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How to Navigate Facebook Ad Analytics Post-iOS14

How to Navigate Facebook Ad Analytics Post-iOS14

Last Updated:  
March 18, 2024

If you're running Facebook ads for your business, it's crucial to track and analyze your ad performance in order to make informed decisions and optimize your campaigns.

Facebook offers a range of ad analytics tools that provide valuable insights into how your ads are performing and how to improve them.

As a Facebook Ads Agency that focuses on performance creatives, these are the most critical metrics to understand on why your ad was successful and if your ads aren't converting as well as you wanted, what you need to do to fix this.

In this blog, we'll cover everything you need to know about Facebook ad analytics.

The most essential element when analyzing your ads inside of your Facebook ad account is converting and it is hitting profitable or marketing CPA/ROASs targets.

However, we need to look at the other parts of what makes the ad successful or not, so you can make alterations of that ad to improve results.

Leveraging Facebook Ad Analytics for Success

First, let's take a look at the different metrics that Facebook offers to track your ad performance. These include:

  • Thump Stop OR Hook Rate Ratio: How good is the ad in making people stop the scroll.
  • Hold Rate: After someone stops the scroll, do they continue to watch the ad after 3 seconds.
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA): This is the average cost of each purchase.
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS): It shows how much revenue your ad generated for every dollar spent.
  • Impressions: This is the number of times your ad was shown to users.
  • Clicks: This is the number of times users clicked on your ad.
  • Cost per click (CPC): This is the average cost of each click on your ad.
  • Click-through rate (CTR): This is the ratio of clicks to impressions, expressed as a percentage. It shows how effective your ad is at getting users to click on it.
  • Average Watch Time: How long does a user watch the video for?

Now that you know the metrics to track let's take a look at how to access and analyze your ads on Facebook.

1. Thump Stop or Hook Rate Ratio

Facebook ad hook rate is a crucial metric for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. It tells you how well your ad is performing in terms of grabbing the attention of your target audience while they are scrolling.

It counts how many times a 3-second video is played out of all the impressions for a particular video.

This means that it gauges the frequency with which viewers who are scrolling through their feeds pause for at least three seconds on your video.

Why Is Hook Rate Important?

It's an excellent way to assess the initial impact and level of engagement of your videos and to assess performance.

Let's say, for example, that one of your videos has a thumb stop rate of 30% and another has a thumb stop rate of only 15%.

People stopped scrolling much more frequently for the first ad than for the second.

This means the hook on the first ad is stopping people from scrolling. However, just because it has a reasonable hook rate doesn’t always mean it is going to be a winning ad.

It is very important to grab your audience's attention in the first three seconds of your video to keep them watching (and ultimately, your main message).

Knowing your hook rate helps you understand how engaging your ad is and whether it is successful in capturing the interest of your target audience.

High hook rates indicate that your ad is effective in grabbing the attention of your audience and encouraging them to stop & watch the ad.

On the other hand, low hook rates may indicate that your ad is not resonating with your audience and may need to be optimized.

However, better performance does not always equate to a higher hook or hold rate! A lower hook rate can be effective if you better target your audience with your creative (also similar to CTR).

By analyzing your hook rate, you can make adjustments to your ad creative, targeting, and messaging to improve its effectiveness and drive better results.

By understanding this metric and making the necessary adjustments, you can improve the performance of your ads and drive better results for your business.

What's A "Good" Hook Rate for Facebook ads?

It really depends on the product & problem and whether it is a more general or specialized audience.

Rozee Digital ads consistently have hook rates between 30 and 45 percent. The minimum you should aim for is 30%.

Placement has a significant impact on the hook rate. The relevance of the advertisement for each placement and auction competition affects placement allocation.

Your ad may naturally have a higher hook rate on IG reels than IG feeds if it resonates with users there more.

The CPA/ROAS and hook rate do not significantly correlate.

We mainly use it as a diagnostic or to compare hook rates for related concepts.

Optimization, attribution setting, targeting (and exclusions!), placement settings, etc. are additional variables that can affect hook rates (and any metrics).

How To Set Up Hook Rate Inside Of Facebook Ads

2. Hold Rate

One of the critical metrics we monitor when running Facebook ads is the ad hold rate ratio.

This ratio is a measure of how long users engage with our ads, and it can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of our campaigns.

The ad hold rate ratio is calculated by dividing ThruPlays with 3-second video plays.

The hold rate is the % of people that got from 3 seconds to 15 seconds.

A high ad hold rate ratio indicates that users are interested in the content of the ad and are spending more time engaging with it.

This can be a good sign that the ad is resonating with the target audience and is likely to be effective at driving conversions.

On the other hand, a low ad hold rate ratio may indicate that the ad is not capturing the attention of users and is not effectively engaging them. This could be a sign that the ad needs to be revised or that the targeting is not aligned with the target audience.

It's important to note that the ad hold rate ratio is just one metric among many that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Facebook ads.

It's important to consider other metrics, such as click-through rate and CPAs/ROAS, in order to get a more comprehensive view of the ad's performance.

According to my observations, the best-performing ads frequently have a high hook rate as well as a high hold rate.

How To Set Up Hold Rate Metric Inside Of Facebook Ads

In conclusion, the ad hold rate ratio is a valuable metric for digital marketers to monitor when running Facebook ads. It provides insight into how long users are engaging with the ad and can help determine if the ad is effectively capturing the attention of the target audience. By regularly monitoring and analyzing this ratio, marketers can make informed decisions on how to optimize their Facebook ad campaigns for success.

3. Average Watch Time

Facebook claims that a Facebook video is watched for an average of 6 seconds. Facebook can track video views for as little as three seconds. You want your video ad's view duration to be at least 10 seconds if you're running one. The Standard of Excellence for video view length is broken down in the table below.

View Length

  • 3 seconds | Poor
  • 6 Seconds | Average
  • 10 Seconds | Good
  • 15-20 Seconds | Great
  • 30+ Seconds | Excellent – This is Your UNICORN Ad

Facebook Ad Analytics Breakdowns for Further Optimizations

To view your ad analytics, go to the Ads Manager in your Facebook business account and select the "Campaigns" tab. From here, you can view detailed metrics for each of your campaigns, such as impressions, clicks, and CTR.

To gain a deeper understanding of your ad performance, you can use the "Breakdown" and "Filters" options to view metrics by different dimensions, such as age, gender, or location.

This can help you identify which demographics are most likely to engage with your ads and tailor your targeting or video messaging accordingly.

In addition to these basic metrics, Facebook also offers advanced analytics tools such as "Audience Insights" and "Performance by Device". Audience Insights provides detailed information about the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your ad audience, while Performance by Device shows how your ads are performing on different devices, such as desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Another useful tool for analyzing your ad performance is the "Ads Reports" feature, which allows you to create custom reports based on the metrics and dimensions that matter most to your business.

This can help you identify trends and patterns in your ad data and make data-driven decisions about your ad campaigns.

Leveraging Triple Whale for Improved Facebook Ad Analytics

Overall, Facebook ad analytics is an essential tool for tracking and improving your ad performance. By understanding the metrics and using the analytics tools available on Facebook, you can gain valuable insights into your ad performance and make informed decisions to optimize your campaigns and drive better results.

Feel free to connect with me on Twitter for free advice.

And if you want to get better attribution and analytics on Facebook this year, check out Triple Whale.

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