[rgbrgb]

The point is that you're not looking at CTRs because FB surfaces conversion costs, which is a much more revenue-aligned metric. You can of course still look at CTRs to do micro-optimizations and copy tests with ads if you want, but the FB ad platform pushes you not to make that the focus. An ad for free money may have a high CTR but if the landing page is not actually delivering the value prop, the conversion cost will still be high. Likewise, an ad for, say, real estate services will have a much lower CTR (even if the service gives away "free money" :), but if the page is compelling and the clicks are real you can still have good cost per acquisition.

[continuations]

Ok I'm not familiar with the FB ad platform but how does FB surface conversion costs? Using your example of real estate services there's no way FB can tell whether someone becomes a client after clicking on the ad. And without that information FB cannot calculate conversion costs.

[dkokelley]

Facebook uses their pixel [1] to determine what their visitors do on their advertisers' sites. The pixel can be set with various options, such as a "purchase" pixel with a revenue component. When you initiate campaigns in Facebook you have the option to define a goal of conversions (views of a specific Facebook pixel), and Facebook will report back the conversions from your campaign.

1: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755

[rgbrgb]

We fire a conversion event back to them when someone becomes a client.

[exhilaration]

Hmmm... what do you pass back to FB? Our FB cookie? That way they can correlate who saw the ad against the visit to your site?

[rgbrgb]

Here's an official explanation of conversion tracking with FB: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/online-sales/conversion-...