Instagram Ads: Key Metrics to Include in Your Reports

Instagram has over 2.4 billion active users. This makes Instagram attractive to many brands and businesses. Its visual nature and targeting capabilities enable you to connect with a global audience through organic and paid efforts.

To get the most out of your Instagram ads campaigns, you need consistent and accurate reporting of results. Tracking the right key performance indicators monthly will give you insights to optimize audience interactions, engagement and conversions. 

This monitoring process will help you drive results, make better decisions, and improve your Instagram marketing overall. Let’s examine which key metrics to include in your Instagram Ads report.

What Are Instagram Ads?

Instagram Ads are paid promotions targeting specific audiences on Instagram. They show up in the feed, Stories, Explore tab, and more. With Instagram’s massive user base and Facebook’s advanced targeting, these ads reach and engage users.

Read more: How to Set Up A Successful Instagram Ads Campaign

Why Track Your Instagram Ads Campaign Performance?

Tracking your Instagram Ads campaign performance leads to better marketing and better ROI. The benefits of include:

Ad Spend: By determining which ads are working and which aren’t, you can allocate your budget better. This helps you spend money wisely by cutting back on ads that don’t work and putting more money into the ones that do.

Better Targeting: Performance data will help you refine your targeting. Understanding who responds to ads based on demographics, locations, and behaviors can improve targeting for future campaigns.

Better Ad Creative: Analyzing ad performance will help you see what type of content resonates with your audience. This could be specific images, videos or copy styles. Knowing this will help you to create more engaging ads.

Better ROI: Increase conversion rates and return on ad spend (ROAS) by adjusting campaigns based on performance data.

Faster to Market Trends: Follow changes in consumer behavior and market conditions to adapt your strategy in real time.

Informed Decisions: Remove the guesswork and make better decisions from creative development to optimizations with campaign tracking.

You can improve your advertising efforts by monitoring the performance of your Instagram ads. This will also help you lay the groundwork for future marketing success. Campaign reporting will keep you agile, competitive and aligned with your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Instagram Ads Campaign Objectives

Instagram Ads offers various objectives that advertisers can choose that align with their marketing goals. Here’s a breakdown of the main objectives for Instagram Ads:

1. Brand Awareness: Increase overall brand awareness among a broad audience. It is good for new brands or launching new products.
2. Reach: Maximize ad visibility by showing it to the maximum number of people in your target audience.
3. Traffic: Drive people (increase traffic) to your website, app, etc.
4. Engagement: Increase interactions on posts or your Instagram page itself. This is used to promote specific posts to get more likes, shares, comments, and event responses.
5. App Installs: Encourage users to install your mobile app. Good for mobile-first businesses or new app launches.
6. Video Views: Promote your video content to increase views. Good for campaigns focused on rich media content to tell stories or showcase products dynamically.
7. Lead Generation: Capture interest or collect leads from people interested in your product or service. Helps build a database of potential customers for remarketing.
8. Conversions: Encourage users to take a specific action on your website or app, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. This is good for performance-driven campaigns looking for high ROI.
9. Catalog Sales: Show products from your catalog to customers. This method scales personalization by showing users the products they are most likely to buy.
10. Store Traffic: Drive customers to your physical store. Good for brick-and-mortar businesses looking to increase foot traffic.

By choosing the right objective, you can ensure every ad displayed works towards your marketing goals.

Instagram Ads Key Performance KPIs

When managing Instagram ad campaigns, you need to differentiate between generic KPIs that give overall insights into ad performance and specific KPIs that are tied to specific campaign objectives.

Here’s a breakdown of both:

Generic KPIs for Instagram Ads

These KPIs can be used for different types of campaigns and goals to provide an overall view of ad performance and health.

• Impressions: Total number of times your ads were displayed.
• Reach: Number of unique users who saw your ads.
• Clicks: Total number of clicks on your ad.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of impressions from a click. How compelling is your ad to your audience?
• Cost Per Click (CPC): Average cost per click. Helps you assess the cost of your campaign.
• Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM): Cost per 1000 impressions of your ad. Used to understand the cost of ad visibility.
• Total Ad Spend: Total spend on all your Instagram ads for a specific period.
• Engagement Rate: Measure of interactions (likes, comments, shares) received vs impressions. How engaging is your content?

