Table of Contents
Introduction
In 2024, Facebook advertising remains a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. But with constant platform updates and evolving audience preferences, staying on top of the latest terminology is crucial for success. This guide demystifies key Facebook advertising terms, empowering you to craft effective campaigns that resonate with your target audience and drive meaningful results.
Why Mastering Terms Matters:
- Clarity and Efficiency: Understanding the language ensures you’re setting clear campaign goals, optimizing bids efficiently, and analyzing data accurately.
- Staying Ahead of the Curve: New features and metrics emerge regularly. Knowing the vocabulary helps you adapt and leverage them to your advantage.
- Improved Communication: Speak the same language as your marketing team or agency, ensuring everyone is aligned towards shared objectives.
- Maximize your budget: Knowing the right terms ensures you’re bidding strategically, targeting effectively, and measuring results accurately, leading to better ROI.
- Navigate the platform: Facebook Ads Manager can be complex. Understanding the terminology empowers you to navigate the interface confidently and make informed decisions.
- Stay ahead of the curve: Facebook constantly rolls out new features and changes its algorithm. Grasping the latest terms keeps you informed and adaptable.
Advertising Terms you Need to Know
We have prepared a list of the most important advertising terms you need to know in order to run a profitable Facebook advertising campaign. They are listed in alphabetical order below:
Ad
Ad is an advertisement that you create on the Facebook ad management tool to promote your e-shop, Facebook page, products, etc. It usually includes images, text, and call-to-action buttons.
Advertising Auction
Unfortunately, when you create an ad, it will not immediately appear in the Facebook user’s feed. Instead, it competes with other similar advertisements in auctions. Facebook measures the quality of ads, bids, and estimated operation rates to determine when to show Facebook users which ads are in the auction.
Advertising ID
This is the unique number for all ads you create.
Ad Set
All your ads are grouped into ad groups. Facebook groups the ads based on operating schedule, budget, target audience, and delivery optimization.
Ads Manager
The Facebook ad manager tool is a tool that can be used to create, manage, and place ads on Facebook, as well as process all payment and billing information related to Facebook ads. Ads Manager also has an integrated analysis dashboard where you can measure the effectiveness of your ads.
Amount Spent
In the reporting, the amount spent is a field that tells you how much money you spent on ads, ad groups, or campaigns.
Audience
The group of people you choose to target with Facebook ads is called an audience.
Audience Network
A group of Facebook partners. A large number of mobile app and web publishers will show your ads on their apps and websites.
Broad Categories
Facebook provides an extensive list of targeting categories to make it easier for you to target your ads. You can group users by interests, Facebook likes, installed apps, etc.
Boost Posts
You don’t have to advertise to build brand awareness or gain more followers. You can also try to promote (sponsored) posts on your Facebook page. By quickly boosting a post on your Facebook page, you can let Facebook users who don’t like your page see it. However, if you want more optimization options, please create ads on Ad Manager.
Campaign
A campaign contains one or more ad sets and ads. You will choose an advertising goal for each campaign.
Campaign ID
A unique ID provided for all your campaigns. This number is displayed in the report section of the Ads Manager.
Campaign Spending Limit
You can set a maximum spending limit for each campaign. Once the limit is reached, your campaign will stop running.
Campaign Reach
campaign reach is the total number of people who saw your ad in the campaign.
Clicks
Clicks are the actions performed by users who viewed your ad and clicked on it. Clicks can be: post responses, comments, click on the company’s profile or picture, post and share, click to expand, clicks related to campaign goals (page likes, messages, website visits, etc.), etc.
Connections
When choosing the audience for your ad, you can choose to include or exclude people who like and follow your page. These people are grouped into connections.
Conversions
Actions completed by customers, such as adding to a shopping cart or making a purchase on your website, are conversions.
Cost per Action
The average amount you paid for a conversion.
Cost-per-click
The average amount you paid for a click on your ad.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. It is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions. It can help you determine how effective your ads are in driving traffic to your website.
Custom Audience
A custom audience is a targeting option you can choose when creating a Facebook ad. To create a custom audience, you need to import details about your customers, such as email addresses or actions taken on your website.
Daily Budget
The daily budget is the amount you want to spend on your ad group or campaign each day. Each ad set can have its own daily budget.
