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.
Partner with M&R Marketing for Your Social Media Advertising Needs
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?