KPIs Per Campaign Objective

After selecting your campaign objective, choose specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your campaign’s contribution to your overall goals. Here’s a breakdown of common Instagram ad objectives and the KPIs associated with them:

Brand Awareness

When brand awareness is the primary objective, you’ll want to select KPIs that measure how well your ads increase your brand’s visibility and recognition among your target audience. Brand awareness KPIs include:

• Frequency: Tracks how many times the same user sees your ad. This is important for brand exposure. A higher frequency can help reinforce your brand message and brand recall among your target audience.
• Brand Recall Lift: Measures the increase in brand recall among viewers due to your ad campaign. Instagram offers brand lift studies that help measure your ad’s direct impact on viewers’ ability to remember your brand.
• Social Listening: Monitoring mentions, hashtags, or social media conversations about your brand can show how much your brand is being talked about due to your ad campaign.
• Follower Growth: When running Instagram Ads to drive traffic to a website, landing page or app select KPIs that measure effectiveness. Follower count during and after the campaign will show if brand awareness efforts are converting viewers into followers.

Traffic

When running Instagram Ad campaigns to drive traffic to a website, landing page or app select KPIs that measure how well your ads are directing users to these destinations. Relevant KPIs for measuring Instagram Ads traffic include:

• Website Clicks: This is the total number of clicks on the ad that direct users to your website. This is a key metric to track because it directly measures how often users have taken action on your ad’s call to action.
• Traffic Quality: Traffic quality can be measured through additional metrics such as:
• Bounce Rate: Percentage of visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate might mean the landing page content needs to be more relevant and engaging.
• Pages per Session: This shows the average number of pages a visitor views during a session. More pages per session mean more engaged traffic.
• Average Session Duration: The average length of a session. Longer sessions mean more engaged and interested visitors.
• Conversion Rate from Traffic: This metric shows what percentage of the visitors directed from your Instagram Ads campaign completed a desired action on your website or app, such as filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.

Engagement

When running Instagram Ad campaigns for traffic, select KPIs that measure how well your ads direct users to your website, landing page, or app.

• Engagement Rate: This is a key metric for any engagement-focused campaign. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of engagement actions (likes, comments, shares, saves) by the total number of impressions and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. This KPI helps you see how relevant your audience finds your ad content.
• Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves: Specific counts of these interactions.
• Cost Per Engagement (CPE): This metric calculates the cost-effectiveness of your engagement efforts by dividing the total ad spend by the total number of engagement actions. It helps you see how much you pay per interaction and helps with budgeting.

App Installs

When your Instagram Ad campaign is for app installs, you’ll want to select KPIs that measure how well your ads are driving downloads, such as:

• App Installs: This is the most direct metric and shows the total number of app installations from your ads. Tracking installs is key to understanding the immediate impact of your advertising.
• Cost Per Install (CPI): CPI helps you see how well your campaign is performing at acquiring new users for your app. A lower CPI means you’re using your budget more efficiently.
• Conversion Rate: This KPI measures the percentage of users who install the app after clicking on the ad. It is a key metric for evaluating how well your ad is performing once users engage with it. High conversion rates mean your ad copy, CTA, and alignment with user expectations are on point.
• Quality of Users Acquired: Analyzing user quality, such as in-app purchases and regular engagement, helps determine the value of users from Instagram Ads compared to other channels. Track the Lifetime Value (LTV) of users acquired through these ads.

Video Views

When running Instagram Ads to maximize video views, focus on KPIs that measure viewer engagement, content reach, and overall video performance, such as:

• Video Views: Tracks the total number of times your video was watched for a specified amount of time.
• Video Engagement: Includes likes, comments, shares and saves. These metrics give you insight into how viewers respond to your video beyond just watching it.
• Average Watch Time: This metric shows the average time viewers have watched your video. It helps you see how sticky your content is—how well it holds viewers’ attention.
• 10-Second Video Views: For more details, tracking the number of viewers who watched at least 10 seconds of your video (or any other specific interval) can be useful, especially if your video is longer. This helps you see when viewers might drop off if they don’t watch to the end.
• Conversion from Video: Even if your primary objective is video views, tracking conversions can be useful if your video has a call to action.

