Why use Ads Explorer?
The Ads Explorer report is a powerful tool designed to optimize your Meta ad campaign management. It offers advanced capabilities that can significantly improve how you manage Meta ad campaigns ⚡️
One of its key features is the ability to set advanced metric conditions similar to Birch's automated rules. This allows for precise threshold settings and automated monitoring, ensuring you can take corrective action before performance declines.
You’ll also gain instant access to insightful, preconfigured templates which save your time by eliminating the need for manual analysis.
Integration with Automated rules: you will be able to quickly create a rule based on the Individual Ads reports data by simply clicking New Rule button. Apart from that, when creating a rule on the Ads level, the option of previewing matching ads will also be available to you!
How to create a report using a template?
Flexible templates is a quick start to your campaign insights. Creating a report using one of the templates in Ads Explorer is straightforward. Click on + New report, and you will see 3 options: Individual ads, Top assets, Custom groups:
Let's take a closer look at each report type to learn more on what they offer👇🏻
Individual ads 🖼️
With this type of reports, you can quickly analyze performance at the individual ad level:
Here are the following options available inside this group of templates:
Top Ads: Highlights ads from the past week with above-average CTR and over 1,000 impressions.
Best Video Ads: Surfaces high-performing video creatives that meet at least one of the following: CTR > 3%, Hook Rate > 20%, Hold Rate > 10%, or Conversion Rate > 3%.
Fatigued Ads: Identifies ads with Frequency > 2 and a CTR drop of 10%+ week-over-week, helping catch creative fatigue early.
Downtrend: Flags ads with declining Website Purchases and Conversion Rates over the last 14 days.
Top assets 🎨
This one offers grouping and comparing ads based on creatives or post IDs. This report aggregates metrics across all ads using the same asset, helping you identify:
Last Week’s Top Performing Creatives, which highlights your best-performing images, videos, and carousels from the past 7 days by matching identical assets across campaigns.
Last Week’s Best Page Posts that shows which Meta Page posts drove the most revenue, grouping identical posts by Post ID across campaigns and ad accounts.
Both reports offer a high-level view with the option to drill down into detailed performance. It’s perfect for optimizing your creative strategy by showing which visuals or videos resonate best across campaigns and audiences.
Custom Groups 🖼️🖼️🖼️
The Custom Groups type of report lets you organize and analyze ads based on your own naming conventions, making it easy to track creative and performance trends across specific themes - they are driven by how you name and organize your assets:
Fatigued Creatives in Concepts: Flags underperforming creatives within tagged concepts (e.g., “UGC,” “Lifestyle”) to help you refresh content in time.
Winning Ads in Creative Concepts: Identifies top-performing ads within each creative concept for faster scaling.
Ad Performance by Mobile Platforms: Groups and analyzes ads by mobile placements and devices using tags in ad names.
Ad Performance by Platform and Placement: Compares results across platforms and placements for better targeting decisions.
Campaign Performance by Objective & Funnel: Breaks down campaign performance by objectives and funnel stages based on campaign name tags.
Best Video Formats: Evaluates which video formats (e.g., duration, aspect ratio) work best with your audience.
Compare Creative Variations: Analyzes different creative elements and variations using custom tags to find high-performing combinations.
💡 All templates are fully customizable by KPIs and time ranges, making them flexible for different campaign goals. To create a report using one of the templates, just choose one and click Use this template button.
Watch this video to see how grouping works and explore a real use case:
How to create a report from scratch?
1. Click + Create report -> + Create from scratch -> Name the report, and a form with default settings will appear, featuring a 14-day timeframe, the highest spend ad account, and basic Spend metric.
2. Customize your report: You can select multiple ad accounts (up to 5), set filters, adjust the metrics (up to 10), and choose from Meta's list of available metrics, including custom metrics (as well as based on Google Sheets), and metrics from Hyros, Wicked reports, and AppsFlyer.
3. Select timeframe and metrics in the table: You can select a single timeframe for the report or compare it with another time period. The list of available timeframes is the same as in Automated Rules.
❗️Note: Custom timeframes are not available.
In the metrics, there is a checkbox Include metrics from the conditions (activated by default)
If checkbox is enabled: All metrics from complex condition will be automatically added to the report. You cannot delete or change them to another metric in the table.
If checkbox is disabled: Metrics from complex condition aren’t included in the report, only the ones you selected.
6. Set your report to be updated on a schedule:
and enable the Update report on schedule option:
5. Configure attribution settings: Adjust your attribution settings to ensure they align with your reporting goals. Go to the Settings:
and set the attribution window that you want to be used for performance reporting:
6. Review your results: Once clicking on "Generate report" button, the report will generate in table view, displaying ad previews, ad elements (ad name, primary text, headline, description, landing page, CTA), links to Ads Manager, creative types, selected metrics, and performance data for up to two periods.
Integration with Automated rules
Based on Individual ads report you can easily create a new rule on Ad level with just a click. The ad accounts, filters, conditions will be carried over from the report. Once the rule is created, you can adjust its settings and set it live.
Additionally, when setting up rules on the ad level, you'll have the option to preview matching ads before activating the rule by clicking on Check matching ads button, giving you more control and flexibility without immediately going live. A new Individual ads Ads Explorer report will be created, automatically populating the form with the filters and metric conditions from the rule.
Saving, editing, and applying settings
Reports can be saved and edited with customizable settings, including metrics, conditions, and filters. If you modify a preset report, the system will prompt you to duplicate it for further customization. After making changes, the “Save and Apply” function ensures that both your settings and the latest data are processed.
To prevent accidental data loss, a warning will appear if you try to leave a report with unsaved changes, ensuring a smooth and error-free workflow.
To initiate an update of your report data, just click Save and Apply or Refresh button.
When ad accounts are disconnected, the associated reports are removed until a new connection is established. Preset reports are automatically regenerated upon reconnection of an account, ensuring continuous monitoring.
Summary
By leveraging Ads Explorer’s advanced metric conditions and preconfigured reports, you can take a proactive approach to managing your ad campaigns. This not only helps you optimize your strategies but also saves you time by eliminating the need for manual data analysis.
Try out this feature and let us know your thoughts! For any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out via the chat bubble or email us at support@bir.ch. We look forward to hearing from you!