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How to Read Facebook Reports

Home Help Desk Articles How to Read Facebook Reports

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to have a Business Manager Account and set it up to be running some ads.

This article is to show you how to extract the right information from your account to answer some basic questions and hopefully give you the knowledge to answer your own questions.

The Dashboard

The Dashboard

In Business Manager select your ad account

  1. Navigation Tabs.  
  2. Saved Reports.
  3. Filters to condense views to help organise your view
  4. Clickable links to ‘drill down’ into your ads.  Rows like a spreadsheet
  5. Search. To … umm. search
  6. Date filter.
  7. Changeable columns, just like a spreadsheet
  8. Column views.  Customisable to answer your questions.
  9. More questions answered within the Row data
  10. Totals, just like a spreadsheet

Organising Ads

Organising Ads

Facebook has a structure to help keep everything organised.

I like to think of it like a filing cabinet which is your whole ad account.  Everything Facebook ad related is inside.

The drawers of the filing cabinet are called Campaigns.  As in a filing cabinet, the drawers need labels so you can easily access the right type of information.  In your ads, I recommend naming campaigns [initials of person making] | [Objective of Campaign] | [other helpful info] eg PM | Website Conversions | Lead Magnets

If you can picture the drawer sliding open, you’d expect to find folders with more labels.  Facebook calls them Adsets. The recommended naming of an adset is [Audience] | [other helpful info]  eg Page Fans | Day 14 to 16

If you can imagine taking a folder out of your drawer, and opening it on the table, you would expect it to be full of individual pages.  In Facebook, that would be each Advert.

The levels are:

– Account

– Campaign

– Adset

– Advert

 

Conversions aren’t really Conversions

Conversions aren't really Conversions

In Facebook, conversions mean the pixel was ‘fired’.  A pixel is a piece of computer code generated by that sits on your website pages. It reports back to Facebook that somebody touched a page and who they were.  

If I want someone to buy my tickets, I would have a pixel on the landing page, the add to cart page, the checkout page, and the thankyou page for example.  Thus if I send 1000 people my website, the landing page might 1000 pixel fires.  If 200 go to buy the ticket, the add to cart might be 200.  If 150 go to enter their credit card details the checkout page might be  150, and if 100 people actually pay for the ticket, the Thank You page might be 100 pixel fires.  Thus, we had 1000 + 200 + 150 +100 or 1450 “conversions” even though we only sold 100 tickets.  

So don’t get hung up on the word Conversion in the dashboard.  We need to split that metric out into its pixel events.

Link Clicks vs View Content (pixel event)

Link Clicks vs View Content (pixel event)

A Link Click is the number of times a link was clicked that was in an Ad.  For example, if you put a website address in there, or if someone clicks a photo with a URL attached.  Another example would include if someone click on the link to your Facebook Page.  Each one is counted as a Link Click.

View Content is a Facebook pixel event.  Someone has modified the default pixel code on a particular page to tell the reporting platform, ‘anyone who touches this page counts as someone who’s viewed it’s content’.  Put another way, ‘I paid for them to see my website, did they make it?”

Thus, if I pay for 908 people to click on the link in my ad, I would hopefully get 908 View Content pixel fires.

If I get 848 View Content pixel fires out of 908, that means some people clicked on my ad, but abandoned my website before the page loaded.  In other words, they couldn’t be bothered waiting.  If this amount is significant, you should test your website loading times using webpagetest.org.  If your page loads slower than 10 seconds on a desktop, a mobile will be a lot worse.  People have short attention spans.  You can’t afford to pay for them to not see your message.

If I pay for 436 people to click the Link in my ad, and 624 View Contents occur, that means you’re getting more traffic than you’re paying for.  This usually means people like your post and have commented, liked it, shared it, or tagged their friends in it.   Pat yourself on the back, it’s beautiful.

Customize Columns

Customize Columns
  1. In the Columns: Performance drop down menu
  2. Select Customize Columns

Customize Columns Window

Customize Columns Window
  1. X out these column headings
  2. Click in the Search bar and type “Link”
  3. Select Unique Clicks to Links

Find View Content

Find View Content
  1. In the search field, type “view content”
  2. Select View Content (Facebook Pixel).  (not the other one)
  3. Note it should be in your columns selected list.  I like to have it after Link Clicks.
  4. Click Apply

You should now have a dashboard view of your data.  You can go back to Customize Columns, and add more or remove current options.  

Eg if it’s the “buy our tickets” campaign, you might also want Add To Cart, Checkout, and Purchase Facebook Pixels.  

Whatever question you have, the Customize Column option usually has the answer.

Other Questions and Column headings

How much did I spend on this: amount spent

How many times did people see my ad: frequency

How much did it cost per purchase: cost per purchase (facebook pixel) (great for ROI)

Troubleshooting

Q: What if I select View Content (or any other option) and there is no data?

A: This usually means you have setup your pixel incorrectly.  Recommendation is to install the WordPress Plugin.  If you’re site isn’t WordPress, follow these instructions.  Send a message to support@adchief.io to put the View Content pixel on your page.

It could also mean no one went to your page.  Check your google analytics to compare.

Please use a different browser.
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