How to Read Your Own Ad Numbers Without a Marketing Degree

You get a report every month. Sometimes it’s a PDF; other times you log in to a dashboard. Either way, you see a bunch of columns: impressions, reach, CPM, CTR, engagements, link clicks, results. Most business owners just check whether the spend matches the invoice, look at the biggest number, and move on.

The biggest number on the report is usually the least helpful.

Campaign reports are made for the person managing the ads, who needs all those columns to make changes. But if you’re the one paying, you only need three numbers. Each one answers a simple question, and together they show if your money is working.

First: Reach, or how many people saw your ad

Most reports highlight impressions, which is just the total times your ad showed up on a screen. If one person sees it eight times, that’s eight impressions. Reach, on the other hand, counts people. So, a report might show 40,000 impressions but only 6,000 reach. Both are correct, but only reach tells you how many potential customers saw your ad.

Compare your reach to the size of your service area. If your business serves several counties, a reach of 900 means your campaign is just getting started.

Next, divide impressions by reach. This gives you frequency, or how many times the average person saw your ad. People often need to see something a few times before it sticks, so a low frequency isn’t always good. But if the same few thousand people have seen your ad 15 or 20 times, more spending just repeats the message instead of reaching new customers.

Second: Results, or what people did after seeing your ad

Every campaign aims for a specific action, like a phone call, a form submission, a message, a request for directions, or a visit to a certain page. The report tracks these under headings like "results" or "conversions."

Be careful with this number, because what counts as a result depends on how the campaign was set up. A result might be a booked appointment, or it could just be someone who watched a few seconds of a video. Both show up in the same column. The best question to ask is: what counts as a result in this report?

If the result means a customer is moving closer to your business, that number matters. If it’s just likes, reactions, or views, it only measures attention, which isn’t the same as business.

Treat clicks the same way. A click only counts as a result if that was your goal. If you wanted phone calls, and you got a thousand clicks but only four calls, then your report is really about those four calls.

Third: Cost per result, or how much each action cost you

Take your total spend and divide it by the number of results. For example, if you spent $600 and got 30 phone calls, that’s $20 per call.

This number lets you compare results month to month, ad to ad, or channel to channel, even with different budgets. Whether $20 per call is good depends on your business. For a roofer, one job from ten calls might pay for the whole month, so it’s a great deal. For a business with a $12 average sale, it’s not. The report won’t make that decision for you, but it gives you the number you need.

What about all the other numbers on the report?

Metrics like click-through rate, cost per thousand impressions, and engagement rate are used to diagnose what’s happening. When one of your three main numbers changes, these metrics help the campaign manager figure out why. They’re useful to include, but they don’t answer the question, "is this working?"

You can use these same three questions for print ads too

A magazine ad doesn’t have a dashboard, but you can still ask the same questions. Circulation is its reach: the number of households that get the magazine. To track results, you might use a special offer only in that ad, a unique phone number, or simply ask new customers how they heard about you and write it down. You calculate cost per result the same way.

Using the same three questions for both print and digital is the only fair way to compare them. Usually, you’ll see they serve different purposes. Print puts your business in front of people who weren’t looking for you yet. Digital often reaches people who are closer to taking action. Looking at both sets of numbers shows how each supports the other.

Three questions to ask about your next report

No matter where your report comes from, these three questions will help you understand it: How many people did we reach? What counts as a result in this report? What did each result cost, and how does that compare to last month?

If you get clear answers, it means someone who understands the campaign's purpose is managing it. If the answers change every month or are full of jargon without real numbers, that tells you something as well.

If you’re planning a campaign and want a realistic idea of what to expect before you spend, our Campaign Estimator is a great place to start.