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What Analytics Does TikTok Ads Manager Provide?

Cody Schneider•

TikTok Ads are a huge opportunity for growth, but you need to know what's working to avoid burning through your budget. Tucked inside TikTok's platform is a powerful analytics suite that tells you exactly how your campaigns are performing. This guide will walk you through the key analytics baked into TikTok Ads Manager, helping you find the data that matters most for growing your business.

Your Starting Point: The Ads Manager Dashboard

When you first log in to TikTok Ads Manager, the main Dashboard gives you a bird's-eye view of your account's health. Think of it as your campaign control center. You can customize the date range in the top-right corner to see performance for today, yesterday, the last 7 days, or any custom period you choose.

The dashboard is made up of several key sections:

  • Overall Performance Trends: At the top, you'll find a snapshot of your most important metrics like Total Cost, Impressions, Clicks, and Conversions. You'll also see some calculated metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC), Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Cost per Action/Conversion (CPA). A handy line chart visualizes your spending and performance over your chosen time frame.

  • Status Bar: This section gives you a quick count of your active Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Ads, helping you understand what's currently running.

  • Campaign, Ad Group, and Ad Lists: Below the main trends, you'll see tables listing your top-performing campaigns, ad groups, and individual ads based on cost. This helps you immediately spot where your budget is going.

  • Demographic Breakdowns: You'll also find some quick visual charts breaking down performance by gender and operating system, which can offer initial insights into who is engaging most with your ads.

While the dashboard is great for a quick check-in, the real power lies in the 'Campaigns' page, where you can conduct a much deeper analysis.

Diving Deeper: Navigating Campaign Reporting

Click on the "Campaigns" tab in the top navigation bar to access the core reporting interface. This is where you'll spend most of your time analyzing and optimizing your efforts. The data here is organized into a hierarchy:

  1. Campaigns: The highest level, where you set your advertising objective (e.g., Traffic, Conversions, Video Views).

  2. Ad Groups: The second level, where you define your audience targeting, placements, budget, and bidding strategy.

  3. Ads: The innermost level, where your actual creative assets (videos and ad copy) live.

You can click through each level to see more granular data. For example, clicking on a campaign name will show you all the ad groups within it, and clicking on an ad group name will reveal the individual ads running inside it.

Must-Know TikTok Ad Metrics

Before you can analyze your reports, you need to understand what the numbers mean. TikTok offers a wide range of metrics, but here are the essentials that nearly every advertiser should be tracking:

General & Cost Metrics

  • Cost: How much you’ve spent on an ad, ad group, or campaign in total.

  • Impressions: The number of times your ad has been displayed on a screen. Note that a single user can see your ad multiple times.

  • Clicks: The number of times users have clicked anywhere on your ad.

  • CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click (Clicks ÷ Impressions). A higher CTR generally indicates a more engaging ad.

  • CPC (Cost Per Click): The average amount you paid for each click (Cost ÷ Clicks).

  • CPM (Cost Per Mille): The average cost for one thousand impressions (Cost ÷ Impressions × 1,000).

Conversion Metrics

  • Conversions: The number of desired actions completed as a result of your ad. This is defined by your campaign objective and could be a purchase, a lead form submission, an app install, or an "Add to Cart" event.

  • CVR (Conversion Rate): The percentage of clicks that resulted in a conversion (Conversions ÷ Clicks).

  • CPA (Cost Per Action/Conversion): The average amount you paid for each conversion (Cost ÷ Conversions). This is often the most important metric for advertisers focused on ROI.

Video Engagement Metrics

  • Paid 2s Video Views: The number of times your video was played for at least 2 seconds.

  • Paid 6s Video Views: The number of times your video was played for at least 6 seconds.

  • Average Watch Time: The average duration for which your video ad was played per single video view.

  • Video Completion Rate: The percentage of video plays that were watched to completion. It’s calculated as (Completed Video Plays ÷ Video Plays).

