Deciphering Meta (Facebook) Ad Results

As I previously mentioned, I had a lot of trouble getting my Meta ad to start running. Maybe Meta was subtly trying to tell me I was wasting my time. Nevertheless.

I'm sticking to my vow to not post the results until my five days have run, and I refuse to check my KDP sales report, mostly because I'd rather be blissfully ignorant than be shocked back to reality.

But I have looked at my ad dashboard, and there sure are a lot of columns I have no clue about. If you're trying to sell your book, which stats do you care about? Me, it's impressions versus clicks. How many times was my ad shown and how horrible were the results?

If, like me, you wonder what the various results mean and if they matter, here is a breakdown: 

Performance Columns

Impressions: Total number of times your ad was shown on screen.
CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions): Average cost to show your ad 1,000 times.
Link clicks: Number of clicks on links in your ad that take people off Meta (e.g., to your Amazon URL).
Shop clicks: Clicks to a Shop — shows "—" for you if you're sending to Amazon, not a Shop.
CPC (cost per link click): Average cost for each Link click. Lower is better.
CTR (link click-through rate): Percentage of Impressions that resulted in a Link click. Higher means your ad is more engaging.
Clicks (all): All clicks, taps or swipes on your ad — includes Link clicks plus clicks on other parts like See More, profile, or reactions.
CTR (all): Percentage of Impressions that resulted in any Clicks (all).
CPC (all): Average cost for each Clicks (all).
Landing page views: Number of times the Amazon page, if that is where your ad is directed, actually loaded after a click (filters out accidental clicks).
Cost per landing page view: Average cost for each Landing page view.

Top 3 columns to watch

Landing page views: The number of times your Amazon page actually loaded after someone clicked. This is more reliable than just clicks, because it filters out accidental clicks where the page didn't load. This is your main success metric.
Cost per landing page view: How much you pay on average for each Landing page view. This tells you if you're driving traffic efficiently. Lower is better. Watch this to see if costs stay low as you get more data.
CTR (link click-through rate): The percentage of times your ad was shown that resulted in a Link click. This shows if your creative and message are engaging. If it drops, your ad may need fresh creative.

How to use them together:

If Landing page views are rising and Cost per landing page view stays low, your ad is working — consider extending the schedule to gather more data.
If CTR (link click-through rate) is high but Landing page views are much lower than Link clicks, your Amazon page (if that's your target) may be loading slowly on mobile.
Ignore Shop clicks for this goal — it only counts clicks to a Meta Shop, not to Amazon, so it will stay at "—". (Again, only if your target is Amazon.)
 

One thing to understand with Meta ads is that it takes time for the algorithm to figure out who to show your ad to. I was already aware of that, but since I only set up an ad in order to test and report back, I chose to run my ad for five days. This created somewhat of a problem for me, because Meta began by presenting my ad to mainly the 65+ demographic. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad. My Goodreads reviewers tend to skew older, but for my own clarification, it would be nice to know if my novel appeals to more than just the geriatric crowd (not that there's anything wrong with that). 

So, how's my ad doing so far? 

Insights:

Engagement is strong — CTR 12-13% is well above typical for traffic campaigns*, meaning your creative + Amazon product link is getting taps and swipes.
*Per Google, a good link Click-Through Rate (CTR) for a Meta (Facebook or Instagram) book ad generally falls between 1% and 2.5%. 
Cost efficiency is good so far — $0.13-$0.14 per Link click and $0.13 per Landing page view shows you're driving traffic efficiently for $13.18 spent.
Volume is still very low — 771 Impressions and 620 Meta Accounts reached lifetime means the system has limited data to optimize. This is expected for a newly active/low-spend ad, so wait for more delivery before making major changes.
As you mentioned previously, concern about delivery skewing to 65+ — with only 620 Meta Accounts reached, early age skew is common while delivery explores. Monitor breakdown by age over the next 7-14 days rather than adjusting immediately.

What to do next to improve results over time

Keep running and let data accumulate:

Your ad is too new/low-volume to judge final performance. Avoid editing budget, audience, or creative in the next few days — each edit restarts learning. Batch changes if needed.

Without knowing if I've made any sales, I'm proceeding blindly here, but call me superstitious: I just won't look. However, I've made the decision to extend my ad for another five days. (My expenditure is low, by the way, so I'm not throwing caution to the wind.) 771 impressions is not a good representation. 

In lieu of having anything interesting to focus on right now, I admit that I'm finding this experiment kind of fun to monitor. Ultimately, a few sales or KU page reads would be nice, but I'm truly not counting on that.