Facebook has always offered a vast amount of metrics for advertisers to measure and improve their results.
However, with features such as custom conversions or custom metrics, some metrics were a little harder to access – and some of them even had to be measured on external reporting dashboards, such as Google Data Studio.
However, this has all recently changed with the introduction of Facebook Ads Custom Metrics.
If you haven’t used them yet, don’t worry.
In this post, we will show you what Facebook custom metrics are, how you can create them, and the 7 custom metrics that we consider to be a staple in any campaign report.
So, let’s get into it.
What Are Custom Metrics?
Custom metrics are one of Facebook’s latest efforts to make data more accessible to advertisers. Launched in late 2019, custom metrics enable advertisers to use custom formulas to calculate their own metrics, based on whatever data’s available.
So when should you use custom metrics?
- To measure an events’ conversion rate.
- To measure how much it costs each time someone initiates checkout.
- To measure your average order value.
There are a lot of other different scenarios in which custom metrics are useful, but you get the idea.
How to Create Custom Metrics
To create custom metrics, access the “Customize Columns” menu in the dashboard.
Then on the top-right corner, click on “Create Custom Metric”.
In the next section, we’ll share some of the metrics we use most often, and how to create each one of them.
7 Facebook Ads Custom Metrics
If you’re in eCommerce, you know how important it is to understand your performance across the conversion funnel. From the moment a user arrives at your store, until the moment they purchase, the data collected on these users’ activity can reveal some issues that might be affecting your performance.
So, what are some of these metrics you can create and use?
1. Revenue Per Click
Facebook’s built-in metric cost per click can tell how much it costs each time a user clicks an ad, but is this the most reliable indicator to look at?
Most often, it isn’t. In fact, the most valuable audiences are often associated with higher costs per click due to higher competition.
If you don’t believe us, take a look at the difference in the cost per click between a conversion, and a link clicks campaign. Then, look at the return on ad spend (ROAS).
For that reason, we like to include this custom metric in our columns so we can look at the average value of each click – not how much it cost, but how much revenue it generated.
2. Unique Add to Cart Rate
Before we discuss this metric, it’s essential to focus on that first word: unique.
One of the most common mistakes we see advertisers make with their columns is to calculate their add to cart rate *(or checkout, or any other funnel metric) *without exlcuding for repeated events. In other words, if 10 clicks resulted in 5 add to cart events, most would assume that that’s a 50% add to cart rate.
But what if it was one single user to add 5 different products to cart? In that scenario, your effective add to cart rate would be 10%.
This makes a world of difference.
A poor add to cart rate can reveal issues on your website, offer, or message, that should be attended to.
For that reason we always include a custom column that measures the unique add to cart rate: the total amount of users who clicked and added a product to the cart.
3. Cost Per Unique Add to Cart
Once you’ve measured the add to cart rate, it’s also valuable to know how much each of those adds to carts costs.
Have you ever paused an ad due to a low return on ad spend only to later find out that it actually did sell? This is caused by delayed attribution: clicks that didn’t convert within a 1-day click window, but converted later on.
This often causes advertisers to second-guess whether to disable an ad, or not.
“But what does this have to do with add to cart costs?”, you ask. Let’s run some math.
If you know that around 50% of users who add a product to cart result in a sale and that the maximum cost per purchase you can afford to break even is $30, then as long as each add to cart doesn’t cost more than $15 each (even if no sales were made yet) the ad shouldn’t be disabled.
There’s no guarantee it will indeed convert, but if you’re ever stuck in a pause, not-pause dilemma, take a look at the cost per cart before making a decision.
4. Cost Per Unique Checkout
This metric doesn’t need much more of an explanation than the one above.
In essence, replace unique add to carts with unique checkouts, and that’s the cost per unique checkout. If both the add to cart and initiate checkout costs are within your targets but there were no sales attributed, it’s might be a good idea to hold off on the “pause” button.
If these two metrics weren’t clear to you, we recommend this awesome video by Savannah Sanchez that breaks it all down.
5. Cart Drop-Off Rate
Another one of our other favorites is the cart drop-off rate.
This metric can be a life-saver, as it has been for us a few times. Ever had a client that likes to make changes to the website without letting anyone else know?
Yeah, we’ve been there.
Whenever there’s a sudden burst of abandoned carts and increase in this rate, it could be one of those times.
It can also mean there’s an issue with your message, or your offer. Are your shipping costs displayed? Do you have a minimum order value that isn’t clearly displayed?
6. Average Order Value (AOV)
The average order value is one of the most important KPIs to track in any eCommerce store. It stands for the amount each customer spends on each transaction, on average.
In a few words, if your average order value is lower than the average cost per transaction, it’s likely your campaigns aren’t profitable.
For some reason, Facebook didn’t think it was important to include it in their built-in metrics. However, you can easily create this with a custom metric by dividing the total revenue from your sales, by the total amount of sales.
7. Conversion Rate
The last metric we’ll discuss shouldn’t come as a suprise – yet, surpisingly, it isn’t one of Facebook’s built-in metrics.
The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total amount of purchases, by the total amount of visitors and represents the percentage of users who end up buying from you.
As you may have noticed, in most cases, we use the Unique Outbound Clicks metrics instead of link clicks as we believe is is more accurate (users can click multiple times on the same ad with th
How to Share Custom Metrics With Other Accounts
If you’re an advertiser who manages more than one account, you may have noticed that you need to re-create the same custom metrics across all accounts.
However, there’s a trick that makes all custom metrics you create on one account to be accessible for all other accounts:
- Create Your Custom Metrics: create all the custom metrics you want in one of your accounts.
- Save Your Report: save the report and set it as your default.
- Change Accounts: change to the account you want to move the custom metrics into. You should still see all the custom metrics from the previous account in your columns.
- Save Report Again: simply save your columns again and voila!
What’s Next?
Custom metrics are a powerful feature that enables you to access data you couldn’t, otherwise. They can come in handy in a lot of different situations, especially when using custom conversions, or custom events.
What are some of the custom metrics you use?
Let us know in the comments below and let’s talk!
