Facebook Ads audit: what to analyze?

Don't you want to spend more than you need to? Want to make every action count? Are you looking for performance? No secret: the (regular) Facebook Ads audit is essential.

You must pay attention to several levels: the nature of the targeting and size of the audience, advertising placements, statistical performance, etc.

Although the expertise of a specialized agency is essential, here is an overview of a Facebook Ads audit.

Why do a Facebook Ads audit?

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To democratize its advertising space, Facebook activates numerous automatic options by default. The company even goes so far as to hide some advanced options, to make Facebook Ads seem simpler and encourage advertisers to invest their budget without too much hesitation.

The problem is that when misused, the return on investment is often disappointing. Facebook Ads requires specific skills, which is why there are experts specialized in this field within many digital advertising agencies.

👉 Not sure who to call for your Facebook Ads audit? Here is the Top 5 best Facebook agencies.

The objective of the Facebook Ads audit is to assess the status of your account and your campaigns to do even better. It's as easy as that!

Now, let's get down to business, namely, what to audit?

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Facebook Ads audit: analysis of the structure of your advertising account

Facebook Business Manager

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To maximize your chances of success, use the Facebook Business Manager to manage all your resources: pages, Facebook accounts, advertising accounts, pixels, and website domains. This tool also allows you to manage the permissions and roles of users within your organization.

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Ad Manager

In the “Ad Manager” you get an overview of your advertising campaigns.

Reviewing your ad account structure will help you manage your campaigns more effectively and avoid potential mistakes.

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👉Your campaigns : clearly name your Facebook campaigns by mentioning their objective (traffic, conversions, interactions...) so you can easily find your way around.

👉Ad sets : they are included in the campaigns. Organizing these sets by audience is the most effective way to compare their performance.

👉Facebook ads : they correspond to the content displayed to the targets. Adding multiple ads allows comparisons to be made. Make sure that the name of each ad accurately describes its content, to avoid clicking “Edit” and wasting time.

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Facebook Ads audit: analysis of the conversion tracking settings

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The Facebook pixel and Google Analytics allow you to measure the effectiveness of your traffic generation and conversion campaigns. Often, poor performance is due to data tracking issues.

Attributions

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With the recent iOS privacy updates, the attribution window (the period of time during which results can be attributed to the campaign) is now 7 days for clicks and 1 day for views.

You should definitely measure your campaigns using this same window, especially if you compare with previous Facebook ads campaigns.

To find the attribution data for your advertising campaigns, click on “Columns” then “Customize columns.” Then search for “Attribution Settings” and check the box if it's not already checked.

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Facebook pixel

In Meta's “Ad Manager”, click “View Setup” to check if your Facebook Pixel (now Meta) is working properly and is associated with your campaign, ad set, or ad.

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The Pixel allows you to:

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👉 find out if the people who clicked on your ad visited your landing page;

👉 measure advertising conversions;

👉 collect data on your site visitors to create personalized retargeting audiences.

If the Pixel's activity signal is red instead of green, it means there's a problem with installing it on your site. In this case, go to the “Event Manager” tool to retrieve the Pixel ID and proceed with a new installation.

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Facebook Ads audit: analysis of your audiences and advertising placements

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Facebook Ads audience types

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To access all the audiences in your Facebook ad account, go to the “Audiences” tool.

Use clear, standardized names to make it easier to manage.

💬 For example : Use a structure like “Key audience characteristics + creation date.”

Regularly update audiences based on finite sources, such as a customer file, to optimize the use of your data. In particular, this will improve the quality of your similar audiences.

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Facebook Ads audience size

The size of the meta audience you are targeting in an advertising campaign is crucial. An audience that is too small limits broadcasting and performances.

To optimize your results, create Facebook ads audiences that are aligned with your core target but sufficiently broad.

Facebook offers two indicators to assess audience size:

👉 The definition of audience : a counter that shows if your audience is too specific, the right size, or too large.

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👉 The size of the estimated audience : the number of people corresponding to the targeting criteria you have defined.

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Facebook audience exclusions

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You can set up audience exclusion within your global Meta targeting. It's especially useful for:

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👉 exclude a personalized audience of loyal customers so that they do not receive prospecting ads;

👉 exclude a smaller percentage of similar audiences (1-3%) and test larger percentages (3-5%);

👉 exclude a custom audience of people who have already installed your application so that they do not receive app installation ads.

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To set up audience exclusions for your campaigns, go to the set of ads of your choice and click on “View configuration”.

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Facebook ad placements

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By default, Meta shows your ads on “Automatic Placements”, covering all the placements compatible with the objective chosen when creating your campaign.

If you choose “Manual Placements,” carefully review the selected placements to make sure they are a good fit for the associated creative content. For example, use a vertical visual for sponsored Stories ads.

Facebook Ads audit: analysis of your ads

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The advertising content displayed on the screens of your targets is essential if you want to obtain good campaign results.

Here are the things to look at:

1 ️ The text hook : check that the promoted offer is still up to date.

2 ️ The call to action (CTA) button : Make sure that the CTA matches the landing page.

3 ️ ※ The landing page : Verify that the page is active and up to date.

4 ️ The quality of advertising : 3 columns in your Ad Manager provide information on the relevance of your content: “Quality”, “Interaction Rate” and “Conversion Rate”.

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These diagnoses influence the distribution of your advertising (more or less impressions with the same budget).

Facebook Ads Audit: Statistical Performance Column Analysis

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To effectively analyze your advertising performance on a weekly or monthly basis, you need to have good results columns.

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👉 In your Ad Manager, you can customize your dashboard.

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⭐️ The Growth Room recommendation : include at least the following columns:

• Cover
• printouts
• Clicks on a link
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
• Results
• Cost per result
• ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
• Conversions

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Depending on the objective initially selected, some columns may be more important than others.

This article gives you a concrete idea of what you need to analyze, but to do it well, use a Facebook Ads agency is indispensable. Why? Not only does she bring you her technical skills, and her past experiences, but she also offers tailor-made support that is essential to perform!

Do you want to discuss it?

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