DAE realize Facebook ads manager shows you a totally different stat set than what actually matters?

I was messing around with my campaigns last night and noticed something wild. I've been staring at CTR and CPC like a hawk for months, but I finally dug into the actual conversion data for a client's e-com store in Austin. Turns out our click-through rate was killer, like 3.5% which I thought was amazing, but the cost per purchase was $47. That's basically throwing money away since their average order is like $30. Found this out when I pulled the "purchase conversion value" report instead of just the basic overview. I've been optimizing for the wrong metric this whole time and probably burned through like $800 on bad clicks. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized the metric you were chasing was the total wrong one?

3 comments

3 Comments

derek99421d ago

Lol yeah that "purchase conversion value" report is a real eye opener. I had a similar wakeup call when I was running ads for a local service biz and realized my "cost per lead" looked amazing but half those leads never even showed up to their appointments.

emma_clark21d ago

Honestly, didn't you used to just look at the surface numbers and think everything was fine? I was the same way with my own small ecommerce thing last year. I was all proud of my low cost per click until I actually put together a proper funnel report and saw how many people dropped off at the checkout page. It's wild how easy it is to fool yourself with the top level stuff.

kelly_west7421d ago

Oh man, the "cost per purchase was $47" part hit way too close to home. I had that exact same moment of reckoning where I realized I was basically paying people to visit my site and then leave (which is really generous of me, I guess). I spent three months high-fiving myself over a 2.8% CTR, only to find out my ROAS was like 0.3 or something equally pathetic. It's like showing up to a party thinking you look amazing, then someone points out you've had toilet paper stuck to your shoe the whole time. Now I'm that paranoid person who checks every single column in the ads manager before I even look at the pretty charts.