Log in to Ads Manager for the first time and there are, literally, hundreds of columns. It looks intimidating on the first visit and it still looks intimidating on the tenth. Six of those numbers are worth your attention, and they are worth it in a specific order.
| Metric | Benchmark | If it is off, it is usually | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CPM | About $30, plus or minus $5 to $10 | The creative |
| 2 | Link click-through rate | 2.5 to 3%; up to 5.5% on a good campaign | The creative or the offer |
| 3 | Landing page conversion rate | About 5% of visitors into qualified leads | Friction on the form, or the page says something the ad did not |
| 4 | Cost per lead | $15 to $30 with qualification on the page | Creative, page qualification, tracking: several things |
| 5 | Lead-to-submission rate | About 15%; 10% to the low twenties still works | The floor, mostly |
| 6 | Cost per funded deal | $1,000 to $1,500 | Anything above it in the funnel |
Why the order matters
The list runs from least indicative to most relevant, and the two ends behave very differently. A $200 CPM has one cause worth checking: the creative is not stopping anyone. Nothing else in the funnel has happened yet, so nothing else can be responsible. A $4,000 cost per funded deal, by contrast, could be the creative, the page, the passcode step, the tracking, the reps, the placement or the paper, because everything upstream feeds it. The further down the funnel a number sits, the more variables can be producing an irregular reading, and the less you can say from the number alone.
How to read it week to week
- Read top-down. If the CPM and click-through rate are in range, the creative is doing its job and the problem is further along.
- Treat the landing page rate as the handover from the ad to the page. A good CTR and a bad page rate means the page broke a promise the ad made.
- Do not manage to cost per lead. A $60 lead that funds is cheaper than a $10 lead that does not.
- The submission rate is where the ad account stops and the floor starts. It moves with the reps, not with the campaign.
- Judge the campaign on the sixth number, over enough weeks for it to mean something, and change one thing above it at a time.
The reason to hold these six and ignore the rest is not tidiness. A broker who knows their numbers can scale, because they know how much they are willing to spend to acquire a customer and whether the system is producing one at that price. A broker with a folder of spreadsheets and a hundred Ads Manager columns cannot, because they cannot tell whether it works. The week these came from is published in full.
Questions brokers ask
Which Meta Ads Manager metrics matter for MCA lead generation?
Six, in order of importance: CPM, link click-through rate, landing page conversion rate, cost per lead, lead-to-submission rate and cost per funded deal. The last one is the one the campaign is judged on; the other five explain why it moved.
What are good benchmarks for MCA Facebook ads?
About $30 CPM, 2.5 to 3% link CTR, 5% of landing page visitors into qualified leads, $15 to $30 per qualified lead, 15% of leads submitting to a lender, and $1,000 to $1,500 per funded deal. Those are the figures our own campaigns are managed against.
Why is cost per lead not the most important number?
Because it says nothing about whether the leads fund. A $60 lead that produces a funded deal every twenty leads is cheaper than a $10 lead that never does. Cost per funded deal is the number that decides whether the spend was a good idea.
What does it mean when a number near the bottom of the list is off?
That there are many possible causes. A high CPM has one likely cause, the creative, because nothing else has happened yet. A high cost per funded deal could be anything from the creative to the placement, so you work back up the list to find which earlier number moved.
How many metrics should I actually track in Ads Manager?
These six, by campaign, weekly. Everything else is available if you need to diagnose something, but a dashboard with a hundred columns is how brokers end up unsure whether their advertising works at all.
Reference
The video these numbers come fromTen minutes on the six metrics, with chapters and the transcript in full.
Alex Makowski
Founder, Infinite Bookings
Runs the lead generation operation behind Infinite Bookings — paid traffic, the funding application, and the delivery pipeline that puts records into brokers’ CRMs.
Reachable directly at alex@infinitebookings.com or 732-609-7182.