Just in time for the busy Christmas shopping period, Facebook has introduced a few new ad reporting tools in an effort to help social media marketers better analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns. The three new tools–Conversion Paths, Cross-account Reporting, and Custom Metrics–will make it easier for advertisers to optimise their existing Facebook Ads campaigns by tracking ad performance across multiple channels, accounts, and publishers. Using these new ad reporting tools, online marketers can gain a deeper insight into what demographics they are reaching, which channels are converting, and how well their campaigns are performing. Below, we’ll take a more detailed look at each of these reporting tools.
Conversion Paths
The Conversion Paths feature was introduced earlier this year in response to a 2018 Ipsos study, which revealed that consumers use multiple channels–from Internet campaigns to print ads–to get ideas for Christmas gifts. This means that the average shopper will engage in numerous interactions across several channels or devices before actually deciding to buy. Conversion path reporting helps advertisers identify the most impactful conversion paths and optimise their message for their target demographic. Conversion path reporting also tracks the most frequent conversion paths, allowing marketers to determine which forms of advertising are most effective.
Cross-account Reporting
The second of Facebook’s new ad reporting features, Cross-account Reporting, provides marketers with a high-level view of their conversions, impressions, and lets online marketers reach across several advertising platforms. No more logging into multiple accounts to run reports; Facebook’s Cross-account Reporting interface provides you with all of the information you need to more effectively target your advertising message. The Cross-account Reporting tool also shows advertisers how many unique customers were reached by the campaign. This information can be useful in improving your marketing strategy not just during the holidays, but all year round.
Custom Metrics
This ad reporting feature lets social media marketers create and save their own custom metrics in order to more easily track the data that is most important to their business. The Custom Metrics feature can also be used to generate highly specific reports using ad data. Custom calculations can be applied to existing data, and the metrics can be reused across all reports. Using this feature, advertisers can perform analyses based on how their business defines success. Best of all, the data does not need to be exported from Facebook; custom metrics can be used within the Facebook platform, by anyone who has access to the ad account.
