Learn how Ads Manager helps you understand how people are engaging with your ads and sponsored stories.

1. Measuring Success
with Ads Manager
Overview
At Facebook, we believe that businesses will be better in a connected world. Ads and sponsored stories
are some of the best ways for businesses to connect with and engage their audiences. It’s important for
businesses of all sizes to understand how their ads and sponsored stories are performing so that they
can achieve their business objectives.
Facebook’s Ads Manager gives businesses visibility into the performance of their ads and sponsored
stories with the ability to drill down into specific metrics.
We’ve recently made significant improvements to the Ads Manager to help businesses understand how
people are engaging with their ads and sponsored stories.
This guide will help you understand how to use Ads Manager to improve your campaign performance
and meet your business goals.
Table of contents
What’s new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Understanding the performance of your campaigns, ads
and sponsored stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Advertising Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Responder Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Actions by Impression Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Inline Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
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2. Facebook Ads Manager
What’s new
We’ve made changes to Ads Manager reporting to make it easier for you to understand the performance of your
campaigns and optimize for the actions that are likely to result in the business outcomes you want.
Introducing the new Actions metric
Actions tells you how many people connected with your business after seeing your ads, even if they didn’t click, so you
know you’re driving results.
The Actions metric replaces the Connections metric. Similar to Connections, Actions tracks Page Likes, App Installs, and
Event RSVPs that originate from your ads. But Actions allows you to track a much more robust set of measurements.
If you’re promoting a Page, Actions measures the number of times people:
liked your Page claimed your offer
liked posts on your Page answered your question
commented on your Page posts followed your question
@mentioned your Page in a status update clicked on the Page post link
checked into your Place viewed the Page post photo
tagged your Page in a photo viewed the Page post video
shared your Page posts viewed a tab on your Page
If you’re promoting an app, Actions measures the number of times people:
installed your app
used your app
spent credits in your app
If you’re promoting an event, Actions measures:
RSVPs to your event (maybe and yes)
Facebook attributes these actions back to the originating ad based a 24-hour view-through and 28-day click-through
window, so that you get a better picture of the overall value of your ad campaign.
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3. Facebook Ads Manager
You can see a breakdown of all of the actions users took by navigating to Ads Manager (facebook.com/ads/manage),
clicking an account, a campaign, and then the ad for which you want to view metrics. Actions will be broken down by
type in the pie chart for each ad.
You can also view aggregated actions for multiple ads or campaigns in the Advertising Performance Report. In
Ads Manager, you can access this report by clicking Reports in the left navigation bar, and following the on-screen
instructions to generate the Advertising Performance report.
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4. Facebook Ads Manager
The most detailed breakdown of actions is available through the “Actions by Impression Time” report. This report
replaces the “Conversions by Impression Time” Report and includes a wider range of actions broken down by each
attribution window.
By measuring the actions you want people to take on Facebook, you can make informed decisions on how to optimize
the content you are promoting.
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5. Facebook Ads Manager
Getting started
Type https://facebook.com/ads/manage into your browser. You will be able to see all of your current ad accounts, their
status, and how much you have spent in the All Accounts view.
Clicking on an account will bring you to the All Campaigns view. You can easily pause, delete, or reactivate campaigns,
track start and end dates, view your total budget, see how much of it remains and how much you have spent as a total or
broken out by date. You will also see notifications here when campaigns are created, rejected, or approved by Facebook.
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6. Facebook Ads Manager
Use the dropdowns to change the date range you want to use to view results, view active or deleted campaigns, or
view a full Advertising Performance report, summarized by campaign.
Once you click on a campaign, you can see information about its performance and either pause, delete it, or activate
ads within that campaign.
Click on any ad or sponsored story in your campaign to access individual performance metrics for it.
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7. Facebook Ads Manager
Understanding the performance of your campaigns, ads and
sponsored stories
We designed Ads Manager to provide real-time metrics that enable you to quickly
understand how people are responding to your ads and sponsored stories.
The Audience graph shows you how much of your targeted audience your
campaign reaches compared to how many it could reach. If you find you’re not
reaching enough of your targeted audience, try raising your bids or budget.
Targeted: The approximate number of people your ads or sponsored
stories can reach, based on your targeting criteria
Reach: The number of unique people who saw this campaign. This is different from impressions, which includes
people seeing your ads multiple times
Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads with the names of their friends who
liked your Page, installed your app, or RSVPed to your event
The Response graph allows you to track performance of your campaign by clicks and actions over time.
