When it comes to advertising, businesses spend money to make money. Advertising on Facebook can be a profitable and worthwhile way to introduce new customers to your business. However, without dedicating the necessary time and resources to researching, monitoring and analyzing your ads and their metrics, you are simply wasting time and money.
One of the greatest tools to evaluating your Facebook advertisement’s effectiveness is the Facebook Advertising Report. This gives you detailed and up-to-date information about your target audience’s behavior and how they are (or are not) responding to your ad. Some of the data can be a bit overwhelming and the terms can be extremely misleading. If you feel you’re in the dark when it comes to your ad report, keep reading as I define the most important Facebook advertising terms.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your ad has been displayed on Facebook. This appears on the right hand side of the newsfeed. Advertisement impressions are are important to any campaign because they show how many times an individual has been presented with your advertisement. While impressions typically are a very important segment of any media buy campaign, they are rather meaningless when it comes to Facebook. This is because users who log into Facebook are very simply not paying attention to the ads being displayed. When an individual logs onto Facebook, they typically have a specific task in mind: reply to a message, write on someone’s wall, chat with friends, make a status update, etc. Because of this, it isn’t likely that users are going to be paying much attention the advertisements.
While we do think advertising on Facebook can be an extremely cost-effective method, the Launch Box Media team does not encourage a small business to set their campaign budget on a CPM (cost per thousand impression) model.
Social Impressions
Social Impressions are impressions (ad displays) that were shown on someone’s Facebook with the names of their friends that have already liked a certain page (see: photo to the left). Some times, you may see this on your home page in the side bar where the ads typically go, or in some cases directly in the news feed. The ads will typically say, “Casey Carter and 2 other friends like this…”
Again, a social impression is simply the number of times it was displayed with a friends name. While this does not mean anyone has taken an action in response to your ad, theoretically, this “social feature” will likely result in your advertisement being noticed over a normal advertisement, as peer recommendation is an integral part of Facebook’s advertising platform.
Social %
This metric shows what percentage of the total impressions were social impressions (i.e. featuring information about the viewing user’s friend who has previously connected with your Facebook page).
Clicks
This is the number of “clicks” your ad has received. A click is counted when a person clicks on your ad and ends up on your “timeline” or “landing page” (as it was referred to before the big Facebook timeline change). Don’t get confused thinking that all clicks turn into likes. The number of “clicks” is simply the number of times a person has engaged with your ad and ended up on your business’s Facebook page.
Social Clicks
This is similar to “Social Impressions”, as this is the number of times someone clicked on a link that featured social context.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
This is the number of clicks your ad has received divided by the number of times it was displayed on Facebook (the impressions). The CTR typically has something to do with the “bid” you placed. The more you’re willing to pay, the more your ad is displayed and the more people take action.
Social CTR
Same as above, but with names of a user’s friends that has already engaged with the ad or sponsored post. In theory, this will be much greater than the basic CTR because the ad has been targeted to someone with a personal connection that has already liked your page. This is arguably the most valuable part of Facebook’s advertising program. Peer recommendation is extremely helpful because people are much more likely to like a page if someone they know already has.
CPC (Cost per Click)
This is the breakdown of how much each individual click has cost you. Even if you have chosen to pay by impression, this will be calculated for you. The average cost per click is determined by the amount spent divided by the number of clicks received.
CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions)
The average cost per thousand impressions on these ads, which is calculated as the amount spent divided by the number of impressions received. Like CPC, this will be calculated if you are working on the pay-per-click model.
Spent
The current amount you have spent since starting to run the ad. You can choose to view the daily report, weekly report or monthly report.
Actions
This includes all actions taken by people within 24 hours of viewing the ad or within 28 days after clicking on the ad. This includes page likes, page post likes, comments on page posts, @mentions, check-ins, photo tags, page post shares, offer claims, answers to a questions, photo views, video views, link clicks, etc.
Page Likes
The number of people who like your page within 24 hours of viewing your ad.
So there you have it… A brief explanation of all those confusing terms. If you need any help creating an effective Facebook ad campaign for your small business, the Launch Box Media team is here to help!
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