Let’s face it – you need an awesome organic presence that drives engagement if you want to get the most out of Facebook, and you also need to invest in advertising to ensure you have a well rounded social media strategy in place! Interpreting your Facebook Advertising Campaign results can be tricky, especially if you are not sure what it is you are looking at. Facebook offers you several metrics intended to allow you to measure the results. In this article, I am focusing on the lingo you are presented with that will help you understand the success of your campaign once it’s ended and make any tweaks while it is running.

Before we dive in, if you’re new to Facebook ads you might get a little lost – but don’t worry, just take a look at the Beginners Guide To Facebook Advertising and things will make more sense!

So, let’s work our way through the Facebook Ads Lingo!

At both Campaign and Ad Set Levels, we are shown the following metrics.

• Results: When you first set up your campaign you chose an objective. The figure shown under results reflects the number of times the objective you chose was met. It could be clicks, reach, page likes… it all depends on what you chose in the first place.

• Reach: How many individual people saw your ads.

• Impressions: How many times your ads were seen – in a perfect world, this number and the Reach figure will not be too far apart. If your impressions are much higher ask yourself why people have to see your adverts so many times before they take action. Tweak your audience or your creative to try and reduce impressions.

• Cost Per result: How cost-efficient was your advert? This is one of the most important figures. You want this figure to be as low as possible. It is important though to remember that this figure is affected by every aspect of the campaign. Its objective, targeting and creative will all have an impact.

• Budget: The maximum amount you instructed Facebook you were willing to spend. Don’t lose sight of this figure – and remember you can tweak it at any time (as long as you are meeting Facebook’s daily minimum spend).

• Amount Spent: This will show the amount Facebook actually spent of your budget during the selected time period.

• Frequency: On average, how many times is each person seeing your advert? This metric is estimated – but it is one of the most useful to pay attention to while your ads are running. The closer the frequency is to 1 the better. That would mean most people only see your 1 of your ads and they take action – brilliant! If your frequency is 5.5, that means that one person is seeing your ads five and a half times before noticing it or taking action. Hmmm… that tells me my creative isn’t working.

If I know I only have one individual advert running in my campaign or ad set, and my frequency is high, I am likely to be annoying people. I either need to change the one advert I have, or make sure I have multiple ads running so that I am not continually showing exactly the same thing to my audience.

At Ad Level, we can look at a few more options to help us understand which of our individual adverts might be worth running again.

• Relevance Score: Facebook scores your ads out of ten. It estimates how well your target audience is going to respond to your advert. You only get a score after your adverts have received 500 impressions and more recently, the overall relevance score was split down into three areas. For each of these areas, the closer to 10 you score the better your advert is. If you are only scoring 5 or below you need to go back to your advert and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. Maybe the imagery isn’t as good as you first thought. Is the language you have used in your ad working? Maybe the audience isn’t quite right and needs a tweak? It is possible to score 8s and 9s out of 10. (I’ve never seen or heard of anyone reporting having reached a 10!) Just remember every time you tweak something you need to give it chance to work!

Let the metrics tell a story

After running a Facebook advertising campaign, I always look at the metrics above. I let them tell me a story and decide what needs to be reworked and what needs to be run again. For campaigns running for several months, I look for changes in the results too. Maybe my cost per result has increased, and therefore it’s time to freshen up some imagery.

I look at the results at Campaign level. Overall was this a success?
I look at it at ad set level – which audiences gave me greatest success and therefore are worth saving for other campaigns or how can I push this audience through my sales funnel further?
I look at advert level. Which adverts specifically worked? Is it less text or more, a particular style of image? What is the trend I am seeing in the successful adverts?

This article is top level – and it would be irresponsible of me to not add a line here about the fact that there are so many different aspects to each campaign that must be considered to get a full picture of campaign success. The truth is, if I start working through every last aspect, A. you’d be bored, and B. I’d be out of a job! That said, these are the metrics that can tell you very quickly if something is working well or not.

It’s a long game

If you are using Facebook advertising, it is a long game, and you need to be constantly learning, tweaking and experimenting. Make sure you understand the results and reflect on them. Don’t be afraid to switch an advert off if it isn’t giving you the results you need and learn from the adverts that didn’t perform as much as you learn from the successful ones!