Cost per Engagement (CPE)
The average cost of a user’s engagement with your ad. It is calculated by dividing the total advertising expenditure by the total number of engagements.
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
The average cost of showing your ad to a thousand people. It is used to determine the cost-effectiveness of your campaign.
Delivery
Delivery is the status of your campaigns, ad groups, and ads. The status is displayed on the marketing activity page of Facebook Ads Manager and can be any status of active, paused or closed.
End Date
This is the date when your ad group is scheduled to end. You set it when you create the campaign.
Engagement Rate Ranking
Engagement rate ranking compares the expected performance of your ads in terms of clicks, likes, comments, and sharing with the performance of other advertisers targeting the same audience.
Frequency
Frequency is defined as the average number of times users see your ad. It’s calculated by dividing your ad impressions by reach.
Followers
Followers are people who like your page and will see your updates in their feed.
Impressions
The average number of times your ad appeared in your target audience feed.
Interaction
If a user interacts with your ad in any way, it will be marked as an interaction in the reporting section. Interaction can be anything from clicking on your ad to watching a video. For example, 1 click and 1 comment by 1 person are marked as two interactions.
Lead Generation
This is the goal you can choose when creating an ad on Facebook. You can ask your audience to fill out a form with their contact information if you have set the goal of your marketing campaign to lead generation.
Lifetime Budget
This is the amount you set throughout the life of the campaign.
Link Clicks
The number of clicks on a link in an ad is the number of times it points to destinations on and off Facebook.
Likes and Interest Targeting
This is a way to target Facebook users based on the pages they like and the interests they express on Facebook.
Objective
The activity goal indicates what you hope to achieve through the Campaign. It can be brand awareness or reach, app installs, video views, catalog sales, etc.
On- Facebook Purchases
All purchases made by Facebook users as a result of seeing your ads on assets owned by Facebook (messengers, Facebook pages, etc.)
Page Engagement
Due to your Facebook advertising efforts, page engagement is a series of actions that Facebook users perform on your business pages or posts.
Page Likes
The number of people who like your Facebook page.
Payment Method
The payment method is how you pay for the ads created on Facebook.
Post Engagement
The number of actions (likes, comments, shares, etc.) that people performed on your homepage posts after seeing your boosted posts or ads.
Potential Reach
This is an estimate of how many people are in the target audience you choose.
Promoted Posts
A promoted post is the boosted post on your business Facebook page.
Reach
This is the number of people who have seen your ad once. Don’t confuse it with impressions, because impressions may include multiple exposures of your ad to the same group of people.
Reports
The reports section of the Ads Manager will show you the most important metrics of your ads and their performance so far. You can choose which metrics to include and which metrics to exclude.
Social Impression
The number of times your ad was shown with social information (e.g. John Dike followed this content.)
Start date
The start date is the date your ad started running.
Status
The status of your campaigns, ad groups, and ads. It can be turned on or off.
Targeted Audience
This is the number of people your ads may reach based on the audience you target.
Traffic
Traffic is the objective you can choose when creating an ad. The point of this objective is to attract as many people as possible to your website.
Transaction
This is the Facebook advertising fee that Facebook charges you. You can view all the costs of your advertising in the billing summary section of the business manager.
Unique Clicks
This is the number of people who clicked on your ad. Please note that this counts people, not actions.
Video Views (VV)
The number of times your Facebook video ad was viewed for three seconds or more.
Verification Hold
In order to verify your payment method, A charge is made on your card. It is usually for the amount of $1.01 and will be returned to you within 5 days.
Conclusion
You need to understand these advertising terms to run a profitable Facebook advertising campaign. Facebook advertising terms is essential for anyone looking to leverage the platform effectively for their marketing campaigns. By understanding concepts such as CPC, CPM, ROAS, and others, advertisers can optimize their strategies, allocate budgets more efficiently, and ultimately achieve better results.
Additionally, staying updated with the latest trends and changes in Facebook advertising terms is crucial to adapt to the evolving landscape and maintain a competitive edge in the digital marketing realm. With a solid grasp of these terms and their implications, advertisers can navigate the complexities of Facebook advertising with confidence and achieve their business objectives more effectively.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.
