyzing Facebook ads data is to derive insights into the effectiveness of campaigns and identify areas for improvement.

In some guides, Facebook ads analytics is mistakenly referred to as a tool. Facebook indeed offers a set of tools to create and manage ad campaigns and track their performance. All these tools are gathered into a one-stop shop called Meta Ads Manager (formerly Facebook Ads Manager). The concept of Facebook ads analysis is much broader since it can include multiple tools or even services to perform an in-depth analysis of campaign results. 

The role of Facebook Ads analytics in the health of your campaigns 

The simple answer to the question ‘Why analyze Facebook ads data?‘ is to spend your advertising budget efficiently. With a data-driven approach to running advertising campaigns, you can be sure that your money won‘t be wasted and you’ll be able to maximize your returns. 

Facebook Ads analytics will help you understand the health of your campaigns through key metrics: impressions, reach, clicks, click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and return on ad spend. We’ll dive into these a bit later. However, you should keep in mind that this data is essential to identify areas of improvement and determine which strategies are working best for your campaigns. 

Facebook Ads analytics provides you with valuable insights into how your campaigns are performing. You can see exactly how many people are taking specific actions on your website after clicking on your ads, such as making a purchase or signing up. Tracking conversions, in turn, allows you to understand the ROI of your ad campaigns better and make more informed decisions about where to allocate your advertising budget. 

Another benefit Facebook Ads analysis provides is a wealth of data about the target audience, including information about age, gender, location, and interests. This information is crucial to understand how to target your audience more effectively. 

You can compare the performance of different campaigns and target audiences to make more informed decisions about where to focus your efforts. All these insights are the result of sophisticated Facebook Ads analysis. Now you understand the value of analytics. The next step is to learn how you can analyze Facebook ads data.

How to analyze Facebook Ads

Primarily, your Facebook ads analytics can be done either in-house using the built-in Meta tools or outside of the Facebook Ads platform. 

The first way is pretty convenient since you already have a set of tools for analytics out of the box. You will find these tools if you click the burger menu button (All tools) and scroll down to the Analyze and report section.

From this list of tools, you need Ads Reporting. Other options such as Audience Insights or Creative Reporting, show analytics relating to your Facebook Page, not ads. 

Ads Reporting is a part of the Meta Ads Manager tool where you create and run ads. Here is what it may look like:

This is the primary tool you can use to analyze the performance of your ads on Facebook. It is designed to create ad performance reports from scratch or with the help of templates, such as Overall performance or Engagement reports. We won’t dedicate much of your attention to this tool here since we already have a dedicated blog post about Facebook Ads Reporting. 

What is Meta Ads Manager for?

• Create new ads. Ads Manager lets you create new ads in an easy and simple process. You will be guided to set your marketing objective, define the people you’d like to reach, manage the budget you want to spend, choose the places to show your ad, choose the ad format, and more.

• Manage multiple ads at once. You’ll be able to view, edit, and duplicate your existing campaigns at any time. It’s also easy to edit settings like audiences, budget, placement options, and creatives. You can even edit multiple ads at once. 
• See how your ads are performing. With the Ads Manager reporting tools, you can see how your ads are performing in real-time. You’ll get insights on what to adjust – such as your ad creative, budget, or audience – so that they perform better over time.

What are the limitations of native tools for Facebook ads analysis?

Facebook…Meta Ads Reporting tool provides you with all the key metrics and beyond them. You can also add custom metrics if necessary. 

In addition to this, trend and bar chart visualizations are available for your Facebook ads analysis. 

In view of this, Meta Ads Reporting seems to be a perfect solution for Facebook Ads analysis. And it really is for specific cases. However, you should be aware of the limitations which you’ll likely encounter, namely:

• No support for multiple accounts. You won’t be able to operate analytics for multiple Facebook Ads accounts by simply selecting them.
• Primitive sorting and filtering. You can only sort your data from A to Z or vice versa.
• Data visualization is limited to three options: pivot table, trend, or bar charts.
• Data comparison. You can’t compare data from groups of campaigns. Also comparing data between different time periods can be challenging since the data can be affected by changes in the ad algorithm or the platform itself.
• Time lag. The more ads you add to your report, the longer it takes to update it. Data in the reports can also sometimes be delayed by a few hours or even a day, which can be a limitation for real-time analysis.
• Your analytics is limited to one platform, Facebook Ads. To manage ads analytics for different platforms, you’ll need to search for a third-party solution. 

Meta Ads Reporting is a good option for analyzing Facebook ads data and gaining valuable insights into it. However, the limitations associated with this built-in tool force marketers and PPC experts to search for more efficient analytical solutions. This is why they tend to run their analytics outside of Facebook Ads using custom Looker Studio Facebook Ads templates or other BI dashboards. 

Smart Facebook Ads analytics outside of Meta

This is basically the second way you can choose for Facebook Ads analytics. It involves using one or several third-party tools depending on your purpose. For example, such solutions as AdEspresso or Agorapulse are designed to enable you to quickly view the most important analytics of your Facebook ads. But their functionality is limited and you’ll often want to go beyond what these tools offer.

A more sophisticated and hence efficient approach is to have an interactive dashboard where you can observe all your key metrics in one place. Here is an example of such an analytics dashboard for Facebook Ads performance by the campaign designed by analytics at Coupler.io.

