How do marketers create, manage and analyze their Facebook & WhatsApp ads reports?
The short answer is Facebook Ads Manager.
If you monitor your ads’ performance correctly, you can limit waste and focus resources on what’s most effective.
In this post, we’ll share everything you need to know to get familiar with Facebook & WhatsApp Ads Reports.
This is exactly what I do to run my business at Markeko.com based on data I fetch myself.
Keep in mind that you need no technical skill to learn this!
Let’s jump in!
Where to find and how to access your Facebook & Whatsapp Ads Manager
I’ll assume you already have a Facebook Business Manager account and you’ve set it up.
If you haven’t, here’s the guide for that.
Once on your Facebook Ads Manager, go to the left menu and click on Ads Manager.
Here’s where we’ll make the magic happen!
We will also be using Facebook’s Ad Reporting Tool, but more on that later.
How to customize your WhatsApp ads reports
In this section you will learn how to customize your WhatsApp ads reports.
Manage your Ads Report’s Columns
CPC, CTR, Reach and Impressions are big words that people like to throw out.
They will eventually pop up when analyzing your results to let’s go over some common terminology.
Budget
How much money you’ve told Facebook it is allowed to spend.
If you don’t see your budget when you log in to the Ads Manager, you probably have it on the ad set level, not the campaign level.
This depends on your campaign structure and it’s fine either way.
Results
Once you set up your campaign, you can choose different objectives.
The Results tab will show you how you’re doing based on it.
If you’re not familiar with facebook campaign objectives, I recommend you check out our Facebook Ads Tutorials!
Reach vs. Impressions
These terms are used interchangeably but they mean something different. Reach is the number of people that have seen your ad. Impressions are how many times your ads are shown.
So if you see the same ad twice, your reach is one and your impressions are two.
Frequency
Frequency is how many times (on average) a single user sees your ad. This is calculated by impressions divided by reach.
Amount Spent
How much you’ve spent on each campaign or ad set is shown here. The total is shown on the bottom bar.
Keep in mind that the amount spent can be seen from both the campaign and set level.
CPR
Cost Per Result. For example, if you’ve chosen Messages as an objective, your CPR is how much each individual message costs.
CPC
Cost Per Click. Say you chose Traffic as a campaign objective. How much each click to your website costs is your CPC.
Unique Link Clicks
Goes hand in hand with CPC. This is the number of times people have clicked on your ad and taken them somewhere, either on or off Facebook.
In order to get your whatsapp ads reporting right, you need to create a report with some of these metrics. And you do them via the Ads Reporting Section.
Reports are just that: a combination of relevant metrics to your business.
You access your main reports page it on the main menu on the top left corner:
Facebook & WhatsApp Ads Reports Breakdown metrics and filtering
Understand how to read your metrics within your WhatsApp ads reports.
Delivery, action and time breakdown
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create custom reports of your ads performance.
These reports include breakdowns, metrics and filtering.
Let’s go over each one:
Breakdowns
You can select breakdowns to customize the way information is displayed. This includes:
Level
Which level is it? Campaign, ad set or ad?
Time
Which time frame do you want to analyze?
Demographics
What do you want to filter people with? These include Age, Gender, Age and Gender, Country, Region, DMA Region and Business Locations.
Delivery
Where and how is your ad reaching your target audience?
Actions
How are people reacting to your ads? Are they using sound, are they reacting
You can then select from a list of all metrics:
- Ad Performance Metrics (Reach, impressions, delivery, etc
- Engagement (Page engagement, likes, video views, etc.)
- Conversions (Website views, purchases, etc.)
- Settings (Objective, ad set budget, campaign budget, etc.)
And performance is how your ads have been doing in terms of clicks, reach, frequency, etc…
All these will make sense in a minute when we create our first custom report.
How to export reporting from WhatsApp & Facebook
How to export Facebook & WhatsApp reports to Excel
There’s only so much you can do inside Facebook Ads Manager to analyze your ads’ performance. Here’s how you can export your Facebook Reports to Excel:
- Go to your Ads Manager.
- In the top right, click on Reports.
- Here, you have two options. You can either export the data on the table you already have or go to a report section where you choose what to download.
- If you only need the data at hand, then click on Export Table Data. If you don’t, continue.
- Choose from the Standard Reports Facebook has already prepared and click on the one relevant to you.
- On the top right corner, click on the arrow that says Export.
But in case you want to create a report directly on Facebook Business Manager (which will be most of the time)…
You need to know how to create them from scratch and save them for later use!
How to save and open saved reports
We all look at data to run our businesses. Sales, video views, website sessions, etc…
But what makes the great stand out from the good?
They know how to look for relevant data.
Even more, they know how to tell Facebook what data they need.Then they get it in an elegant, repeatable way.
That’s what reports allow you to do.
There are so many performance indicators to worry about, but only some will be of crucial importance to you.
Let’s go to your Ads Reporting section to figure this out.
Don’t mind anything else here except for three things:
Breakdowns, Metrics and Date Window.
We’ve talked about breakdowns but here’s a quick reminder of what it can split your data into:
- Campaign Level (Both name and ID).
- Time
- Delivery
- Action
- Settings
- Dynamic Creative Asset.
Now, once you figure which of these are more important to you, you can choose from the Metrics menu.
- Performance
- Engagement
- Conversions
- Settings
But these are not the only ones. Facebook actually allows you to create your own metrics and formulas.
If you go to Create Custom Metric, you can name it and create a formula for it!
Here is you select the custom metric for your reports:
What is relevant to your business?
Are you using the same Excel formula instead of creating your own metric?
Once you finish your report, remember to SAVE IT!
Now you can access it whenever you want and even get it sent to you by email periodically.
