Top 10 TikTok Ads Metrics For PPC Specialists in 2024 | Coupler.io Blog (2024)

Whether you’re a seasoned performance marketer or just starting with paid advertising, TikTok Ads should be in your portfolio due to the number of people you can reach.

One thing paid advertising on social media platforms has in common is that they all need to be measured and continuously improved to achieve the best results.

Let’s discuss the main TikTok Ads metrics you should be watching, why they are important, what are the industry averages and how to track them.

Top 10 TikTok Ads metrics and KPIs to track in 2024

When you first open TikTok Ads manager, you will see a variety of data already available (once your TikTok ad campaigns are running). How do you know which metrics and KPIs matter and how can they help you improve your ads performance?

If you feel lost with all this data, we’ve compiled a short list of the 10 most important TikTok Ads metrics you should regularly track when running paid ads. These will help you understand how your ad campaigns are performing.

Below is a quick view of these TikTok Ads metrics. We’ll go over each of these in more detail, explaining why each matters, where to find them, and how they fit into the big picture.

Now that you have the quick overview, let’s look into each metric to understand them better. If you want to jump straight into how to track these, we cover this in the next section. Feel free to skip right to it.

We’ll start with metrics you can find inside the TikTok Ads Manager Dashboard.

Ad Impressions

Overview

TikTok ad impressions measure the total number of times your ad was shown to TikTok users. You need to keep in mind that these are not unique users. A new impression will count every time a user sees your ad, including when it’s the same user.

Why it’s important

Ad impressions give you insights into your ad exposure and will vary based on your audience size.

There are two numbers you need to look at here – reach and frequency.

Reach tells you how many users have seen your ad and frequency will tell you how often the same user has seen it.

For example, let’s say 10 unique users see your ad once. This means your ad reach is 10. But when 5 of them see it twice, ad frequency is no longer once per user, so your reach is going to be 15. This will translate into 20 total impressions.

Reach is important especially when you are looking to drive brand awareness, but you should always be mindful of your ads frequency. For example, if you are targetting a small audience, seeing the same ad too many times might annoy the user and hurt your brand image.

How to calculate

You won’t have to track these individually as TikTok automatically calculates and displays total ad impressions in your ads manager dashboard.

Benchmark

If your campaign is not bringing in the results you’d hoped for, you might want to tweak your audience if impressions are low. However, before doing that, consider looking at other TikTok Ads metrics to fully understand the effectiveness of your campaigns and where the problem might be. Low impressions don’t necessarily equal a wrong audience.

Clicks (Destination)

Overview

You should be looking at impressions in conjunction with clicks. More specifically, destination clicks.

Ad clicks to a specific destination measure the number of times a user has clicked on your ad and was redirected to a desired destination. This can be a website, app, or app store.

Why it’s important

The clicks (Destination) metric is like a filtered view of all clicks as it doesn’t include other clicks like comments or likes your ads get.

The main thing this TikTok Ads metric tells you is how well your message is resonating with your target audience. If your campaigns are getting enough impressions but low clicks, you either have an audience mismatch problem or your videos are not engaging enough.

Note that the number of clicks is not the same as conversions.

If you’re running TikTok campaigns to your e-commerce store, clicks will count towards your website traffic, not sales. This means you should also be looking at conversions, which we’ll get to in a bit.

How to calculate

You won’t have to calculate these on your own. You can easily find this metric inside your TikTok Ads manager dashboard.

Benchmark

When it comes to Clicks (Destination) metric there isn’t a specific benchmark that will tell you if your ads are performing well. It all comes down to how big your target audience is and how engaging your videos are. If your audience is small, a low number of clicks doesn’t indicate there’s a problem. Instead, you should focus on your CTR.

CTR (Click-Through Rate-Destination)

Overview

Click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of users who click on your ad after seeing it, no matter the call to action. In other words, it’s a good indicator of your engagement rate and ad effectiveness.

Why it’s important

Before looking into conversions to understand the effectiveness of your TikTok Ads, it’s important to analyze your CTR. This gives you a direct indication of how engaging your content is and how well your message resonates with your audience.

Without people clicking through and landing on your website, sales can’t happen.

If your CTR is too low, try testing shorter videos, punchier messages, and different CTA’s.

How to calculate

To calculate CTR you need to divide the number of clicks by the total impressions and multiply the result by 100.

Benchmark

The average CTR should be around 0.84%, but this will depend on your niche and call to action too.

A brand awareness campaign encouraging people to discover more about a brand will have a higher CTR compared to a sales campaign that prompts people to buy a product.

Instead of focusing on average benchmarks for this metric, you should try to create your own and always aim to improve that. You can do this by trying different video types, lengths, and copy to understand what resonates best with your target audience.

CVR (Conversion Rate)

Overview

An important TikTok Ads metric to track when advertising on social media is the conversion rate.

