The soft metrics to guide your Facebook ad optimizations right now

Yes, MER is our north star at the moment. (RIP ROAS 💔)

But it’s not the only star in the Facebook ads sky.

Since we’ve begun losing all sorts of in-platform data from purchase conversions to unique adds to cart, the metrics we used to look at as a ‘nice to have’ have quickly become some of our better guiding metrics when it comes to on-platform ads optimization. 

For example, if we know that all opt-out data (within our given 7-day click window) rolls into Facebook 24-48 (even 72) hours after the conversion happened, and shows up on the day of the data transfer (and not the date of the conversion), we also know that we can’t make informed optimization and scaling decisions wisely. 

However, by looking at soft metrics that are almost exclusively on-platform, we know that Facebook isn’t losing any of that data, and we also know that it is not delayed.

We recently created a soft metrics dashboard in Facebook reporting to help us transition from our old faithful reporting dashboard to one that has more trusted data.

Our standard set-up

• Campaign Name

• Delivery

• Ad Set Name

• Bid strategy

• Budget

• Attribution Setting

• Results

• Reach

• Frequency

• Impressions

• Amount Spent

• Purchases Conversion Value

• Purchase ROAS

Added soft metrics set-up

• Post engagement

• Engagement rate (custom conversion: post engagement / impressions)

• See more rate (custom conversion: (Clicks(all) - Link Clicks - post reactions - post comments - post shares) / impressions)

• CPM

• Click quality (custom conversion: landing page views / link clicks)

• Unique outbound clicks

• CTR

• CPC

• LPV

• LPV to ATC %

• ATC

• ATC to IC %

• IC

• IC to PUR %

• ATC to PUR %

• Purchases

• LPV to PUR % (Website conv rate)

• RPC (Revenue per click) (custom conversion: purchases conversion value / landing page views)

• AOV (custom conversion (purchases conversion value / purchases)

• CPA/CPP

• ThruPlays

• Thumbstop ratio (custom conversion: 3-second VV / impressions)

• Video average play time

• 3-second video plays

• Video plays at 50%

• Video plays at 95%

Shout out to Jake the Ad Nerd for his genius insights on the server-side setups metrics that he shared with us in the Foxwell Founders Membership Slack channel.

A few things to keep in mind:

• All of the non-soft metrics listed in our dashboard above (LPV, ATC, IC, PUR, etc.) must be server-side conversions to be more accurate than not. (Check out our blog on CAPI for more on this).

• We understand that even after implementing CAPI, domain verification, and events prioritization, the conversion metrics we’re still looking at are still not 100% accurate

• We’re also looking at very similar data for our campaigns in Google Analytics (make sure your UTMs are on-par for this to work)

• The video soft metrics are only applicable for video ads (obvs)

• For ATC data (and ATC to PUR % data), note that unique ATC data is no longer available in-platform. Because of this, this percentage may be skewed to the percentage or number you’re used to seeing, especially if your shop usually has more than a few products added to cart on any given order.

  • To remedy this, one case study we recently did with a client was determine the average total number of items added to cart over a period of 90 days (with a plan to update this number each quarter) to create a modeled ATC custom conversion, or mATC. From there, we’re looking at mATC (instead of ATC) and mATC to PUR% (instead of ATC to PUR %) for a more accurate reading of the percentage of cart abandoners.

The TL;DR here is that there is no ONE metric that you can look at all by itself anymore. We must take into account much of the data listed above, from Facebook Ads Manager, from Google Analytics, from Shopify, and anywhere else data is coming in (like Supermetrics, Motion, KNO, etc.) to tell a fuller (but not 100% full) picture of what’s happening in Facebook Ads.

Want discounts on Supermetrics, Motion, KNO, and more?

Check out our Foxwell Founders Membership.

Godspeed out there. It’s rough right now, but we truly believe we’ll all overcome this, like we have with every platform change before.

PS - confused by any of the acronyms or custom conversions listed above? Check out this blog.