Meta Ads Glossary
This glossary defines the terms used throughout the Meta Ads guides and in Ads Manager reporting.
Putting This to Work
Keep this page open when reading a report. The terms that matter most for a business are cost per result, return on ad spend and frequency, because they describe money in, money out and whether the audience is getting tired.
In Practice
A report shows a cost per result of $38 and a frequency of 4.2. The first number says what a lead costs. The second says the same people have seen the ad more than four times, which usually means it is time for new creative.
Key Terms
- CPM
- Cost per 1,000 impressions. The price of showing an ad a thousand times, regardless of actions.
- CPC
- Cost per click. Spend divided by clicks. Ads Manager distinguishes link clicks from all clicks.
- CTR
- Click-through rate. Clicks divided by impressions, shown as a percentage.
- CPA
- Cost per action, often called cost per result in Ads Manager. Spend divided by the number of results.
- ROAS
- Return on ad spend. Purchase conversion value divided by spend.
- Reach
- The number of distinct accounts that saw an ad at least once.
- Frequency
- Average number of times each account saw an ad. Impressions divided by reach.
- Impressions
- The number of times an ad appeared on a screen.
- Attribution window
- The period after a click or view during which a conversion is credited to an ad. The default is 7-day click and 1-day view.
- Learning phase
- The period after an ad set is created or significantly edited while the delivery system gathers results. Meta states that an ad set exits learning after about 50 optimization events within a week.
- Learning limited
- A status shown when an ad set is unlikely to gather enough results to exit the learning phase.
- Ad fatigue
- Declining performance as the same audience sees an ad repeatedly, often visible as rising frequency and falling CTR.
- Optimization goal
- The action the delivery system tries to get for the lowest cost.
- Conversion
- A valuable action, such as a purchase or lead, usually tracked through the Pixel or Conversions API.
- Custom conversion
- A conversion defined by a URL rule or event parameters inside Events Manager.
- Lookalike audience
- People similar to a source audience.
- Advantage+
- Meta's name for a family of automated features, including campaign types, audience, placements and creative enhancements.
- Advantage campaign budget
- Automatic distribution of one campaign budget across ad sets, formerly campaign budget optimization.
- Placement
- A location where an ad can appear, such as Facebook Feed or Instagram Reels.
- Relevance diagnostics
- Quality, engagement rate and conversion rate rankings that replaced the single relevance score in 2019.
- Special ad category
- A required declaration for ads about credit, employment, housing or social and political issues.
- Business Portfolio
- The top-level container for a business's Meta assets, formerly Business Manager.
- Events Manager
- The tool for managing the Meta Pixel, Conversions API and other data sources.
- Power Editor
- A former advanced campaign tool merged into Ads Manager in 2017.
Key Facts
- Ads Manager lets you customize columns, so the metric names you see depend on the report layout.
- Metrics with a lag, such as conversions, can change for days after an ad runs as attribution windows close.
Sources
- Meta Business Help Center www.facebook.com
- Ads Manager www.facebook.com
- Meta Blueprint courses www.facebook.com
- Search Engine Journal, paid social www.searchenginejournal.com
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