What do the numbers on the Ad Performance tab mean?
How Creative Lab combines ads that share a creative and works out each column, from Spend and ROAS to Hook Rate and Frequency.
One row per creative
The table on Ad Performance has one row per creative, not one per ad. Ads that show the same video are combined into one row, and so are ads that show the same image. The numbers in a row cover all the ads in it.
- A row is named after the first ad Meta sent that uses the creative, or Unnamed Ad when that ad has no name. A number in brackets after the name, for example (3), means several ads were combined into the row.
- The line above the table counts what was loaded, for example 12 creatives found (30 ads total).
- The small picture at the start of a row is the image, or the thumbnail of the video with a play icon on it.
- Type shows Video, Image or Text. Text means TrueROAS found no picture or video for the ad.
- A row with a TrueROAS ROAS of 2 or more and at least 100 in spend has a faint blue background.
How to read ROAS, Sales and Orders
Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad gets the credit for a sale. ROAS, Sales and Orders show two figures in one cell:
- The TrueROAS figure, with the TrueROAS icon on a light green background. It only shows when it is above 0, and the Meta figure next to it is then grey.
- The figure Meta reports about itself, with the Meta icon. When TrueROAS has nothing for the creative, only the Meta figure shows, in bold. Why that happens is explained in Why are creatives missing or showing no TrueROAS sales in Creative Lab?.
Sales in these cells are rounded to whole amounts. The TrueROAS ROAS, or the Meta ROAS when it shows alone, is light green from 1, green from 2 and dark green from 3.
The columns
Hover over a column header to read its tooltip, quoted in the tables below.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Spend | What Meta charged for all the ads in the row during your dates. |
| ROAS | The TrueROAS sales divided by Spend, next to the purchase value Meta reports divided by Spend. Tooltip Return on Ad Spend - TrueROAS vs Meta. |
| Sales | The revenue of the orders TrueROAS credits to these ads with your store's attribution model and window, next to the purchase value Meta reports. Tooltip Revenue - TrueROAS vs Meta. |
| Orders | The number of those orders, next to the purchases Meta reports. Tooltip Number of purchases - TrueROAS vs Meta. |
| CPA | Spend divided by the TrueROAS orders. When TrueROAS has no orders for the creative, Spend divided by the purchases Meta reports. A - when neither has any. Tooltip Cost Per Acquisition. |
| Clicks | The link clicks Meta counts for these ads. Tooltip Outbound link clicks - clicks that take users to your website. |
| CPC | Spend divided by those clicks, or - without clicks. Tooltip Cost Per Outbound Click - Cost for each click to your website. |
| CTR | Those clicks divided by impressions, as a percentage. Tooltip Outbound Click-Through Rate - % of impressions that clicked to your website. |
| Hook Rate | 3-second video views divided by impressions, as a percentage. Videos only, so images show -. Green from 15% and dark green from 30%. Tooltip Percentage of viewers who watched more than 3 seconds - measures initial attention (videos only). |
| Hold Rate | ThruPlays divided by 3-second video views, as a percentage. Meta counts a ThruPlay when a video is watched to the end, or for at least 15 seconds. Videos only. Tooltip ThruPlays / 3-second views - measures how many viewers watched to completion (videos only). |
| Impressions | How many times the ads were shown. |
Which ad gets the credit for an order, and whether tax, shipping and refunds are in the TrueROAS Sales, follow your store's settings. See How do I change the attribution model and attribution window?, Does TrueROAS include tax and shipping in my sales? and Can TrueROAS take refunds off my sales?.
Columns you can add
These columns are hidden when the page opens. How to show them is explained in How do I sort the creatives and choose the columns in Creative Lab?.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Meta Sales | The purchase value Meta reports. Tooltip Revenue reported by Meta. |
| Meta Orders | The purchases Meta reports. Tooltip Number of purchases reported by Meta. |
| Reach | The reach of each ad in the row added up, so a person who saw two of the ads counts twice. |
| Video Views | The 3-second video views. |
| Frequency | Impressions divided by Reach, with 2 decimals. Tooltip Average number of times each person saw your ad. |
Money amounts outside the paired cells show 2 decimals with your store's currency sign. A - means there is nothing to show.
The Top Performing Creatives chart
Above the table, Top Performing Creatives shows up to 6 creatives with the highest sales, with Total Sales on the right. The info icon next to the title reads Shows total sales for your top video and image creatives. Ads using the same creative are combined.
- Each line shows the picture of the creative, its sales and its ROAS. The top creative has the longest bar, and the other bars are drawn in proportion to it.
- Only creatives with sales and a picture are listed.
- The chart counts each ad's TrueROAS sales, or the purchase value Meta reports when TrueROAS has no sales for that ad. Conversions are counted the same way, and the ROAS is those sales divided by spend. So a creative can rank higher in the chart than its TrueROAS Sales in the table suggest.
- Hover over a picture to see the name of the creative, its Spend: and its Conversions:.
- With no creative that has both sales and a picture, the chart reads No creative performance data available.
Good to know
- The numbers depend on your dates, which are saved to your login, and on the attribution settings and the Meta ad account of the store, which are the same for the whole store. See How do I change the dates in Creative Lab?.
- Why a creative shows only Meta's figures, or does not show at all, is explained in Why are creatives missing or showing no TrueROAS sales in Creative Lab?. Why these numbers can differ from the Ads Manager, currency included, is explained in Why do Creative Lab numbers differ from the Ads Manager?.
- Some columns have the same names as in the Ads Manager but are worked out differently there. See What do the columns in the Ads Manager mean?.
- You cannot click a number to see the orders behind it, and you cannot change how a column is worked out.