Lead Generation

The goal of running lead generation Instagram ad campaigns is to capture customer information such as email addresses, phone numbers, or other relevant contact details. The KPIs you’ll want to track are:

• Leads Generated: This metric shows the total number of leads (e.g., contact forms filled, sign-ups completed) collected from the ad. It measures the campaign’s success in achieving its primary objective.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): This metric is key to understanding how well your campaign generates leads. Tracking CPL helps with budgeting and making adjustments to improve the campaign’s efficiency.
• Lead Conversion Rate: This metric measures the percentage of ad viewers who become leads by completing the desired action (e.g., filling out a form). It’s calculated by dividing the number of leads by the total number of clicks or interactions and multiplying by 100.
• Return on Investment (ROI): ROI measures the total return from the leads compared to the ad spend. This metric is key to evaluating the financial performance of your lead generation campaign over time, especially when leads are tracked through the sales cycle.

Conversions

If your goal is to drive conversions – such as a purchase, sign up, form fill, or any other specific action – you’ll want to track Instagram KPIs like:

• Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who complete a desired action after clicking on your ad. This metric measures how well your ad converts interested clicks into final actions.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): ROAS is key to understanding the profitability of your advertising. It’s calculated by dividing conversion revenue by total ad spend. A higher ROAS means you’re earning more than you spend on ads.
• Cost Per Conversion (CPCV) or Cost Per Action (CPA): This metric tracks the cost of each conversion achieved through your ads. Tracking CPA helps you manage your budget and evaluate the campaign’s financial performance.
• Value Per Conversion: This metric goes beyond just counting conversions by assigning a monetary value to each based on the revenue they generate. It helps you prioritize efforts on types of conversions that bring in more value.
• Average Order Value (AOV): In e-commerce, tracking the average order value from customers who converted via Instagram ads can give you insight into their buying behavior and how well your ads are promoting higher-value products
• Bounce Rate on Landing Pages: For ads that direct users to a landing page the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who navigate away after viewing only that page) can indicate how well the page meets the expectations set by the ad.

Store Traffic

If you’re using Instagram Ads to drive physical store traffic, you’ll want to track the following KPIs to see if you’re converting online engagement into in-store visits.

• Store Visits: This is the key metric for any campaign to drive foot traffic. Store visits are tracked through location-based services and mobile device data to estimate the number of people who visit your store after seeing your ad. This metric can attribute ad exposure to in-store visits.
• Cost Per Store Visit (CPSV): CPSV calculates the cost of driving one customer to your store due to the ad campaign. This metric helps you evaluate the financial efficiency of your campaign in driving physical store traffic.
• Conversion Rate from View to Visit: This KPI measures the percentage of users who visited the store after viewing the ad. It helps you understand how well the ad is motivating people to make a physical visit.
• Promotional Redemption Rate: If your ad includes a promotion or coupon to be redeemed in-store, tracking the number of redeemed coupons can measure the ad’s direct impact on store visits.
• Sales Lift: Measuring any increase in sales during the ad campaign compared to a similar period without advertising can give you a clear indication of the campaign’s impact on store traffic and sales performance.

By tracking these KPIs against your specific campaign goals, you can measure performance, optimize spending, and refine your strategy to achieve better results.

Essential Components of an Instagram Ads Report

An effective Instagram Ads report summarizes key data points and insights demonstrating campaign performance to clients or stakeholders. Here’s how to break it down:

1. Overview 
Provide a brief campaign overview, including the objective, duration and a snapshot of the overall results.

Highlight the key findings and insights that show the campaign was successful or where it needs improvement. This section should be a quick reference so your audience isn’t overwhelmed with data.

2. Campaign Info
Include the campaign details such as total budget (ad spend), timeline (start and end dates) and ad types (e.g. photo, video, carousel, stories).

This gives context to the performance metrics and helps you understand the campaign scope and scale.

3. Audience Insights
Talk about the audience demographics, including age, gender, location, and the targeting strategy used—detailing the criteria such as interests, behaviors, and custom audiences. This section helps you evaluate if the campaign reached the intended audience and how well the targeting performed.

