Using native tools like Facebook Ads Manager or LinkedIn Campaign Manager for your paid reporting needs can be an effective solution across your team. Still, it’s essential to recognize some of the limitations that may impact your workflows' operational efficiency.
Having your paid data siloed across these native tools makes it difficult for cross-channel analysis and isolates your paid and organic performance metrics. This can get increasingly fragmented and time-consuming when you have multiple ad accounts with data that needs to be individually exported before being combined.
Khoros Marketing Analytics and Ad Capabilities can save your team time by providing access to data from multiple social and ad accounts through one platform. Additionally, this data can be visualized and categorized in ways that can’t be done natively.
Let’s dive into some of the organic and paid reporting foundations.
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Defining Content Types: Posts vs. Ads & Promoted vs. Dark
There are two different content types in Khoros - posts, and ads. Both are sourced from different APIs and have unique widgets, exports, and filters.
Posts include organic data across social channels and paid metrics connected to Facebook promoted and dark posts.
The term promoted post references an organic post used to create an ad.
This is the same thing as Facebook and Instagram “boosted” posts. It’s also the post associated with LinkedIn Sponsored Ads.
Facebook promoted post metrics are the same metrics found within native Facebook Insights. In Khoros, as within Facebook Insights, some metrics such as reach and impressions are broken down into paid and organic metrics. Others such as engagement are not.
Due to API limitations, only the organic metrics connected to LinkedIn and Instagram promoted posts are contained within posts widgets and exports. The paid metrics associated with these promoted posts are only accessible via the ad account and Khoros ad widgets and exports. This differs from native insights in which paid and organic metrics are shown for promoted posts.
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Facebook dark posts are a bi-product of the Facebook API and contain paid metrics. However, it’s best to exclude them due to inconsistencies in what’s provided by Facebook.
The term dark ad references an ad made with new creative rather than existing organic content.
Posts widgets also contain LinkedIn dark posts connected to Direct Sponsored Ads. However, these posts contain no metrics. They will only appear if Direct Sponsored Ads are running through an authenticated ad account.
Ad widgets and exports contain data sourced directly from ad accounts. They include paid metrics connected to dark ads and promoted posts.
The following summarizes the content and metrics contained within each content-type:
| Content-Type | Inclusions |
| Post |
|
| Ad |
|
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Organic Reporting: Modifying post widgets to get needed results
Post widgets and exports are the only way to report on organic performance. However, they include Facebook paid metrics described above as well as LinkedIn dark posts with no metrics. The dark post filter can be used to remove Facebook dark posts. Once dark posts are removed, Facebook promoted posts and LinkedIn Dark posts remain.
Labels can be utilized to remove this content from a dashboard. You can either label this content and filter it out by selecting “include unlabeled” and all other labels but that one within the label filter. Or you can label all organic content and select “exclude unlabeled” and the label within the label filter. Content can be labeled retroactively in bulk within the calendar’s list view and may take up to 24 hours to be reflected within analytics.
As a reminder, when promoted posts are excluded, the organic metrics connected to them are also removed. Facebook includes paid and organic metrics with these posts and, in many cases, does not break the metrics apart.
There is a new content type filter available that identifies posts connected to ads within the platform. Based on this information, it classifies posts as promoted or non-promoted. While this filter can streamline isolating non-promoted (organic) content the ad account needs to be authenticated into the platform to do this. Future iterations of this filter will better identify promoted posts even if the related ad isn’t authenticated in the platform.
- Use Post Widgets or Exports
- Exclude Dark Posts
- Label Facebook promoted and LinkedIn Dark Posts OR organic content
- Filter dashboards or widgets accordingly
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Organic and Paid Reporting: Combining and filtering post and ad widgets effectively
Reporting on organic and paid metrics together require a combination of post and ad widgets and the authentication of an ad account.
As mentioned above, post widgets contain Facebook promoted posts with paid and organic metrics and the organic portion of Instagram and LinkedIn promoted posts. While ad widgets contain paid metrics connected to promoted posts and dark ads.
Including post widgets and their ad counterpart (e.g., post impression and ad impressions widget) provides a breakdown of paid and organic and an overall picture of performance. Filters can be applied to focus on specific social and ad accounts.
Additionally, ad filters such as campaign and ad set can be used to focus on specific ad types. For example, selecting campaigns connected to dark ads will cause those to be the only results that populate in the ads widgets. These filters can be applied at the dashboard, export or widget level. Learn more about ad filtering and reporting.
It’s worth noting some overlap between posts and ad widgets and exports when it comes to Facebook promoted posts metrics since they live in both places. The only way to remove this would be to exclude the campaign or ad set connected to those posts or exclude Facebook altogether.
- Include post metrics and their ad counterpart
- Filter to specific social and ad accounts
- Exclude dark posts
- Use ad filters to bring in results for specific ad types as needed
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Questions? Comments? Thoughts?
If you have any questions on the tips provided, please comment below and I’ll get back to you! Additionally, you can schedule a 1:1 product coaching session at your convenience!
