Facebook App Ads

Measuring Installs and In-App Conversions

You can use App Events to measure, in aggregate, what people are doing in your app. The App Events methods for tracking events are part of the Facebook SDKs for iOS and Android.

You can use predefined events such as Added to cart in a commerce app or level achieved in a game, or use custom events that help you understand the engagement and ROI coming from your mobile ads on Facebook. You will be able to:

  • Measure the total count and value of these actions taken within your app
  • Measure the count and value of actions attributed to a specific ad campaign

Technical Implementation

Install Tracking

Follow our guide to using the Facebook SDK for App Ads. The Facebook SDK is required to enable install tracking.

In-App Conversions

By using App Events for event tracking, the count and value of these events will automatically be attributed to your ad campaigns.

Facebook SDK for App Ads

Ads Manager

The Ads Manager is your off-the-shelf tool to get insights about the performance, audience, and placement of your ads. By adding the Facebook SDK to your app, you'll be able to use the Ads Manager to measure app installs and in-app conversions.

Standard Reports

  • Performance Reports
  • Audience Reports
  • Placement Reports

Advanced Reports (Requires SDK)

  • App Install Reports
  • In-App Conversion Reports
Reporting with Ads ManagerAds Manager

Post-Install Results in Ads Manager

By using purchase events within Ads Manager, you can view post-install results from your mobile app install ad campaigns. There are two ways to access these insights. First is through a table view. Select List Settings within Ads Manager and include these post-install results as part of your campaign columns. You can view these insights in the main table view across install cohort dates based on the date range chosen.

You can also chart these metrics by clicking the graph icon on your side panel after you choose an ad campaign. This view offers the ability to chart revenue, yield, and ARPU and compare it to your average performance across each metric. The x-axis is the time window, and the y-axis is the the metric you choose to chart.

Yield percent (%) is defined by the revenue from a particular install day cohort divided by the spend used to acquire people from that same cohort. For example, for a particular campaign in Ads Manager, you select your time window to be from 11/01/2015 - 11/02/2015 in the date picker and you spent $500 on 11/01 and $1000 on 11/02. Now let's say for installs that occurred on 11/01 (28-day click-through attribution), you receive $1000 in revenue from those 11/1 installs on 11/1, $2000 in revenue on 11/2, and $4000 in revenue on 11/03. And for installs that occurred on 11/02, you receive $1500 in revenue from those 11/2 installs on 11/2, $3000 in revenue on 11/03, and $4000 in revenue on 11/04.

Your average 1D Yield% for 11/01/2015 - 11/02/2015 will be total revenue you get attributed to these two install dates within the 1-day window divided by total spend on these two days, which is (1000 + 2000 + 1500 + 3000) / (500 + 1000) = 500%. You can view 1-day, 3-day, 7-day, 30-day, and 90-day yield %.

Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is defined by the revenue gained from an install day cohort divided by the total users from that cohort. For example, for a particular campaign, if $500 in revenue is attributed to that install day cohort, and the total # of installs in that cohort is 200, then your ARPU is $2.50. You can view 1-day, 3-day, 7-day, 30-day, and 90-day ARPU.

To access all the raw data, you also have the option to export the post-install results by clicking the export button within the chart view section. The raw data will be exported by install cohort date.

Getting Help from a Facebook Marketing Partner

If you are interested in working with a technology partner that can help you measure your app performance across multiple ad networks, you can connect with a Facebook Marketing Partner that offers mobile measurement capabilities. These Facebook Marketing Partners offer advanced technology and customization that can do everything from manage growing complexity to provide measurement tailored to your business vertical.

Facebook Marketing Partners