How to Measure Performance of Your Optimized Ads

Happy Wednesday!

This week, we’re diving into a crucial topic that can make or break your ad campaigns: measuring the performance of your optimized ads.

Whether you’re advertising on Meta, TikTok, or any other platform, understanding how to effectively track and analyze your ad performance is essential for maximizing your return on ad spend (ROAS).

What you will learn today:

• How to identify what elements make your ads perform well

• How to keep your team aligned on a successful strategy

• Why long-term data can help you understand your customers

• Our step-by-step guide to launching, analyzing, and optimizing ads

• How to set up your creative system to effectively track your ad performance

• How to identify successful strategies and optimize your ads

And much more…

Bonus For You

If you run an e-commerce business and spend at least $5,000 a month on ads, we will write 3 creative concepts for your brand completely free.

We want to show you our creative process and why our clients love it.

Simply fill out this form and we will send you 3 concepts tailored to your brand.

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Why You Should Document Your Ad Performance

Keeping an ad journal is one of the most effective ways to systematically improve your ad performance over time.

Here’s why it’s an invaluable tool for any brand serious about optimizing their ads:

1. Identify What Works and What Doesn’t

An ad journal allows you to track the performance of each ad. By documenting the results of every variation and change, you can:

• Identify which elements (such as hooks, visuals, style, or calls to action) consistently lead to better ad performance and more conversions.

• Learn from underperforming ads and avoid repeating ineffective creative styles. Knowing what didn’t work is just as valuable as knowing what did.

2. Improve Team Alignment

An ad journal acts as a central repository of knowledge, ensuring that everyone on your team is on the same page:

• New team members can quickly get up to speed by reviewing the documented history of past ad campaigns, learning what has been tried and what has succeeded or failed.

• With a well-maintained ad journal, your team can consistently apply successful strategies across different angles and customer audiences.

3. Spot Patterns

Over time, your ad journal will reveal patterns and trends that can inform future optimizations. This long-term view helps you:

• See which types of content and creative elements resonate most with different segments of your audience.

• Recognize shifts in audience behavior or market conditions and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Testing and Optimizing Ads

Here’s our step-by-step approach to testing and optimizing ads:

1. Launch New Ads with Unique Variations

We start by developing new concepts, each with four unique variations. This allows us to test different elements and see what resonates best with our audience.

2. Wait for Reliable Data

After launching the ads, we wait for one to two weeks to gather enough data for analysis. Patience is key to obtaining reliable insights.

3. Analyze Business Metrics

Key metrics include CPA, ROAS, Conversion Rate, and Average Order Value (AOV). These indicators help us assess the overall performance of each ad.

4. Analyze Retention Metrics

Retention metrics such as:

• Hook Rate (percentage of viewers who watched at least 3 seconds)

• Hold Rate (percentage who watched at least 15 seconds)

• View percentages at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%

…give us a detailed view of where we might be losing our audience.

5. Optimize Based on Findings

Using the data, we create new optimized variations of the ads. This iterative process is where the ad journal becomes invaluable.

Setting Up Your Ad Documentation System

To effectively track your ad performance, you need a proper documentation system.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Choose a Platform: You can use spreadsheets, project management tools like Asana or ClickUp, or a marketing analytics platform like Notion. We prefer using Google Sheets for data analysis and Notion for documenting changes and iterations.

2. Track Key Columns: Include columns for ad name, date of changes, the specific changes made, metrics before and after the changes, and any notes or observations.

3. Record Changes: Specify any adjustments to the ad copy, visuals, or targeting

4. Track Metrics: Document performance data before and after each optimization.

5. Add Insights: Include observations, feedback, and ideas for future changes.

Analyzing Your Documentation

Regularly review your documentation to identify patterns and successful optimizations. This ongoing analysis will help you refine your strategy and improve your ad performance over time.

Here’s what to look for:

• What changes led to improvements? Document these insights to guide future ad creatives.

• Regularly update your documentation to track ongoing optimizations and their impact on performance.

Get Started

Now it’s your turn!

Create your ad documentation, analyze your data, take notes on what’s performing and what’s not, and make those optimizations.

Remember to keep track of the changes you’ve made and how they impacted the results.

Get Our Free Guide: Build A Solid Creative Strategy For Your Brand

We've put together this training to teach you how to create a high-performing creative strategy for your brand.

This is the same process we use to build creative strategies for hundreds of brands, which has resulted in top-performing UGC ads for our clients across various industries.

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How We Can Help You

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways we can help you…

1. If you’re looking for a creative partner who will handle your entire creative production, deliver winning ads every month, and help you scale, apply to work with us here. We have worked with brands like HexClad, BestSelf, Product Hunt, Morning Brew, and others.

2. Want us to train your internal team and implement all of our creative production systems and strategies in your business? Apply here and we will help you build an in-house team that can create hundreds of winning ads every month.

3. If you’re looking to take your ad performance to the next level and have a consistent stream of winning creative, but don’t want to hire anyone, we have created a program that teaches you our entire creative production process and everything we have learned over 3 years of creating tens of thousands of ads.