Ad performance and cost per lead
How the Ads tab works out spend, cost per lead, CPM, CTR and the click to lead funnel, and why it differs from Ads Manager.
The Ads tab on a website's analytics page sets the ad spend against the leads the website actually received, so you can see what each lead cost and move budget to what works. The dashboard shows the same cost per lead for each website over the last 7 days.
It needs spend: connect the Meta ad account or enter spend by hand. The Period and Domain filters apply as on the other tabs.
Not set up yet? Follow Set up cost per lead, start to finish. Numbers look off? See Ad spend sync problems.
The numbers
| Number | How it is worked out |
|---|---|
| Spend | What the ad account spent in the period, synced from Meta (or entered by hand). |
| Website leads | Events the relay sent to Meta as Lead in the period. A lead Meta refused still counts: someone sent the form. |
| Cost per lead | Spend divided by website leads. |
| Meta leads | The leads Meta attributes to the ads, by the ad account's attribution setting. |
| Cost per lead (Meta) | Spend divided by Meta leads. |
| CPM | Spend per 1,000 impressions. |
| CTR | Link clicks divided by impressions. |
| Cost per link click | Spend divided by link clicks. |
| Visitors from Meta | Unique visitors who arrived with an ad's IDs in the address, or from a Facebook or Instagram link. |
| Click to visit | Visitors from Meta divided by link clicks. Lower than 100% when people leave before the page loads, block tracking or click twice. |
| Visit to lead | Leads sent by visitors from Meta, divided by visitors from Meta. |
Which events count as leads is set by the website's event mappings: anything mapped to Lead. Leads your team enters by hand in another system never reach the relay, so they are not counted.
Spend and leads per day
The bars are each day's spend and the line is that day's website leads. Hover a day for its cost per lead. Below it, cost per lead per day has a gap on days without leads.
Spend days follow the ad account's timezone, leads the relay's. For accounts in a distant timezone, a lead near midnight can land on a neighbouring day.
By campaign, ad set and ad
The table splits spend, website leads, cost per lead, Meta leads and CTR by campaign, ad set or ad. Click a column to sort. Website leads are matched on the IDs the tracker recorded, so this needs the ad URL parameters and ad attribution turned on. Leads without them are on the Unattributed row.
Per-campaign leads come from the event log, which is kept for 90 days. The totals at the top use the daily statistics and cover any period.
Why it differs from Ads Manager
Meta counts a lead when it can tie it to an ad click or view within its attribution window, models some it cannot see, and can revise the last few days. The relay counts every lead the website sent. Use Cost per lead for what you paid per real enquiry, and Cost per lead (Meta) to compare with Ads Manager.
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