How to measure Facebook sales campaigns in Google Data Studio

Introduction

Facebook advertising strategy should be based on the campaign goal. Not only theoretically, because you need to choose one of the available goals while you set up the new campaign. The chosen goals have a big impact for future campaigns performance which drive expected results. For example: If you want to drive more traffic to your website you just simply choose the “traffic” as your goal. If you choose differently, your results would probably be different than expectations. It is all about the different algorithms used in each type of campaign. It could also happen if you choose a “traffic” goal when you want to drive more likes to the post for example. That is why setting up the proper goal is so important to your strategy. In this article we will take a closer look at campaign goals in the context of reporting and analysis.

Metric Segmentation

In reference to the business goal we can identify 4 segments that can be used in performance analysis.

Reach - tells us about your: reach, ads impressions, clicks (all), cpm and cost. These metrics are used to evaluate cover of your target group.


Performance - yours: link clicks, cpc and ctr of link clicks, transactions, income. These kinds of metrics can help to understand the effectiveness of campaign goals, which in this case is the traffic.


User comfort - This metric shows us that we have exaggerated the frequency with which the ad was displayed for a single user. You have to take care about this metric especially when you run remarketing campaigns. In general, there is one rule that is good to remember. The smaller your target audience is the more attention needs to be paid for this metric.


Social effects - there are a lot of available metrics in this case but we choose only two planes that have the biggest impact (in our opinion). The first one is an increase of fans and the the cost of fanpage like. The second one is ads interactions: reaction on a post and their cost


Everyone can define their own segmentations which are essential to their businesses. You can find an enormous amount of metrics in each advertising interface. It is not about to name it way way or another, but to understand how to do a proper analysis based on these metrics.

All clicks vs real clicks

In a Facebook Ads channel the proper metric to measure the clicks is “link click”. The column “all clicks” could be confusing because except the real ad click it also represents the fan page click and views. The amount and cost of “all clicks” is always way much more optimistic than the reality.





Let's imagine that we are running a campaign which has traffic as a goal and think about what metrics we can use to create reports or analysis. Usually first columns that we choose will be the default ones.





According to metrics segmentation which were described above, ask yourself about: how many segments represent the performance metrics?”

The problems:

• Too narrow analysis through the one metric segment - campaigns generating traffic also bring other results
• The vast majority of Facebook Ads reports do not have columns with the expenses, so without a custom report, we do not refer to the budget in the analysis.
• All metrics segments are spread into separate reports, so we can’t analyze all reports as one. The analysis is scattered, or you may not even be aware of additional results,
• There are no day-by-day linear time reports to help you analyze your campaign performance or issues with conversion counting (inside Facebook Ads Manager, except manual work witch module reports)
• Reporting problem when you run several Facebook accounts,
• Problem with data processing outside Facebook (external reports)

The solutions

• Custom report (we mention this in a problems section) - This is exactly the solution to the limitations of default Facebook reports. We can simply create a report according to the described concept and save it permanently. Customize columns is in the same place as the performance report described above and shown in the graphic. - in this way, we will solve the problem of narrow analysis, missing columns in reports, or segment dispersion,
• Data import from Facebook to the Google Cloud BigQuery system and visualization in Data Studio. In this way, we can solve the problem of the lack of linear reports or the problem of reporting multiple advertising accounts.
• Facebook Witcloud collect module - allows you to automatically import data from multiple Facebook Ads accounts to Google Cloud Big Query. You can find more about this in the documentation
• A little surprise for you at the end of this article! You can try to recreate the report in your ad system or use advanced solutions which you can find in a short video course. Try it for free!**

Advanced reporting

How could a traffic target report look like? Below you can find additional capabilities of faster and more effective analysis.


Account performance view

Let’s take a closer look at a few additional values that now you can use in reporting by using BigQuery and Google Data Studio

• A possibility to recreate Facebook Ads Manager view where you can easily switch between your own (and well known) account structure: overall, account, campaigns, ad sets and single ad performance (left side of the report view above). You can view the report template at the end of this article.
• A possibility to switch between your accounts thanks to filters. A very comfortable solution if you run several accounts simultaneously.
  
  
  
  
  
• Comfortable switch through attribution models. Making the conversion counting model consistent with Google Analytics. Convenient way to get rid of differences of data counting between systems. By unfolding the filter, we simply open a fast path to change attribution throughout the reporting.
  
  
  
  
  
• Line charts and data comparison, for example: week to week spendings or income or other parameters. This kind of data visualization helps to make a fast recognition throughout the account performance and allow to diagnose more serious problems (if they appear) like for example: unexpected campaigns stops or decreased number of impressions which can say i.g: burnout of the audience group (the ad view ratio per user is to high). The line charts are the best way to visualize this kind of situation (or problems).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Connecting of segmentation metrics in reference to performance campaigns. Entering websites is a natural situation on the transaction path. The user firstly has to enter the website to make a purchase. Because of that, it is possible to choose traffic oriented campaigns on Facebook Ads. Below, you can find the template of performance analysis for ecommerce campaigns.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this report we put together true link clicks (link clicks, link cpc). It is a very important metric in the context of click and website visits. In the default dashboards Facebook reports all clicks ("Clicks" on the report above) e.g when the user clicks into post. Cost of all clicks can be significantly different than real website clicks. E.g campaign name 15 has 1200 (All) Clicks but there are only 125 website visits.
  
  
• By using BigQuery we have the opportunity to calculate all metrics or just simply use all kinds of math. Data Studio helps us to create the calculation field that we can’t do in the Facebook Ads system. We also are available to extract the data to excel (or google sheets). Thanks to that we have more time to make proper analysis and make smarter decisions.

Summary

By combining the possibilities of Bigquery, Data Studio and WitCloud tools, we can create a database that opens up new possibilities:

• Automated tabular visualization that includes all metrics segments and any report customization for your own needs,
• If you have multiple Facebook Ads accounts, it is possible to place a filter that allows you to conveniently and quickly switch between individual accounts,
• The data is processed in the BigQuery system, which gives great opportunities as to what we can do in the advertising system,
• Ability to analyze the reports in the form of line charts like in Google Analytics,
• Ability to analyze all metric segments in one simple view for all accounts,
• Ability to calculate basic indicators and the automation of this process, e.g. conversion rate (not available in the Facebook Ads system)
  
  
  In this way, we can solve all the problems described in the article and we also are able to automate reporting, even if we have many advertising accounts

For those who want more

We have prepared a ready and free Data Studio template and a demo report that illustrates the issues discussed in the article. Try recreating it in the ad system. You can find the template in the link below.


Step 1
Analyze the finished report with demonstration data: Template Data Studio Facebook Ads for ecommerce ; Template Data Studio Facebook Ads for other business


How we created the data input in the BigQuery database to make the Template Data Studio Facebook Ads for ecommerce? Read more in article "WitCloud Templates - Facebook Ads - ready to go reports"


Step 2
Create Your first Google Cloud (GCP) project. - How to create first project on Google Cloud video tutorial


Step 3
How to automatically set up such reporting for your business? Test it for free for two weeks and use a ready-made Data Studio template. You can learn this in a short and easy video course here: Tutorial - How to use ready Facebook template for e-commerce - it will take You 8 minutes