Facebook updates Ads Manager to highlight conversions and key metrics

Facebook updates Ads Manager to highlight conversions and key metrics:
Facebook today announced changes to the Ads Manager tool to reduce the number of manual calculations advertisers have to do to understand how well their campaigns are achieving their objectives.
The campaign summary page in Ads Manager, the dashboard where advertisers can view their campaign analytics and edit their ads, now reports metrics that are more relevant to a given campaign. For example, if an advertiser says the goal of a campaign is to acquire page Likes, the summary page will highlight the total number of new Likes and costs per Like. If the goal is to get new users for an app, the tool will report new app installs and costs per install.

Previously, Facebook reported “actions” and “cost per action,” but these actions were not specific to the goal an advertiser had in mind. For instance, an advertiser looking for page Likes might have ads that are very effective in generating engagement such as comments or shares, but is not converting those users into fans. In the former campaign summary, the advertiser would see a high number of actions, but that metric wouldn’t give the advertiser the right impression about the success of the campaign. Now, advertisers will see the numbers that are most important to a given campaign, making it easier to identify whether ads are effective or need to be optimized.
Along with these changes, which will be available to all advertisers in the next few weeks, is an improvement to Facebook’s conversion tracking tool. Advertisers who run ads to a website with conversion tracking in place will now see their number of conversions featured more prominently in Ads Manager. Facebook will also calculate “cost per conversion,” and if advertisers set a value for conversions in their tracking pixel, Facebook will calculate the total “conversion value” as well. This makes it easier for advertisers to understand their return on investment for a specific ad or campaign.

Nothing seems to be changing about how advertisers create ads in Facebook’s self-serve tool and the pricing model is also staying the same. But being able to view costs per Like or costs per conversion without manual calculation will likely be a welcome change for Facebook marketers.