Uncovering Deeper Insights: Customizing and Filtering Your Data

The default reporting view is a good starting point, but the ability to customize columns, filter your data, and use breakdowns is what separates a novice from an expert analyst. This is how you move from simply viewing data to finding actionable insights.

Customize Your Data Columns

You're not stuck with the default metrics. Above the campaign table, you'll see a 'Columns' button. Clicking this opens a menu where you can check or uncheck dozens of different metrics to create a reporting view that perfectly matches your goals.

For example, if you're running ads for an e-commerce store, you might create a custom view that includes metrics like:

  • Total Purchases

  • Cost Per Purchase

  • Gross Merchandise Value (GMV)

  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

You can even save your custom column setup as a template to quickly access it later. This is incredibly useful for standardizing your weekly or monthly reporting.

Filter for Focus

Just as important as choosing your metrics is filtering your view to isolate specific segments of your data. The 'Filter' option lets you narrow down your data based on various criteria, such as:

  • Campaign Objective: Look only at your Lead Generation campaigns.

  • Campaign Status: Show only campaigns that are currently active.

  • Ad Group Level: Filter by placement, like showing only TikTok placements and excluding Pangle.

  • Time: Compare performance from this week versus last week.

Filtering removes the noise so you can focus on answering specific questions about your performance.

Break Down Your Data for Granular Insights

The real discovery happens when you use the 'Breakdown' feature. This lets you segment your results by a specific dimension, helping you identify your top-performing segments. Common and powerful breakdowns include:

  • Time: You can break down your data by Day of the Week or even Hour of the Day. This might reveal that your audience is most likely to convert on weekend evenings, giving you an opportunity to test dayparting schedules.

  • Demographics & Location: Break down your results by Age, Gender, or Country/Region. You might discover that while your initial targeting was broad, a specific age bracket is driving nearly all your conversions, allowing you to refine your targeting and improve your CPA.

  • Platform & Device: Use the 'Placement' breakdown to see how ads perform within the TikTok Feed versus other placements. You can also analyze results by Operating System (iOS vs. Android) or Connection Type (WiFi vs. 4G). For some products, you might find that iOS users convert at a much higher rate, influencing future budget allocation.

By layering filters and breakdowns, you can start answering highly specific questions, like "What was the Cost per Purchase for females aged 25-34 in California last month on iOS devices?" This is the level of detail that drives real optimization.

Bonus Feature: Creating Custom & Video Reports

Beyond the main campaign view, TikTok offers dedicated reporting tools under the 'Reporting' section.

Custom Reports

This powerful feature lets you build your own report from scratch by selecting a group of metrics (like Impressions and Cost) and segmenting them with one or more dimensions (like Campaign Name, Gender, and Age). You can generate charts and tables, then export the data as a CSV or Excel file. If you find yourself consistently building a specific report for your team, you can save the setup to run it again with a single click.

Video Reports

Because creative is so vital on TikTok, the platform provides dedicated video reports. Here you can analyze audience retention for specific video ads. A retention graph shows you exactly when viewers are dropping off. If you see a major dip after 3 seconds, that's a clear signal you need to make the first few moments more engaging on your next creative.

Final Thoughts

TikTok Ads Manager delivers a surprisingly comprehensive set of analytics to monitor, analyze, and optimize your ad campaigns. By moving beyond the main dashboard and mastering the use of custom columns, filters, and breakdowns, you can get the granular insights needed to improve performance and drive better results for your business.

Ultimately, analyzing your TikTok data is just one part of understanding your overall marketing performance. Juggling spreadsheets to combine TikTok ad spend with your Shopify sales data or Google Analytics traffic can quickly become a time-consuming chore. We built Graphed to solve this problem by connecting all your marketing and sales data sources in one place. Simply connect your TikTok Ads account and you can instantly build real-time dashboards using simple, natural language to see your full-funnel performance and make smarter decisions, faster.