Many creatives gravitate towards the planning phase of creative strategy. There is a certain allure that comes with thinking of a winning ad—channeling your inner Don Draper to create something that catches people’s attention and convinces them to make a purchase.
While the research and ideation phases are essential, the ad analysis phase is where the most significant impact can be made. It takes understanding how to analyze ad creative data to optimize your campaigns and improve your creative abilities.
This article explains how to analyze Facebook ad creatives like an expert. We will focus on the best practices for setting up creative tests, naming your ads, and the KPIs to monitor.
Set Up Proper Naming Conventions
If you want to track ad creative performance, you need to be able to quickly pull ad data. One of the biggest blockers to this is having poor naming conventions. Without them, you’ll spend hours looking for the data instead of using your expertise to make decisions.
Without a structured naming system, identifying and comparing different campaigns becomes nearly impossible. How can you quickly see which audience, creative, or message drives conversions if you’re sifting through hundreds of vaguely named campaigns like “Test 1” or “Campaign ABC”?
Proper naming conventions allow you to streamline ad management and easily pinpoint the variables responsible for performance shifts. This structure provides clarity, enabling your team to collaborate efficiently and spend less time sifting through data.
Tips for Setting Up Naming Conventions
A solid naming structure provides clarity from the get-go. Here’s a quick breakdown of what should go into naming your campaigns, ad sets, and ads:
- Campaign Level: Include the campaign’s objective (e.g., conversions, traffic), the target audience (e.g., demographic, interest-based), and the date range. This helps you identify at a glance what the campaign is meant to achieve.
- Ad Set Level: Detail the specific targeting criteria for this ad set. This might include characteristics such as age, gender, interests, and placement (e.g., Facebook vs. Instagram).
- Ad Level: Specify the creative elements being tested, such as the type of ad (static, video, carousel), the messaging angle, and any calls to action. This provides a clear snapshot of the ad’s creative direction.
Standardizing these elements will make your data more organized and accessible, which is the first step toward practical ad analysis.
Set Up Proper Tagging in Your Creative Tracking Tool
Proper tagging within your ad reporting tool is crucial for analyzing ad performance, especially when running multiple creatives simultaneously.
How Tagging Works
Tagging enables you to stage each creative asset with specific categories, such as:
- Campaign Brief: Which campaign or strategic brief is the ad part of?
- Messaging Angle/Theme: The core message or theme the ad is conveying.
- Hook Used: The attention-grabbing element at the beginning of the ad.
- Creative Type: Whether the ad is an iteration of a previous version or a completely new creative.
- Custom Tags: Any additional categories relevant to your analysis, such as specific target audiences or platforms.
The Importance of Tagging
Using tags helps you find performance trends in things you may be testing, like the messaging angle. We also like to use tags to aggregate data by brief so we can see if our creative outputs are improving brief by brief.
How To Analyze Facebook Ad Performance (Starting High Level)
When analyzing Facebook ad performance, it is essential to start with a high-level overview before going into specific details. This approach allows you to identify broad trends and patterns that guide more detailed analysis.
Key Areas to Analyze
- Format: Begin by assessing the overall performance of different ad formats (e.g., video, static, carousel). Identify which formats are driving the most engagement and conversions.
- Most Recent Brief (CSR): Compare the performance of ads tied to your most recent campaign briefs or CSR (Campaign Strategy Reports). This helps you understand how well the latest strategies resonate with your audience.
- Messaging Angles: Find the rational or emotional marketing messaging angles that drive the best performance.
- Creative Theme/Design: Understand which creative themes or templates work best for your account. Things like Us vs. Them, UGC, etc.
- Specific A/B Tests: If running A/B tests, compare the results to see which variations perform better. This could involve testing different headlines, calls to action, or images.
- By Creator: If you’re working with multiple creators or influencers, analyze the performance of ads based on the individual creator. This helps identify which creators are driving the most value for your campaigns.
How To Analyze Facebook Ad Results
Now that we have reviewed the high-level performance, it’s time to analyze the Facebook ad metrics that show positive or negative performance.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) This KPI measures the cost of acquiring a new customer. Many KPIs play a part in this, such as your CPC, and website conversion rate.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people (Impressions) who clicked on your ad after seeing it. A higher CTR suggests that your ad is compelling and relevant to your audience.
- CPC (Cost Per Click): Measures the average click cost on your ad. Monitoring CPC helps manage your budget and optimize spending.
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Indicates the average revenue generated for each dollar you spend on ads. Higher ROAS reflects more profitable campaigns.
Analyzing ad performance is how you will grow and learn as a creative strategist and channel your inner Don Draper. This guide is the starting point to becoming an expert ad creative analyst.
[Recommended reading: Should You Use Facebook Ads And How To Use Them Correctly?]
[Image credits – Main Photo by Abraham BL; Facebook Ad samples: from Facebook,..duh]
A pioneer in the digital marketing space, Colby Flood is the Owner of Brighter Click and DataAlly. He started his career as a Marketing Director in the Nonprofit sector, before moving on to start his own business. Driven by a mission to increase giving, Colby is best known for inspiring businesses to connect with Nonprofits that align with their core values.