5.2 Important Metrics

Important metrics – We live in a world of rich data, more data than you can ever need. And it’s all within our fingertips, thanks to Meta. But in that huge amount of data, it can be difficult to know what’s important and what’s not. We’re gonna get started by outlining some important metrics and figures you should be on the lookout for.  

Reach – Reach tells us how many people have seen our ad. To be clear, this is the number of accounts or individuals who have had the ad displayed to them. Impressions are how many times our ad has been shown, while reach is the number of accounts who have seen the ad impressions or how many times the ad has been displayed overall. This could be multiple times per person, so it will be even or greater than reach. With both reach and impressions, there isn’t an industry standard that we should be expecting for every dollar spent; these expectations are up to you and your business to benchmark yourselves. I would recommend keeping a close eye on these for your first few campaigns so that you can start to get an idea of your own brand’s expectations. You should be tracking how many impressions you can expect for every dollar spent and the same with reach.  

Frequency – Frequency is calculated using both the reach and impressions data. Frequency is how many times on average, a person will be shown your ad. So the calculation here would be impressions divided by reach. And these figures should line up reasonably well. Frequency is a metric that is often ignored or can be used to highlight a critical issue. If the frequency of your ad is too high, say above 7, that means the average person is seeing your ad 7 times. It’s fair to say that if someone hasn’t converted from your ad after 7 opportunities, they probably aren’t going to. The goal here would be to keep your frequency between 2 and 4. That way, you are not wasting the budget targeting someone who isn’t likely to engage. 

Another note here is that we are able to put a frequency cap on our ads so that we can ensure that repetitive display isn’t stifling people’s newsfeeds and resulting in annoyance. Cost per result. This is also a variable dependent on a number of factors, such as industry and goal. But in general, the cost per result is calculated by dividing the number of results by the total amount spent on the ad.  

For instance, if the ad goal was purchases, then the cost per result would be the amount spent on the ad divided by the amount of purchases that have taken place as a result of that ad. The reason this value expectation varies is because the cost per result for a purchase, for instance, is a lot higher than the cost per result for a video view. Again, these are benchmarks that you should be setting for yourself early in your advertising efforts.  

Quality ranking – The quality ranking metric used to be more of a mystery to us as advertisers. And while there is still some mystery around the ranking, Meta has shared some of their insights with us. Firstly, the quality ranking is generated by comparing your ad against similar ads competing for the same audience. Some of the criteria meta has confirmed that shape the ranking of this assessment is low-quality attributes such as clickbait, engagement bait and sensationalized language. In addition to this, meta also collects data on who is hiding your ad display.