How do I track my Instagram ad performance?

Asked a year ago

Table of Contents Show

A Sneak Peek into Ads Manager
How to Analyze Your Instagram Ad’s Performance
How to Adjust Your Instagram Ad
Partner with M&R Marketing for Your Social Media Advertising Needs
Additional Resources
How do you track ad performance?
How do you know if someone has boosted your Instagram post?
What metrics would you use to measure the success of an Instagram ad?

Does Instagram give analytics to help you track your ad performance?

Gareth Browne

Monday, November 01, 2021

Yes it does, just like google analytics, it has it's own built in system. To see it, first log in to your business account, open up the sidebar menu by clicking on the top right corner, and click on the tab marked as Insights and the relevant categories such as activity metrics, content and audience will be there.

Can't find what you're looking for?

When running a successful digital marketing campaign through Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., it is important to track the performance. Facebook and Instagram are the most popular platforms as they have the highest adoption rate in the USA; unfortunately, neither of these platforms (which are run from the same FBX platform since Facebook owns Instagram) integrate seamlessly with Google Analytics. A workaround is needed.

To effectively track these social platforms into Google Analytics, and create a singular source for all of your performance data, we recommend taking the following steps:

1. Utilize Facebook’s Business Manager

You will need to have a Facebook & Instagram business page already. Once you have this, go to business.facebook.com and create a business account (this is not the same as a business page).

2. Navigate to the Ads Manager section of the Business Manager

3. Create your own campaign, ad set, and ad (assuming these do not exist already)

This is the same place you edit the ad’s text, images, etc. Scroll to the bottom of this editor section. You will see a section called Tracking and an empty box called URL Parameters. This is where you will enter in your URL tracking information.

5. Enter URL parameters for Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses something in URLs called Universal Tracking Mechanisms (UTMs) which Google Analytics uses to parse data into the platform that you can then view in their reports. In my pictured example, you will see UTM parameters for an example Instagram campaign. Generally speaking, we use the source= parameter for tracking the source of the traffic, the medium= parameter is “cpc” which stands for Cost Per Click, the campaign= parameter is our ad set name, and our content= parameter is for our ad name.

We do things this way because it allows our data to roll up cleanly against other automated source tracking, like Google Ads. In theory, you could name these UTM parameters whatever you like. Google Analytics does not know the difference.

Example parameters:
utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=example_ad_set&utm_content=ad_name1

6. Copy and paste this UTM data into the parameters field on every single ad

You should change the campaign= parameter to something that matches your ad set name and your content= parameter to something that matches your ad names. This can take some time if you have many ads and ad sets, but it is worth the investment in time.

Things to know about UTMs:

– they are case sensitive
– spaces will break the tracking
– you do not need to include a ? like you do in normal URL tracking for GA
– these only work if you have Google Analytics code on every page of your website

Once your campaigns are turned on and they start getting traffic to your website, you will see the data begin to roll into the campaign reports in Google Analytics. These are found here: Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns in Google Analytics once you sign in.

Happy tracking!

With over 1 billion active Instagram users each month, Instagram remains one of the fastest-growing social media platforms available. People aged 13+ are eligible to create an Instagram page, so there’s a high likelihood your target audience is on Instagram. However, that doesn’t mean that your target audience will find your page. Hello, Instagram ads!

Instagram ads are paid posts that are displayed in a user’s news feed, stories, or reels. A business can set specific criteria to maximize its chance of reaching its target audience. Once approved, the ad will be served to the target audience until the previously determined budget is used. This takes place in Ads Manager. Before jumping into the nitty-gritty of Instagram ads, let’s highlight Ads Manager.

A Sneak Peek into Ads Manager

To discover how you track Instagram ad results or adjust an ad, first you need to understand where all these ads call “home” – meet Ads Manager. According to Facebook,

“Ads Manager is a Facebook tool that lets you create and manage your Facebook ads. You can view, make changes, and see results for all your Facebook campaigns, ad sets, and ads. With Ads Manager you can create ad campaigns, manage multiple ads at once, and see how your ads perform.”

More than just Facebook ads and campaigns, Ads Manager allows you to create and manage the social media platforms that are owned by Meta such as Instagram and Facebook Messenger. It boasts a plethora of features, such as:

Ad creation and management provide a space to build and manage the ad.
Ads reporting provides important information about the performance of your campaign.
Assets management shows your pixels, catalogs, and more.
Billing and payment methods give you the capability to insert new payment methods (credit or debit cards), retrieve invoices, and implement spending limits.
Campaign structures give you the capability to determine what objective, targeting, and creative you want for your campaign.
Marketing objectives allow you to specify what your goal is for the Instagram ad.

How to Analyze Your Instagram Ad’s Performance

To see your Instagram ad’s metrics, follow these steps after logging onto your Business Facebook account on your desktop computer:

Open your Ads Manager account
Click on the Instagram ad campaign you’d like to review
Click on View Charts

In the charts section, you will see the Performance Overview. This contains information about link clicks, cost per click, clickthrough rate (CTR), and how many link clicks happened on specific days.

If you scroll further down, you’ll see the demographics (age and gender distribution of the ad), what device your Instagram ad was seen on (desktop or mobile), and what platform it appeared on (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.). In the top right corner, you can edit the days you want to analyze, as well.

You can view even more detailed data by following these steps:

Open your Ads Manager account
Click on Campaigns
Click on Breakdown in the tab of your choosing – Campaign, Ad Sets, or Ads
Choose which Breakdown you want to see – time, delivery, or action.
Choose the subcategory located under “By Time”, “By Delivery”, or “By Action” that you are interested in

From there, you can dive into the details to determine how well your Instagram ad is performing.

How to Adjust Your Instagram Ad

Whether you made a typo or want to change the ad target, you can make those changes in Ads Manager (the same place where you’re analyzing the performance of your ad). Once you open your Ads Manager account, you must hover over the campaign you want to change and click “edit”. From there, you can edit the categories shown on the screen. Once your editing is complete, Facebook must re-approve the ad. During this time, your ad may be paused until it is approved or rejected.

It’s important to know that if you want to change the campaign objective (for example, from impressions to engagements), you must create a new ad.

Our expert team can handle your social media needs! We understand the ever-changing rules and regulations of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, so you don’t have to. We will gladly implement a marketing strategy into your social media pages to reach your target audience. Are you interested in learning more? Give us a call today: 478-621-4491.

Stay tuned for our four-part series on social media:

Does Posting on Social Media Improve Your SEO?
Are Facebook Ads Worth It? The Inside Scoop on Social Media Advertising
Do Instagram Ads Work? How to Track Results and Make Adjustments
Is it Worth it for Your Business to Create a LinkedIn Page?

Additional Resources

How do you track ad performance?

If you're new to tracking your performance, start by clicking All campaigns in the navigation menu on the left in your Google Ads account. Click either Ads & assets or Keywords from the page menu on the left to see statistics tables that show you a complete, customizable view of all of your data.

How do you know if someone has boosted your Instagram post?

Boosted posts will appear in the Stories or the Explore tab. If you have an Instagram Professional account and Promote is available, you'll see Boost Post as an option when you upload a post to your Feed.