4. Performance Metrics
List key metrics such as reach, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPM), total conversions, conversion rate, cost per action (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS).

These metrics measure the campaign’s ability to engage users and get them to take desired actions (conversions).

5. Visual Data 
Include graphs, charts and screenshots of the ad creatives to show data trends and make the campaign performance easier to understand. Visuals are key to explaining complex information. They can highlight successes or identify areas for improvement better than text alone.

6. Comparative Analysis
Compare the current campaign results to historical data or industry benchmarks. This shows progress or regression over time and positions the campaign’s performance against broader industry standards so you can benchmark.

7. Recommendations and Next Steps
Based on the analysis, offer insights into what was learned about audience preferences, ad format performance and messaging impact.

Provide concrete recommendations for future campaigns suggesting changes to strategy such as budget allocation, targeting, creative or ad changes to improve future campaign performance.

8. Conclusion
Conclude the report by summarizing the campaign’s overall impact and how it aligned to the original objectives. Mention any strategic considerations or further research needed to inform future campaigns and decision-making.

Read more: What Should Be Included In A KPI Report: 4 Essentials

Enhance Your Instagram Ads Reporting with Swydo

Leveraging Swydo to automate your marketing reporting processes streamlines your reporting process and increases your team’s efficiency. Quickly create custom Instagram Ads reports for your clients or stakeholders and set up automated delivery schedules to meet required deadlines.

Swydo users save hours of manual reporting per week. This time gain means more time to analyze and optimize campaigns, create new strategies and get new clients.

Read more: Report Automation for Marketing Agencies: Streamlining Operations.

Instagram Ads Reporting Best Practices

Creating an Instagram Ads report requires a targeted approach to tracking and analyzing the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Here are some best practices to make your Instagram Ads reports actionable, informative and strategic:

1. Set Clear Objectives
Before you launch an ad campaign, set your goals. Whether you’re increasing brand awareness, generating leads or driving sales, your objectives will determine what KPIs to measure.

2. Measure the Right KPIs
You need to choose and measure relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to properly manage and measure the success of any Instagram Ads campaign. The KPIs you choose should match your campaign objectives. Once objectives are set, identify which KPIs will measure success. 

3. Use a Consistent Reporting Structure
Create a template for your reports to ensure consistency and ease of understanding over time. This should include sections for campaign objectives, spending, KPIs, visual data and conclusions. Consistency in reporting makes it easier to compare data over different periods or across different campaigns.

4. Incorporate Data Visualizations 
Graphs, charts and tables are necessary for quick data insights and trends. They give a visual summary of your campaign performance so clients or stakeholders can easily digest complex data and see the results at a glance.

5. Perform Regular and Timely Reporting
Decide on a reporting frequency that matches your campaign duration and objectives. Weekly, bi-weekly or monthly reports will keep all clients or stakeholders informed and allow for timely adjustments to the campaign.

6. Compare to Previous Performance or Industry Benchmarks
Include comparative analysis in your reports to show progress against past performance or industry benchmarks. This will help you identify trends, forecast future performance and understand the campaign in a bigger picture.

7. Provide Actionable Insights and Recommendations
A report shouldn’t just be a data dump but should also offer insights and recommendations. Based on the data, suggest what to optimize, such as ad spend, target audience or ad creatives.

8. Automate Data Collection
Use tools that collect and integrate data into your reports automatically. Automation saves time, reduces the chance of errors and lets you focus on analysis and strategic decision-making. Think about reporting and monitoring tools like Swydo.

9. Review and Adapt
Finally, always review your reporting process itself. As campaigns change and new tools and methods emerge, adjust your reporting to stay relevant and valuable.

Conclusion

Monitoring your Instagram ads campaigns is key to optimizing results and strategy. Regular reporting allows you to track campaign metrics closely, understand audience engagement, measure performance, and progress toward your objectives.

Choosing the right key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for measuring performance and making informed decisions. This will lead to continuous improvement, better campaign results, and digital marketing.

Swydo enhances the campaign optimization process with its user-friendly automated reporting and monitoring platform. Utilized by digital marketers in over 80 countries, Swydo delivers actionable insights into campaign performance. Try Swydo for yourself by requesting a demo or signing up for a free 14-day trial.