“Ad reports gather and display your most important metrics from your current campaigns, ad sets, and ads. The metrics in these reports will help you learn how you’re reaching your business goals as well as who is engaging with your ads.”
—Facebook
Basically, Facebook Ads Reports give you everything you need to evaluate and optimize your ongoing Facebook marketing.
As you may have surmised from the title, this post is rather straightforward. I’m going to show you how to easily create the most informative Facebook Ads Reports possible.
I’ll make sure you know exactly which metrics to focus on, like I did in my recent post, “How to Run a Facebook Marketing Audit.” In this post we cover how to evaluate a Facebook page and a Facebook ad account by auditing their performance. This post is our intro to Facebook Ads Reports and today we’ll be diving into detailed evaluations. If you haven’t had a chance to check out this beneficial Facebook feature, it might be a good place to begin.
Let’s get started, we have Facebook Ads Reports to create!
Article Contents
Introduction to Facebook Ads Campaigns
In order to explain Ads Reports we first need to cover a little bit of theory on Facebook Ads structure and on key terminology, then we’ll explain the exact steps for generating a report.
Campaign Structure
In Ads Manager, you’ll be able to create reports that evaluate each level of your advertising. Let’s look at the campaign structure before we get too far so you know what I’m talking about.
In order to successfully advertise on Facebook you’ll need to set a goal for your advertising and create ads that reflect your goal while working together to achieve it.
Each campaign that you create has an objective (for instance, a campaign to increase likes on your page, drive visitors to your website, or increase conversions on the website). Under each campaign you can create one or more ad sets: here you have defined parameters like budget and targeting; so you might have an ad set for men and another ad set for women, with a $100 budget each. Then under each ad set you have one or multiple ads; these can have different creatives/copy that compete with each other in A/B testing.
Therefore, each ad you create will belong to an ad set (or group of like ads) with the same objective. These ads sets will usually have different variables that make them unique and collectively form a campaign.
Each campaign will be defined by its unique desired goal or objective. For example, if you’re advertising to get people to click through to your website, you’ll have a customized set of ads to achieve that goal. If you’re advertising for likes and exposure, your ads will be constructed differently, grouped differently, and assigned to an exposure-specific campaign.
When you’ve got your ads up and running, you want to measure the performance of each campaign to get a feel for how they’re working.
If you find a problem you may want to break it down by ad sets in order to get a more detailed view of the issue. Once you’ve found an ad set that isn’t performing as well, you’ll want to look at individual ads in order to find a commonality that keeps them from performing as desired.
Those are the ads you’ll want to pause or recreate in order to help them perform as desired.
How to Create Facebook Ads Reports
Let’s take a look at the steps to create and use Facebook Ads Reports.
First Steps
Facebook makes it pretty simple to get started creating Facebook Ads Reports. The whole process can be completed in 4 easy steps.
- Determine and select the metrics to be included in your report
- Review the columns, metrics, and data
- Save the report
- Export the report so you can share
Introduction to Your Facebook Ads Reports
In Ads Manager you’ll find a default report of the previous week.
- You can organize this information by clicking on – Columns and Filters.
- Next click on All Campaigns and choose All Campaigns, All Ad Sets, or All Ads (based on what you want to include your report)
Select Your Metrics
When you click on the Columns drop down menu you’ll notice that your default report will provide you with Performance metrics. You can customize this to reflect other metrics as well by changing your selection in the Customize Columns drop down tab.
Each of the metric sets can be customized to include specific info. Select which of the following you’d like to report:
- Performance – reports results, reach, impressions, and frequency
- Clicks – reports clicks, unique clicks, CTR (click-through rate), and CPC (cost per click)
- Videos – reports numbers of views and % of video viewed
- Website – reports website actions (all), checkouts, payment details, purchases, and adds to cart
- Apps – reports app installs, app engagement, credit spends, mobile app actions, and cost per app engagement
- Engagement – reports page likes, page engagement, and post engagement
- Settings – reports start date, end date, ad set name, ad ID, delivery, bid, and objective
- Events – reports event responses and cost-per-event response
Note: Each of the columns can be reordered by clicking and dragging them to your preferred position.
Further, you can have a definition of each parameter by going over it with your mouse.
Save Your Facebook Ads Reports
Time to save your preferences. This process is simple.
- Click on the Save option to keep these customized metrics available for a future report. It will be available from the Columns drop down menu.
- You can also set your custom report as the default when you login to the Ads Manager by clicking on Set As Default on the same menu.
Export Your Facebook Ads Reports
In order to share your Facebook Ads Reports you’ll need to export them.
- In Ads Manager click on the Export option
- Select which file format you want to use
- Click on Export
There you have it. You’ve officially created a custom Facebook Ads Report, saved it, and exported it. Give yourself a pat on the back!
Take Your Facebook Ads Reports to the Next Level
Now that you know how to create Facebook Ads Reports, let’s take a look at what else you can do to make your reporting even better.
Filters
- Customize the way your results appear in Ads Manager by selecting specific filters.
- Click on the Filters drop down menu and the filters you desire.
- Choose from Delivery, Objective, Buying Type, Placement, Metrics.
-or- - Design your own filter with Create New Filter.
- Add the keyword you want to filter by to the Filters area and click Apply to save.
- Click the + icon to add more filters and further customize or click on the x icon to remove.
- Clear removes all filters.
Scheduling Your Facebook Ads Reports
You can have your Facebook Ads Reports created automatically and sent to your (any) email daily, weekly, or monthly.
- First create a report
- From the top left menu, click on Save new report
- Select Schedule Email
- Select how often
- Save
What to Do Next
Now that you’re proficient in creating Facebook Ads Reports, it’s time to put your new skills to use. Your marketing is only successful if you have the feedback to prove it. Test new strategies and create custom campaign reports to evaluate them. You can take it even further: Change body copy, headlines, images, and placement and start A/B testing your ads against one another by creating reports for each of them.
You have the skills to track your Facebook marketing in detail. Use them to continually optimize your strategy and you’ll be reaping the benefits in no time!
