How to View Facebook Ad Campaign

Checking on your Facebook Ad campaigns is the first step to knowing if your marketing budget is actually working. Instead of navigating endless menus, this guide will show you exactly how to view your campaigns and understand the data you see. We’ll walk through finding your ads in Facebook Ads Manager, customizing your view to see the metrics that matter, and what those numbers actually mean for your business.

Finding Your Campaigns in Facebook Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager is the central hub for all your advertising activity on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. It's where you create, manage, and, most importantly, view all your campaign performance data. Here’s how to navigate it.

Step-by-Step: Navigate to Your Campaign List

1. Go to Ads Manager: Start by heading to facebook.com/adsmanager. You may need to select the correct ad account from the dropdown menu in the top left if you manage more than one.
2. The Campaigns Tab: The Ads Manager opens on the "Campaigns" tab by default. This is your main dashboard, displaying a high-level list of all the campaigns you've created.
3. Understand the Structure: Facebook ads are organized in a hierarchy:
4. Filter and Search to Find Specific Campaigns: If you have many campaigns running, the view can get crowded. Use the search and filter tools located just above your campaign list to narrow down your search. You can filter by:

Understanding the Ads Manager Dashboard

Once you've found your campaign, the next step is to understand the wall of numbers you're seeing. The dashboard is a table with rows for each campaign and columns for different performance metrics. Seeing the right metrics is crucial for an accurate view of performance.

Customizing Your View with Performance Columns

The default columns are helpful, but you’ll want to customize them to match your campaign goals. Click the “Columns” dropdown menu above the campaign results table.

• Default Presets: Facebook provides several useful presets. For example, the "Performance and Clicks" setup will show you results, reach, cost per result, CTR, and CPC. The "Engagement" preset focuses on post reactions, comments, and shares.
• Customize Columns: The true power lies in selecting "Customize Columns...". This opens a window where you can add, remove, and reorder hundreds of available metrics. You can look through categories or search for specific metrics like "ROAS" (Return on Ad Spend) or "Video Plays."
• Save Your Custom Set: Once you've created a view you like, check the "Save as preset" box at the bottom and give it a name like "E-commerce KPI View" or "Lead Gen View." This saves you from having to set it up every time you log in.

Key Metrics to Analyze for Campaign Performance

Simply viewing your campaign doesn't tell you much if you don't know what the metrics mean. Here are the most important ones to analyze, broken down by what they tell you about your performance.

Performance & Conversion Metrics

These metrics tell you if your ads are achieving your main business objective.

• Results: This column shows the primary actions your campaign is optimized for. If your objective is "Traffic," a result is a link click. If your objective is "Sales," a result is a purchase.
• Cost per Result (CPR): How much are you paying for each of those results? Calculated as Total Amount Spent / Number of Results. A low CPR is what you're aiming for, as it indicates efficiency. For example, if you spent $100 and got 10 leads, your CPR is $10.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): For e-commerce businesses, this is the most critical metric. It tells you how much revenue you're generating for every dollar you spend on ads. Calculated as Website Purchase Revenue / Amount Spent. A ROAS of 3.5x means you made $3.50 in revenue for every $1 spent in ads.

Audience Engagement & Click Metrics

These metrics help you understand if your targeting and creative are resonating with your audience.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) (Link): The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked the link in it. It's calculated as (Link Clicks / Impressions) x 100. A high CTR suggests your ad creative and messaging are compelling and relevant to your target audience. A low CTR might mean your creative isn't grabbing attention or your targeting is off.
• Cost per Click (CPC) (Link): How much you pay every time someone clicks the link in your ad. While CTR shows relevance, CPC indicates an intersection of ad quality, competition, and targeting.

Delivery Metrics

These metrics provide context on how your ads are being delivered and how often people are seeing them.

• Impressions: The total number of times your ad was displayed on a screen. Note that this is not unique, one person can see the ad multiple times.
• Reach: The number of unique people who saw your ad at least once. Reach will almost always be lower than impressions.
• Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your ad, calculated as Impressions / Reach. This is vital for managing "ad fatigue." If your frequency gets too high (say, above 5-7 in a short period), your ad's performance may decline because the same audience is seeing it too many times and tuning it out.

Analyzing with Breakdowns

For an even more detailed campaign view, use the "Breakdown" dropdown. This allows you to split your campaign results by dimension, helping you identify top-performing segments. Common breakdowns include:

• By Delivery: Age, Gender, Location, Platform (Facebook vs. Instagram), Placement (Feed vs. Stories).
• By Time: Day, Week, or Month, to spot trends in performance.

For example, using the "Age" breakdown might reveal that your CPR is much lower for the 25-34 demographic than any other group, giving you an insight to double down on what's working.

Final Thoughts

Viewing your Facebook ad campaigns in Ads Manager gives you the raw data you need to assess performance. By customizing your columns, analyzing core metrics like Cost per Result and ROAS, and using breakdowns to dig deeper, you can move from reactive reporting to proactive optimization that drives real growth for your business.

While Ads Manager is fantastic for analyzing Facebook campaign data, it often creates isolated insight. Seeing campaign ROAS is great, but combining it with live website traffic from Google Analytics or actual sales funnels from your CRM in the same view is much harder. With tools like Graphed, we connect directly to all your advertising, sales, and analytics platforms. This allows us to handle the manual work for you, instantly building live dashboards with simple prompts so you can get a single, unified view of your business performance without wrestling with CSVs.