Starter guide
An ad campaign produces dozens of numbers and almost all of them are surplus. Only three tell you whether you are making or losing money, and they are the ones Markettai puts in front of you on the Performance screen (see «Performance»).
The ones that matter:
| Number | What it measures | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| CPA, or cost per customer | What it costs you on average to get one new customer. | It is the main number. If it rises above what that customer leaves you, the campaign is losing money. |
| ROAS, or return on ad spend | How many euros come back for every euro spent on ads. | Below 1 you are losing. How far above 1 it has to be depends on your margins. |
| CTR, or click-through rate | Out of every hundred people who see the ad, how many click. | It measures whether the ad grabs people. When it falls steadily, the image and the text are wearing out. |
- Number
- CPA, or cost per customer
- What it measures
- What it costs you on average to get one new customer.
- What to do with it
- It is the main number. If it rises above what that customer leaves you, the campaign is losing money.
- Number
- ROAS, or return on ad spend
- What it measures
- How many euros come back for every euro spent on ads.
- What to do with it
- Below 1 you are losing. How far above 1 it has to be depends on your margins.
- Number
- CTR, or click-through rate
- What it measures
- Out of every hundred people who see the ad, how many click.
- What to do with it
- It measures whether the ad grabs people. When it falls steadily, the image and the text are wearing out.
The ones that matter less than they look. Likes, comments and the number of times the ad has been shown are called vanity metrics because they go up without sales going up. They are not useless: plenty of interaction and no sales is telling you that you are attracting the wrong people. But they are never the number you decide on.
How to read them together. A low cost per customer with few sales means the campaign is small, not that it is going badly. A high click rate with a high cost per customer means the ad attracts people but the page it leads to does not convince them. And all three getting worse at once is the classic sign of a burnt-out ad (see «When an ad has burnt out and what to do»).
Do not draw conclusions from the first two days: until Meta has learnt who to show the ad to, the numbers are worth nothing.