In the TikTok Ads account, you will find this under CVR.

Conversion rate, or CVR, measures the percentage of users who click on your ad and complete a desired action (purchase, form completion, app event, etc). This metric tells you how effectively your ad brings the intended results.

Why it’s important

Getting conversions is the ultimate goal for many businesses. Unless you’re trying to grow your brand with awareness campaigns, a good conversion rate should be one of your primary metrics to track.

How to calculate

To calculate CVR divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks and multiply the result by 100.

Benchmark

A good CVR should be between 2 and 5% depending on your niche and the conversion event you are looking to drive.

When your CVR is low, make sure you are targeting the right audience with the right message. This means analyzing TikTok Ads metrics like impressions and clicks first, trying to understand if your ad videos are reaching enough people and generating interest.

It’s also important to check there are no technical issues blocking users from completing an action. There’s nothing worse than getting people to a product’s landing page where the Buy button isn’t clickable or the page is not even loading.

Impressions, clicks, conversions, and the click-through rate metrics will help you measure your ad campaign performance overall.

Next, we’ll look into the most important metrics for measuring your ad campaign budget allocation. These metrics will help you understand if TikTok Ads should be a part of your marketing strategy or not. You should always be comparing your paid ad results across different social media platforms to understand which is the most profitable one.

More on that a bit later. First, let’s go over the main TikTok Ads metrics that tell you how your ad budget is being spent. Note that based on your bid strategy you will be looking mainly at CPC, CPV, CPA, or CPM.

CPC (Cost per Click – Destination)

Overview

Cost per click, CPC in short, measures the amount you have to pay when someone clicks on your ads.

Why it’s important

Similar to clicks, CPC doesn’t directly tell you how much you are paying to make a sale. This doesn’t mean it’s not an important metric. Considering not all clicks translate into sales, you need to be mindful of how much you are spending to drive results.

How to calculate

To calculate CPC you need to divide the total campaign ad spend by the number of clicks.

Benchmark

A good CPC for TikTok marketing ads should be between $0.25-$4.

Note that CPC is a metric that will vary based on your bidding strategy and competition. You can read more about TikTok’s bid strategy options here. You should test different approaches to maximize this metric but keep in mind that the more relevant your videos are to your target audience, the better your CPC should get.

CPV (Cost per View)

Overview

Since TikTok is a video-only social media platform, cost per view, CPV in short, is a relevant metric to track when optimizing your marketing paid campaigns.

CPV measures the average cost you pay when a user views your video.

Why it’s important

CPV is lower than CPC in general. That makes it a great metric for brand awareness and reach campaigns when your goal isn’t necessarily to drive sales.

You can bid for 6-second video views or 2-second video views. TikTok recommends you bid $0.01 or higher to maximize your campaign performance.

How to calculate

To calculate CPV you need to divide the total cost of your ad campaign by the number of views it gets.

Benchmark

There isn’t an industry benchmark for CPV. What you pay will depend on your bid and the competition. We recommend you bid between $0.10-$0.30.

To optimize this metric you should focus on creative and engaging videos that stand out while showcasing your brand and delivering an impactful message fast.

CPA (Cost per action)

Overview

Cost per action, CPA in short, measures the average cost you pay for a specific action a user takes after viewing your ad. This can be a purchase, a form completion, a newsletter sign-up, or other conversion action.

How to calculate

To calculate CPA, divide the ad spend by the total number of conversions or installs.

Benchmark

It’s hard to set a benchmark for CPA as it will vary a lot based on the industry and the type of conversion you are looking to drive.

In general, you should always be looking to lower this by optimizing your landing pages as well as targetting, provided that your video is driving a good CTR.

CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions)

Overview

Similar to CPC and CPA, CPM should be tracked when you are optimizing for impressions to maximize reach.

CPM measures how much it costs you to display your ad in front of 1000 users.

Why it’s important

When you are looking to drive brand awareness, CPM bidding is recommended. You will pay based on how many times your ad is displayed, irrespective of clicks or engagement.

This will optimize the total cost while getting your videos in front of as many users as possible.

How to calculate

To calculate your CPM rate, you need to divide the total ad spend by the total number of impressions and multiply it by 1000.

Benchmark

The average CPM on TikTok is $9.16. TikTok advertising prices start at $0.50 CPM with a minimum budget of $500 per campaign, so you won’t be able to bid less than that.

Optimising CPM comes down to increasing the relevance of your videos and messaging for the target audience.

Ad Spend and Total Cost

Overview

Ad spend is the monetary value of an ad, while total cost measures how much your campaigns cost you in total.

You can track these in your main TikTok ad manager dashboard.

Why it’s important

How much you spend will depend on your budget. Comparing results across different platforms will help you make better decisions about where your marketing budgets should be allocated.

