Evaluate Facebook Ad Impression Data with LeadsRx Impression Tracker

It’s important to gather all relevant data from all channels used by enterprise marketers to get the word out about their products and services – and Facebook advertising should be no different. After all, that’s what impartial multi-touch attribution is all about: showing you what channels are working and which ones are not in your marketing campaigns.

But Facebook does not share user-level data or support third-party impression pixels, so tracking all aspects of Facebook advertising is not directly possible. Not so fast, though. LeadsRx can help you harness the power of attribution by using the LeadsRx Impression Tracker to gather additional Facebook ad impression information within your attribution reports.

So What Facebook Data Does LeadsRx Collect?

The whole point of collecting attribution data is so you have the insights to evaluate overall advertising performance at an aggregated level. Here’s what LeadsRx collects from Facebook attribution:

• Link Clicks – Facebook uses the word “clicks” to refer to a number of different actions that users take after exposure to your advertising. “Clicks” include a user clicking on links (“link clicks”) within the ad – but Facebook also defines “clicks” as post likes, comments, shares, clicks to a Facebook page or Instagram profile, and clicks to expand a photo or video to full screen. Within LeadsRx, we only use “link clicks” within the ad in our calculations – not the remainder of the actions Facebook defines as clicks. It’s an important distinction – because these are the most valuable clicks – driving prospects to your website content. Here’s a Facebook for Business article further explaining the difference between “Clicks (all)” and “Link Clicks.”

• Impressions – We use Facebook impression counts in our LeadsRx attribution calculations. Facebook defines an impression as “the number of times your ads were on screen.” Impressions are just one of several metrics Facebook uses to measure the success of your ads on the platform. So if your Facebook ad appears on the screen of whatever digital device the viewer is using, that counts as an impression. The user does not have to act on the ad by either clicking, commenting, sharing, or expanding a video or photo for it to count. Facebook for Business also sheds more light on the impressions topic here.

• Conversions – Facebook tracks conversions in a couple of different ways. “Actions” are well-defined events – link clicks, page views, purchases, likes, etc. – that Facebook counts after exposure to advertising. These are different from “Custom Conversions,” in which a URL rule and/or parameter-based rule can be employed to solely capture purchases of a certain type and amount. Within the LeadsRx platform, we use the Action, “omni-purchase,” and all Custom Conversion totals to calculate total conversions.

Seen Ads Equal Engagement

The goal of attribution is to maximize effectiveness of all channels and find the best combination of channels that is driving traffic and conversions. For Facebook, specifically, the impressions metric helps determine if your target audience is indeed being influenced by your ads, and if the ad is pushing users toward the ultimate goal, conversions. If no one is converting after seeing your ad, or a limited amount of your targeted audience is getting eyeballs on the ad, what good is it doing? A impression equals engagement and, hopefully, those impressions push prospects to a conversion. This analysis is what LeadsRx brings into the attribution equation by tracking Facebook impressions.

And maybe the content of your Facebook ad grows stale, or the offer within the ad just is not attractive anymore. You need to be able to track the ebb and flow of impressions. If a particular ad is working, keep at it and perhaps direct more resources toward it; conversely, if an ad is not working, adjust it or stop it so you can optimize your ad spend. Continual monitoring of ad performance through attribution is key.

Attribution Reporting is Your Friend

You can only act, react, and make informed decisions if you have the right data. Within the LeadsRx attribution reports, we present Facebook impression-related data in this way:

1. The touchpoint interactions chart will show Facebook impressions by hour, day of the week, and by day. This information will appear as ghosted bars behind solid ad click bars on the Touchpoint Performance page. Data is pulled from Facebook automatically and updated within LeadsRx once each day.

• The touchpoint conversions chart will show an incremental number of conversions we believe came from Facebook view-through impressions (i.e., ads that were viewed but not clicked on). This will appear as a text notation on the Touchpoint Performance page. This data cannot be shown by day or other dimensions, and it cannot be broken down by different types of conversions. This is because Facebook only shares information that has been pre-aggregated.

The LeadsRx Impression Tracker is our way of getting the best information available from essentially “gated” user-level data from Facebook, as well as from other walled gardens who limit the data it shares. We continue to work with Facebook data to find other ways ad impression results can be incorporated into other attribution reports. While not available today, in the future we will represent this information in our ROAS and Conversion Attribution reports.