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8. Facebook Ads Manager
Seven metrics allow you to quickly understand the size and engagement of your audience. You should monitor these
metrics closely to assess the success of your advertising campaigns.
1. Campaign Reach: The number of unique people who saw this campaign. This is different from impressions, which
includes people seeing your ads multiple times
2. Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your campaign’s ads or sponsored stories
3. Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads with the names of your friends who
liked your Page, installed your app, or RSVPed to your event
4. Actions: All the people who took an action within 24 hours of seeing—or within 28 days of clicking—on your ad or
sponsored story. You’ll only see data here if you’re promoting a Page, app, or event or running Page post ads.
5. Clicks: The number of clicks this campaign’s ads or sponsored stories have received
6. CTR: Click-through rate. The number of times people have clicked on ads or sponsored stories in your campaign,
divided by the number of times they were shown on the site during the dates selected.
7. Spent: The amount you’ve spent on your campaign during the dates selected
Inline reporting shows your bid and price for each ad or sponsored story. You can click on any ad to see a preview of
how it will look on Facebook, and a summary of your targeting. There’s also a graph of your performance with a drop-
down that lets you see trends about Clicks, CTR, Impressions, and Actions at a glance. Use the information in this area
to track whether your ads and sponsored stories are becoming more effective over time, or whether you need to make
changes to keep your messaging fresh.
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9. Facebook Ads Manager
Reports
The Reports tab gives you access to four reports—Advertising Performance, Responder Demographics, Actions by
Impression Time, and Inline Interactions—that give you in-depth performance and demographic information on your
accounts, campaigns, ads, and sponsored stories. Use these reports to understand at a granular level what messaging
is most effective.
You can view these reports summarized at the account, campaign, or ad level. You can
also see data aggregated by the month, week, day, or a custom timeframe; specify a date
range for which you want to view data, and choose whether you want your performance
information displayed in a webpage or in .csv formats.
If you choose webpage display, you can click the column headers in any report to sort
by that metric. You can also schedule reports and export them to a .csv file to use the
performance data in other applications.
To get started, navigate to facebook.com/ads/manage and click on the Reports tab on
the left-hand side of the page.
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10. Facebook Ads Manager
Advertising Performance
The Advertising Performance report includes statistics like impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), spend and
actions so that you can see how cost-effective your campaigns, ads, and sponsored stories are.
You can also use Advertising Performance to get an in-depth understanding of how your accounts, campaigns, and ads
are performing against each other so that you can focus your spending on the ones that achieve your business goals at
the lowest cost.
For instance, in the example below, we can quickly see that the Ads Manager Guide Account has outperformed the
Facebook Marketing Solutions account over the accounts’ lifetimes. Although we spent ~5x on Ads Manager Guide versus
Facebook Marketing Solutions, we received over 83x the actions, which suggests that we should dedicate a greater
proportion of our media budget to the Ads Manager Guide Account in the future because it is much more effective.
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11. Facebook Ads Manager
Responder Demographics
Responder Demographics shows you who’s responding to your messaging broken out by country, region, gender
and age ranges. Use this information to confirm that your ads and sponsored stories are interesting to your desired
audience and find information that can help you optimize your targeting criteria and content.
For example, the following report shows that women aged 45-54 are far more likely to engage with our recent Facebook
Marketing Solutions campaign than men aged 18-24. Depending on our business goals, this suggests that we should
either consider optimizing our spend on this audience for similar campaigns in the future so that we can maximize our
return on advertising spend, or change our messaging to appeal more to young men.
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12. Facebook Ads Manager
Actions by Impression Time
The Actions by Impression Time report shows the number of actions organized by the impression time of the Facebook
Ad or sponsored story. An action is attributed to an ad or sponsored story based on the length of time between a user’s
view of or click on the ad or sponsored story and the action (i.e., 0-24 hours, 1-7 days, 8-28 days). Use this report to
understand how users are engaged with your ads over time.
For instance, in the example below, we can see in the report below that both our Facebook Marketing Solutions and
FBV ads drove credit spend in-app. However, we may have more confidence in the Facebook Marketing Solutions ad’s
ability to drive credit spend because more people took immediate action on the ad.
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13. Facebook Ads Manager
Inline Interactions
The Inline Interactions report will help you understand immediate user engagement on ads and sponsored stories. It
includes metrics like impressions, clicks, and detailed actions such as likes, photo views, and video plays that happened
directly on your ads.
You can use this information to understand which of your campaigns or ads inspire immediate action, so you can
optimize for impact.