How to calculate

Ad spend is not a metric you need to calculate. The cost of each campaign is displayed in your Ad manager.

Benchmark

There isn’t an ideal amount of money you should be spending on TikTok Ads. This will depend on your industry, your budget, and where you choose to invest it.

When it comes to allocating budget across your campaigns, you should not look at Ad spend only but calculate your ROAS.

ROAS (Return on ad spend)

Overview

Return on ad spend, ROAS in short, is the primary metric that tells you how cost-effective your paid advertising campaigns are.

Why it’s important

ROAS is like the holy grail of every PPC performance marketer. It’s the number one metric that should guide you.

What’s the point of running ads that drive impressions, clicks, or even conversions if it costs you more than the sales you’re generating?

Calculating ROAS is important as it will help you decide which campaigns to kill and which ones need optimization. It will also give you an idea of what’s working well, so you can replicate that in future campaigns.

How to calculate

You can’t find ROAS inside your TikTok account, you will have to keep track of it separately.

To calculate ROAS, you need to take the total revenue generated by your TikTok Ads and divide it by the Total cost of your ads.

Benchmark

A good ROAS ratio is 3:1 or higher, meaning your paid marketing campaign on TikTok is considered efficient when it’s generating 3 times the amount invested.

How to measure and track TikTok Ads performance metrics?

We’ve covered the top TikTok metrics you should be looking at. But how do you get to track and measure them?

All social media platforms offer their native analytics, but using them is not always the best.

When you are running paid ads on different channels, the main thing you want to know is which one is the most efficient. That is hard to do without custom reporting.

Let’s look into how you can better track and measure your TikTok Ads performance metrics.

TikTok Ads metrics reporting using PPC performance dashboards

A performance reporting dashboard can be truly eye-opening. Not only does it give you real-time insights into how your paid ads are performing, but it also helps you compare numbers across multiple platforms in one view.

For example, on a PPC multi-channel dashboard by Coupler.io you can easily have access to the KPIs of the campaign run in TikTok Ads, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and other platforms. So, you will see whether TikTok Ads CPM is lower than FB Ads CPM and so on.

Having this data without having to switch between accounts will help you make better decisions on how to invest your advertising budget more efficiently. You can easily track your overall ad spend, impressions, clicks, and cost metrics like CTR, CPM, and CPC.

To start using this free dashboard template, complete the following steps:

• Follow this link to create a Coupler.io account for free and an automated data connector to Looker Studio. If you are already a Coupler.io user, then you’ll be directed right to the importer.
• Connect the TikTok Ads account and other ad sources, if needed, one by one following the setup wizard’s instructions. You can ignore channels where you don’t run ads.

• Click Proceed to preview the data to be populated in the report. No actions are needed here.

• Click Proceed and follow the in-app instructions to authorize the connector and create a data source in Looker Studio.

• The final click should be on the Create report button.

In a moment, you will be redirected to the copy of the PPC report with your data. The dashboard will be updated automatically every day by default. If you want to have a more frequent data refresh, go back to Coupler.io and tweak the schedule to your liking. Every 15-minute refresh will make your dashboard live!

Bookmark your new PPC dashboard to always have the performance of your ad campaigns at your fingertips.

Thanks to the built-in Coupler.io connector, it will take up to 2 minutes to connect your TikTok Ads account to the dashboard to track all the metrics we discussed in this article in one view and improve your ROAS.

TikTok Ads metrics analytics from inside the TikTok Ads manager

If you are only running TikTok Ads, the main analytics provided by the app should be more than enough for you.

You will be able to see an overview of how your budget is being allocated and trends over time for the main metrics we covered in this article.

The main TikTok Ads manager dashboard will give you an overview of your account, while the analytics section lets you dig deeper into the data.

You can create custom reports using pivot tables, check your attribution analytics, and more.

For proper attribution, make sure your conversion events are properly set.

How to turn TikTok Ads data into actionable insights?

It’s always good practice to start with one platform and test different campaigns before scaling your budget or looking into different platforms. For some industries, the main demographics can’t be reached on all social media platforms.

This article should have provided you with relevant insights into the different TikTok Ads metrics and how they are relevant, as well as how to track them.

Ultimately, setting up proper real-time reporting is the best way to stay on top of your budget and optimize your campaigns for maximum efficiency. As an option, you can consider the provided PPC dashboard or connect TikTokAds to Looker Studio and tailor a custom report yourself. Good luck!

Borys Vasylchuk

Performance Marketing Expert at Coupler.io with 6+ years of experience in creating, managing, and optimizing PPC campaigns in B2B SaaS products. Before Coupler.io, I worked in SE Ranking and Loio, which definitely contributed to developing my marketing skills. I embrace a full-stack user acquisition approach, including running ads, designing ad creatives, optimizing landing page experience, and measuring analytics.