To monitor campaigns or ad sets on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, we fully utilize custom metrics alongside the well-known standard metrics. For many marketers, they are (too) unfamiliar territory, but their added value is undeniable.
‘Facebook and Instagram’s custom metrics give you, as a digital marketer, all the tools you need to understand and therefore optimize your advertising data at a higher level. This applies at the campaign, ad set, and ad level.’
‘While standard metrics consist of a series of predetermined statistics, custom metrics go next-level. Precisely because you can build tailored statistics that offer deeper insights. It’s an undervalued part of ad management. And as far as we’re concerned, completely unjustified.’
‘When combined with the right expertise and experience, these custom metrics are worth their weight in gold. Precisely because we learn to look at campaigns from a different perspective, we can test, analyze, and optimize more effectively. And we then apply those learnings to future campaigns.’
‘In return, these custom metrics require extra dedication. On the one hand, to master the tools and the building of formulas, and on the other, to set up flawless tracking. Because without watertight tracking, there is no watertight data.’
‘At Expliciet, Team Performance has been actively working with these custom statistics in Facebook and Instagram for quite some time now. We are happy to share some of our practical findings with you.’
‘The See More Rate provides more insights at the ad level and tells you if someone expands the primary text of an ad. This allows you to conclude whether a certain headline, image, or primary text performs better than the alternative. Just make sure you only test one variable so that the test remains representative.’
‘Thanks to this metric, we learned that the CTA (headline) “Discover everything about the job” yielded better results than “Apply here”. We also learned that starting with the benefits of the job offered in the primary text resulted in a higher click-through rate than starting with the job description.’
‘This metric for video ads allows you to measure how many people watched at least three seconds of your video. In short, you can measure how well your ad catches the eye. From experience, we know that ads with a higher Thumbstop Rate often lead to higher conversion rates. One of the important factors impacting this is your video’s thumbnail.’
‘This statistic shows you at the campaign, ad set, and ad level if there is a weak point in your campaign. This is not a standard metric in Meta, so you have to create it yourself.’
‘This is an extremely relevant metric for e-commerce. By linking the purchase value to the number of purchases, you see the average amount each person spends per purchase. This gives you more information about which ad generates a lot of revenue and which less. For example, if you see that the average purchase value is lower than the average cost per purchase, you know that the campaign is not profitable enough.’
‘How high is the quality of the clicks on your ad aimed at driving traffic to your website? That’s what this metric tells you, as this figure represents how many clicks actually result in a landing page view. A percentage that is (too) low could be due to poor loading times, for example.’
As a marketer, do you want to understand your company’s or clients’ ads on Meta platforms even better? Then definitely keep your fingers on the custom metrics buttons. Just like we do here at Expliciet. And be sure to share your experiences with us.