Top Ads
Which individual ads earned their spend, and what did the creative actually look like?
This is the only screen in the app where a number and the creative that produced it are one click apart.
So it is where you stop arguing about which ad is the problem and go and look at it.
The tables
Your budget is never spread evenly. A few ads hold most of it, and the fastest money on this page is in those few rows.
Top Performing Ads
One weak row near the top of this list costs you more than ten weak rows at the bottom. Read down from the top and stop early.
One row = one ad, across every campaign the filters currently allow.
Columns: ROASROASRevenue earned for every ad dollar spent.4 or more is healthy · CPACPAWhat one order costs you to win through ads. · SpendSpendWatch it to control budget and back the winners. · CPMCPMWhat it costs to reach a thousand people. · CTR (Link)CTR (Link)How enticing your ad is to the people who see it.1.5% or more is healthy · CPC (Link)CPC (Link)The cost of each site visit from Meta. · FrequencyFrequencyA read on ad fatigue in your audience.Under 2 is healthy · ReachReachYour true audience size; compare with frequency for saturation. · Link clicksLink clicksTraffic Meta is sending; judge it by the sales it converts. — each with a % △ beside it against the previous period.
Opens sorted by Spend, highest first. The header reads Top Performing Ads [click an ad for preview], and that instruction is the point of the page.
How to scan it — where the money is
- Sort by Spend, highest first.
- Look across at ROAS and CPA on the top three rows.
- The row that matters: a top-three spender with ROAS below the total row. Three ads usually hold most of the budget, so one weak row here outweighs ten weak rows further down.
How to scan it — what is wearing out
- Sort by Frequency, highest first.
- Look across at CTR (Link) and the
% △beside it. - The row that matters: high frequency with CTR (Link) falling against last period. The ad still works, the audience has finished with it.
Clicking a row opens a preview panel with the ad as it renders, its name, a Preview in multiple devices: link, and the Destination URL: the ad actually points at.
Check the destination before you judge the ad. A strong CTR (Link) with a weak ROAS is often an ad pointing at a collection page, a sold-out variant, or last season's landing page.
Filters
If this list looks unexpectedly short, a choice you made ten minutes ago on another Meta page is still narrowing it.
The Campaign: All and Ad Set: All bar is shared with every Meta page, and your choice survives navigating away and reloading. That is the first thing to check.
The ad-set list only becomes usable once exactly one campaign is selected.
The date range applies. The app's country, customer type and source filters do not reach Meta pages.
Sorting a column re-orders the ads on this list. Below a hundred rows it happens instantly in the browser; above that the app asks the server again, so the table blanks for a moment.
There is also a chart/table switch, a metric picker of up to three measures, a Compare tick box and an Export button.
Watch out for
This is a page of ads, not every ad. Meta returns one page of results and the app orders that. Sorting by CTR (Link) gives you the best CTR (Link) on this list — not the best in the account. An ad that never entered the list cannot be sorted into it.
The total row covers more than the rows. It is Meta's own total for your dates and filters, so it includes spend from ads that did not make the list. The column will not add up to it, and that is expected.
Frequency and Reach count people, not events. They cannot be added down the column, and the total row is Meta's unique count, not a sum.
An ad name is not an ad. Duplicated ads across ad sets appear as separate rows with the same name. Use the preview to confirm two rows are the same creative before merging them in your head.
Do this first
Sort by Spend, open the top row, and read the Destination URL: in the preview.
The most expensive ad in your account pointing at the wrong page is the cheapest problem you will fix this month.
See yoursYour ads ranked by spend, with the creative one click away. The Meta section opens on Overview — Top Ads sits directly under it.
Open Meta →