We’ll go over how to do both next.
How to open saved reports in the Ads Manager
Here’s how to access previously saved reports:
Once you get to your Ads Reporting Section, click on the top right Reports.
A menu will load where you’ll be able to access all your previously saved reports.
Click on one to open it.
How to run recurring reports and send automatic emails with reports
Facebook allows you to automate how data is shown to you.
Data changes and so should your method to get it.
Don’t export the same whatsapp ads report every week, have Facebook deliver it to you via automatic reporting emails.
(Warning! Before you go on to do this, you must have the admin, analyst or advertiser ad account access.)
You can have two types of reports: Saved and New.
For a saved report:
- Hover over your report’s name and click on the pencil edit icon that appears.
- Select the settings label to open report settings.
- Toggle on to schedule email.
For a new report:
- Select the dropdown menu next to the save button and select save as….
- You will be taken to the report settings menu.
- Type in a name and select the Schedule Email checkbox.
- Identify the method and select the email addresses you’d like to send it to.
- To modify your email report, Edit it and confirm your changes.
Easy right?
This doesn’t have to be tricky, it’s meant to help you.
With this comes the question: What data should I analyze?
And the answer is: it depends.
We all look at different data, I’m sure your specific industry has different KPI’s than mine! A good tip I can give you is to just look for it.
What industry are you in? Which metrics are the most relevant?
Create your ads reporting based on it.
Remember to experiment! Nothing is set on stone. If some metric reveals something about your business that others are not seeing you just gave yourself an advantage!
Understand the performance of your WhatsApp Ads
Performance, demographics, and placement
You got the data! The hard part’s over.
But what does it mean?
You’ve got all these numbers and ways your ads have been performing…
Now the only thing left for you to do is to interpret your whatsapp ads reporting.
Let’s pick three metrics that are relevant to us: performance, demographics and placement.
Performance answers the question: How effective were my ads?
You can segment effectiveness into other relevant metrics: Reach, frequency, impressions, etc…
This is great! With all your different campaigns, you can then see which one had the best performance.
Now you know what campaign drove the most results.
Demographics answers the question:
Who saw my ads?
You can further dive into this with other metrics like age group, location, common interests…
Now you know that young adults of age 18-24 from the East Coast are watching your video ads for a particularly long time…
Got it!
Placement answers the questions:
Where were my ads shown?
Now, this can help you see what was the best placement for your ads.
Turns out, Instagram video stories drove more than half of your website traffic!
You just gained visibility over your digital performance. You’re no longer shooting in the dark, the target is right in front of you.
You’re now able to confidently focus on what’s working and ditch what’s not.
If this specific combination is driving your results, focus on it
Summary section
Maybe you don’t need all that data and you just want a summary.
There are two ways you can access your performance’s summary: Ads Manager and Ads Reporting.
To see your Ads Reporting Summary:
- Click on Ads Reporting from the main menu.
- Select a Saved Report or create a new one from scratch.
- Above the table, click Levels.
- Select Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ads depending on what you want to look at. If you need help on Campaigns vs. Ad Sets vs. Ads, here’s a blog post to help you!
- You can view combined results for all of the objects or a select group of objects:
- To view results for all of the objects, you’ll first need to select a breakdown. In the top-right corner, click Breakdown and select one.
- To view results for select metrics, check the box next to each object.
- After setting a breakdown, you can also add any filters you think necessary.
- At the bottom of the table, click the arrow next to Results from.
To see your Ads Manager Summary:
- Go to Ads Manager.
- Click Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ads depending on what you want to view.
- You can view combined results for all of the objects or a select group of objects:
- To view results for all of the objects, first select a Breakdown.
- To view results for select objects, check the box next to each object and click View In the top-right corner, click Breakdown and select one.
- After setting a breakdown, you can also add any filters you might need.
- At the bottom of the table, click the arrow next to Results from.
Reporting Table
Or maybe you need a mix between two: not a huge whatsapp ads report but not a summary either.
Here’s where the reporting table proves useful.
In your ads reporting, you see on the left side that you’ve got plenty of checkboxes to choose from.
Also, once you select one you can see the Reporting Table in the middle change in real time.
If you need to see a quick solo metric, then this is the way to go.
Accessing your WhatsApp Business Chat Data
If you have WhatsApp Business on your phone, you can access your chat statistics.
This is a much simpler reporting tool, but it gives you visibility over how much people are actually starting a conversation with you. This is key for effective WhatsApp Ads Reporting!
If you don’t know how to connect your WhatsApp Business to your Facebook account, here’s the guide for that!
Steps:
- Log in to WhatsApp Business and tap on the three dots in the corner.
- Tap on Business Settings.
- Tap on Statistics.
You should find these statistics. You can’t break them down, so try to keep track of them!
We have lots of WhatsApp tutorials here at Markeko:
- How to Send Broadcasts?
- How to Connect it To Your Fanpage?
- The Difference Between WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business.
- How to Use WhatsApp Business Labels.
Check them out here!
These will prove useful for your WhatsApp Ads Reporting and general WhatsApp performance later on.
Also, if you want to learn more about WhatsApp Business + Ads + API, we came up with a WhatsApp Business Guide for you to check out!
Final Thoughts
I’ll give you some good news: 99% percent of Facebook Marketers have no idea what they’re doing.
They don’t even know where to start looking for the answer.
Unlike you.
You already know that data based marketing is the best marketing. The answers are in the numbers.
You can find those numbers in your WhatsApp Ads reports now.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Which metric is the most important to you and why?
Next Chapter: How To Optimize Your WhatsApp Ads
Previous Chapter: WhatsApp Ads Budget And Bidding