Coupler.io is a data automation and analytics platform that allows you to deal with multidimensional data management tasks. It provides an ETL solution to automate exports of data from Facebook Ads to BigQuery or a spreadsheet app – Facebook Ads to Excel or Google Sheets. To process and manipulate the acquired data and hence derive insights from it, you can opt for an expert service that is meant to solve sophisticated data analytics tasks.

On this ads performance dashboard, you can see all the Facebook ad key metrics that enable you to get insights into your ads performance. Moreover, the dashboard is designed to support other advertising platforms such as LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads. If you use these platforms (and we know you do😉), you’ll be able to analyze all your ads data in one place.

We’ve already mentioned these Facebook ads key metrics several times, so it’s high time to actually cover this in detail.

7 Facebook Ads key metrics

Here is a list of seven key metrics to analyze Facebook ad campaigns:

1. Reach – the number of unique users who saw the ad.

The reach metric in Facebook Ads analytics shows how many people saw your ad at least once, regardless of whether they engaged with it or not. 

As a rule, a 10-30% reach of your target audience is considered to be an optimum indicator. However, to use an appropriate benchmark, you should take into account multiple factors such as industry, ad format, ad placement, ad budget, and other specific advertising goals and the audience you are targeting.

2. Impressions – the number of times an ad was displayed on a user’s screen.

Every time your ad is displayed on Facebook, it’s an impression. Unlike the reach metric which measures the number of unique users who have seen your ad, impressions measure the total number of times your ad has been displayed. 

3. Clicks – the number of clicks on the ad.

It’s clear that every time someone clicks on your ad, the number of clicks goes up. The more clicks you get the better. However, to consider your advertising campaign more or less successful, you should have at least 1 click per 100 impressions. This is where Click Through Rate (CTR) comes in.

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR) – the ratio of clicks to impressions, expressed as a percentage.

You’ll get CTR if you divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions, and express the result as a percentage. A high CTR shows that your ad is resonating with your target audience and is driving a lot of clicks. A common benchmark for CTR is 1% but it will vary depending on the specifics of your ad campaign.

5. Cost per Click (CPC) – the average cost of a click on the ad.

You’ll get CPC if you divide the cost of your ad campaign by the number of clicks. Your goal is to keep your CPC low as it means you’re getting a lot of value for your advertising budget. CPC varies depending on industry and competition, so, it’s hard to say what a common or average metric you should strive for.

6. Conversion Rate – the percentage of users who completed a desired action, such as sign-up, after clicking on the ad.

To get the conversion rate, you also need to perform a mathematical operation – divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks. Conversions here are the number of users who took a desired action, for example, signed up for Coupler.io. Clicks are basically the number of clicks on your ad. 

The optimum conversion rate is 2-3% and your goal should be to make it higher. A high conversion rate indicates that your ad is effectively driving valuable actions from your target audience. 

7. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – the return on investment from the advertising campaign, calculated as the revenue generated divided by the cost of the campaign.

Aren’t you tired of math? 😄 To calculate your ROAS, you need to divide the revenue generated from your ad campaign by the money spent on the campaign. The optimum return on ad spend is 2 to 1, meaning that you earn $2 for every $1 spent on advertising. But of course, you need to grow your ROAS to get a good return on your advertising investment.

FAQ on how to analyze Facebook ads performance

We’ve collected a couple of frequently asked questions about analyzing ads on Facebook and provided you with guidance on how you can do this.

How to analyze frequency in Facebook ads

Meta Ads Reporting tool provides Frequency as a popular metric you can track. It’s defined as the average number of times a user has seen your ad. Here is what it may look like on the ads report.

How to analyze A/B testing Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads allows you to experiment with different versions of your ads so you can see which works best. For this, you need to create campaigns for your A/B testing and actually create a test. Go to Experiments using the All tools menu.

• Click Get Started for A/B Test and fill out the required fields to create the A/B test.

Once the test is complete and you want to see its results, open your test. You’ll see two sections: Results and Test Details. 

• The Results part contains a summary of the performance for your chosen metric, for example, CPC.
• The Test details part contains a summary of your overall test and ad campaign activity.

This data will let you understand which ad campaign showed better performance.

Bonus stage: Facebook ads campaign management tips

As a bonus section, we decided to share some advice that will be valuable for those who are just starting their path with Facebook ads campaigns. 

• Write a great copy for your ad. You can’t just send any old text – you need great copywriting to make your ads more powerful and connect with your target audience better. Keep your copy short and simple, and have a clear call to action (CTA).
• Choose compelling images. Pick images that will grab your audience’s attention. Don’t just use any cute cat or baby images you find on the Internet 😉
• Have someone else review your ad to ensure your ad is easy to understand.
• Test everything, from your ad copy, images/videos, ad placements, target audience, even your budget. You won’t know which ad will give you better results until you test them.
• Keep improving the performance of your ads. For example, if you find that your ads are bringing in many clicks but no sales, try refining your target audience. This will help you avoid losing more money on your ads.

It’s also important to know that Facebook reviews every single ad you publish on the platform. So, be sure to check their advertising policies to ensure your ad complies and prevent it from being rejected. Understanding what you can and cannot advertise on Facebook may save you a lot of time and money in the future.

Even if you follow all the advice above, this won’t guarantee the success of your campaign. This is where Facebook Ads analytics should come into play to help you figure out the bottlenecks and areas to improve. Then you’ll be able to fix those problems and increase your performance over time. Good luck with your data!