Note that the total interactions column in this report does not include actions taken on the photo viewer or video player.
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14. Facebook Ads Manager
Best Practices
A/B test your ads and use the Advertising Performance report to identify which campaigns help you achieve your
business objectives most cost-effectively. For instance, an app developer would use the Advertising Performance
report to measure the Actions to Spend ratios on different versions of their ads. That way, they could understand
which version drives the highest number of app installs, shares and instances of credit spend at the lowest cost
and allocate more of their marketing spend to that version.
Monitor the seven metrics in your inline Ads Manager reports to keep track of the performance of your campaigns
or ads and sponsored stories. For example, a regional retailer could watch the Campaign Reach and CTR metrics
and know whether they were reaching enough people to meet their business objectives, or whether they should
expand their targeting criteria.
Watch the Response graph to see whether your campaigns inspire an increasing number of actions over time,
or whether they have reached their peak effectiveness. For example, a consumer packaged goods advertiser
marketing an evergreen product such as soap would watch for the Response graph to climb up and to the right.
When the graph levels off, they should take that as an opportunity to recapture their audience’s attention with
new messaging.
Check the Responder Demographics report to confirm that your campaigns are interesting to your target audience.
For instance, a cellular phone carrier who wants to target specific geographic regions with its advertising should
check the Responder Demographics report to make sure that people in those areas are taking actions based on its
ads and sponsored stories.
Use view-through and click-through conversion information to understand how people interact with your ads over
time. Since you have visibility into multiple attribution windows for each ad, you can understand which ads drive
immediate action and which ads drive latent action. Using this information, you can more accurately assess the
value of each ad.
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15. Facebook Ads Manager
Glossary for Ads Manager and Full Report
ACTIONS: For ads and sponsored stories pointing to PRICE: The average amount you’re paying per click
Pages: the number of times people liked your Page, (CPC) or 1000 impressions (CPM)
liked posts on your Page, commented, @ mentioned,
checked into your place, tagged your brand in a photo, REACH: The number of individual people who saw this
shared your Page posts, redeemed your offer, clicked ad during the dates selected. This is different than
on the Page post link, viewed the Page post photo, impressions, which includes people seeing your ad
viewed the Page post video, or viewed a tab on your multiple times
Page within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored SOCIAL CLICKS: Clicks on ads that were shown with
story, or within 28 days of clicking on it. For ads and the names of the viewer’s friends who liked your Page,
sponsored stories pointing to apps: the number of RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you’re not
times people installed, used, or spent credits in your advertising a Page, event, or app, you won’t see social
app within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored data
story, or within 28 days of clicking on it. For events:
the number of times people RSVPed within 24 hours of SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS: Impressions that were shown
seeing your ad or sponsored story, or within 28 days of with the names of the viewer’s friends who liked your
clicking on it. Page, RSVPed to your event, or used your app. If you’re
not advertising a Page, event, or app, you won’t see
AD: A marketing message in the voice of the brand. It social data
can appear in the right-hand side of every Facebook
page SOCIAL REACH: People who saw your ad with the
names of their friends who liked your Page, RSVPed to
BID: The maximum amount you’ve indicated your event, or used your app. If you’re not advertising a
you’re willing to pay for each click (CPC) or per 1000 Page, event, or app, your ad won’t have social reach
impressions (CPM)
SOCIAL %: The percentage of impressions where your
CLICKS: The number of clicks your ads have received. ad was shown with the names of the viewer’s friends
If you’re advertising a Page, Event, or app, Clicks also who liked your Page, RSVPed to your event, or used
include Page likes, event RSVPs, or app installs directly your app. If you’re not advertising a Page, event, or app,
from the ad you won’t see social data
CPC: The average cost per click, calculated as the SPENT: The amount you spent during the selected time
amount spent divided by the number of clicks received period
CPM: The average cost per thousand impressions, SPONSORED STORY: Marketing message that comes
calculated as the amount spent divided by the from a Page post, or stories about a friend interacting
thousands of impressions received with a brand through actions such as check-ins, app
CTR: Click-through rate, or the number of clicks your ad use, or Page likes. The core message is controlled by
received divided by the number of times it was shown the advertiser, but sponsored stories will also show
on the site social context, such as people interacting with what’s
being promoted to their friends. Sponsored stories can
FREQUENCY: The average number of times each person appear on the right hand side of Facebook or in the
saw your ads news feed on the web or mobile.
IMPRESSIONS: The number of times your ads have been
shown on the site
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