How do I evaluate individual Meta and Google Ads ads?

What the “Ads” view shows

For each ad in a campaign, three kinds of figures sit side by side, and each column says which kind it is:

Below them is “Not attributable”: what the campaign received without an ID in the link, or with one that matches none of its ads. Above the table you see what share of visits carried a matching ID. If it is small, the parameter is missing from some of your ads. The “Campaign total” row shows the same figures as the campaign under “Attribution”.

The ad costs do not always add up to the campaign costs. What the platform assigns to no ad, for example with Performance Max or deleted ads, appears only in the campaign total, and so does a correction entered by hand. The view then states both totals.

Putting the ad ID into the link

1. 01Meta: in Ads Manager, open the ad, go to “URL parameters” under “Tracking” and add utm_content={{ad.id}}, for example utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign={{campaign.id}}&utm_content={{ad.id}}. Meta inserts the ad’s ID when it serves the ad.
2. 02Google Ads: in the account settings, enter utm_content={creative} under “Final URL suffix”, for example utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={creative}. Google inserts the ad’s ID on the click. At account level the suffix applies to all campaigns.
3. 03For Metrunio to find the campaign, utm_campaign names it as in Metrunio or gives its external ID. With {{campaign.id}} and {campaignid} the platform’s campaign ID is enough if the campaign carries it as its external ID; it then stays the same after a rename.

• The value must be exactly the ad’s ID, with nothing added. A name or your own label in utm_content attributes nothing. With {{ad.name}}, Meta also inserts the name the ad had when it was first published.
• Meta does not support the parameters for collection ads on Instagram. Changing the URL parameters can send an ad set back into the learning phase.
• At Google, a suffix on individual ads, keywords or sitelinks goes through review again after every change.
• Performance Max does not support {creative}. Visits from such campaigns are listed under “Not attributable”, and their costs in the campaign total.

Where the per-ad costs come from

From the cost fetch of a connected ad account, at the same rhythm and with the same look-back as the per-campaign costs. An ad belongs to the campaign its platform campaign is matched to; anything matched to no campaign creates no ad. If the per-ad fetch fails, the per-campaign costs are unaffected, and the view states the reason.

Through the server API, POST /v1/server/costs also accepts ad_ref, ad_name, ad_group_ref and ad_group_name per row when platform is meta or google_ads. The rows for one campaign and one day belong in the same request, because Metrunio adds them up to the campaign total. One request carries up to 500 rows. Without the creative level they only count towards the campaign, and the response says how many per-ad rows were left aside.

Limits

• The cost fetch has to know an ad before a visit can be attributed to it. Visits through a new ad before its first fetch stay without an ad.
• Meta does not report deleted ads in the per-ad fetch.
• Preview images exist at Meta for ads with an image or video and at Google Ads only for image ads. Metrunio passes them through and holds them in memory for no more than one hour, without storing them permanently; your browser loads nothing from Meta or Google. For an ad that has not been served for a while, the image may be missing.
• TikTok, LinkedIn and Microsoft Advertising are not included in this version.