Cross-Account Reporting and Custom Ad Metrics Launching

Through 2019, Facebook has made steady improvements to Business Manager, with more pencilled in for 2020.

Most improvements have centred on streamlining interfaces; however, in recent months, Facebook has also rolled out several important features related to reporting.

Offering richer, deeper and more tailored campaign insights.

Three of the more eye-catching updates are tied to:

1. Cross-account reporting
   • Making it easier to manage and compare activity across multiple ad accounts
2. Custom metrics
   • Providing the ability to tailor and customise reporting metrics
3. Conversion paths
   • Managing performance attribution across a multitude of touchpoints

“We’ve launched several updates to our reporting tools that are designed to make it easier for you to measure ad performance across accounts, channels, and different publishers.

Using these updates, you can get a better holistic picture of how your ads are performing, what channels are driving conversions, and what audiences you are actually reaching during the holiday season.”

Given how social media costs tend to blow out at this time of year, improved campaign insights certainly wouldn’t go amiss.

Multi-account & Channel Reporting

Cross-account reporting has been a long time coming and should streamline day-to-day evaluation operations for many.

Now with cross-account reporting, you'll be able to see metrics across multiple ad accounts, such as:

• Reach
• Impressions
• Conversions

The new cross-account reporting should make reporting more transparent and concise.

Reports offer an aggregated view of all your ad accounts, helping you to quickly understand how your business is performing holistically.

In the past, businesses would manually pull data and then manually create reports to aggregate data for multiple accounts.

With this new feature, you can save time and work more efficiently.

In addition, when pulling reports manually in the past, advertisers could not view unique reach. Whereas, this latest offering shows de-duplicated reach (or unique people reached across accounts and campaigns), so you can better understand whom you are reaching and the accuracy of your ad targeting.

Developing and Customising Reporting Metrics

Inevitably, when running reports via Facebook or Instagram, marketers will from time to time hit analytics roadblocks.

For example, there’s something you’re tasked with reporting on which is not supported natively, and you have to manually export data and workshop to suit offline. i.e. metrics which combine social engagement and website behaviour.

Or, you’re highly sceptical about available reports, but in lieu of finding something more suitable, having to put your name to stats you do not trust.

Thankfully, it is now possible to tailor and customise your own reporting metrics within Ads Reporting.

Note, Facebook Ads Reporting is not the same thing as the regular reporting in Facebook Ads Manager. It’s often confused.

In Ads Reporting, you can concoct and tailor your own reporting formulas under Custom Metrics. Composing formulas as you wish, incorporating multiple data sources.

You can then save and reuse custom metrics as required.

Tracking Results Across Multiple Touchpoints

Keeping with the idea of holistic reporting, Facebook launched Conversion Paths reporting earlier this year within Facebook Attribution.

Customers often have multiple interactions across channels and devices before visiting a website and ultimately converting, but these interactions are not necessarily reflected by simple revenue or conversion reporting.

The conversions paths report lets you see how individual publishers contribute to a conversion path. You can view:

• How many conversions happened on conversions paths with just one publisher
• How many happened on conversion paths with multiple publishers
• Position and frequency of each publisher in the conversion path (first, middle, last)
• De-duplicated and full conversion paths for the conversion event and time period you select

Pairing this report with the performance and attribution model comparison dashboards would offer even more in-depth insights into your attribution results. 

Analytics offerings for digital channels will never be perfect, both in their reliability and comprehensiveness.

However, given how much they have advanced in recent years, if your business still reports today as it did in 2018, you’re probably due for a revamp.

As per Facebook’s latest reporting releases, there is plenty that smart marketers can get their teeth into in 2020.