Read an Ads Manager report
Ads Manager will show you 350 metrics and happily let you drown in every one. The skill is ignoring almost all of them. The report is a pivot table you slice by columns, breakdowns, filters, and dates, and the dozen numbers that actually run a campaign (Results, Reach, Impressions, Cost per Result, CTR, CPC, Frequency, ROAS, plus per-objective metrics) fit on one hand.
Default columns
Results, Reach, Impressions, Cost per Result, Amount Spent, Frequency, CTR, CPC, and ROAS (Purchase) are the default columns. Custom column presets are saved per user, not per account, and can be set as the default.
ROAS is only meaningful if a Purchase event with a `value` parameter is firing via Pixel or CAPI. Without a value, ROAS shows zero or is missing.
Cost per Result depends on the optimization event the ad set is using. Comparing it across ad sets with different optimization events is apples-to-oranges.
Breakdowns
Three families: by Time (day, week, 2-week, month), by Delivery (age, gender, region, country, placement, device, platform position), and by Action (post reaction, video sound, dynamic creative element, conversion device).
Placement, Impression Device, and Platform Position breakdowns are marked 'Estimated', because Meta models these from a sample rather than reporting per-impression.
Filters and scheduled reports
Filters slice by status (active, paused), objective, delivery flag (Learning, Learning Limited, Off), date range, and many other dimensions.
Scheduled reports send daily, weekly, or monthly to a list of email addresses. Reports can also be shared via a read-only link.
Recent API restrictions
January 12, 2026: Meta removed 7-day-view and 28-day-view attribution windows from the Insights API. Historical-data caps were also tightened: 6 months for frequency breakdowns and 13 months for unique counts.
June 2025: combining Reach with several breakdowns (Placement, Impression Device, Platform Position, Publisher Platform, Action Type, Device Platform) is restricted to date ranges of 394 days or less.
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