What should be focused on in a FB Ads Account review?

Question

When doing Facebook mobile ads account assessment / review, what are the first things you are looking at? (if you skip usual suspects like CPM, CPI, CPA).

Answer 1

This is our high level checklist for the first things we look at:

-> Audiences(how many audiences, which audiences, how are they structured within campaigns, which geos etc.). Essentially we look for whether this is carefully thought through - and if this covers audiences with the highest purchase-propensity in key geos. Plus: we see if audience sizes are large enough to ensure delivery.

-> Creatives. What creative formats are being used. How many creatives per ad set. How many distinct value props are highlighted. How many distinct creative themes are present.

-> Bidding & economics: What KPIs are ad sets optimized for. How are ad sets doing vs. target CPA/ROAS. How is spend distributed.

Although every app is different, nearly every problem or opportunity we see has come within the ambit of the 3 areas above.

Answer 2

To understand an account that isn't yours, at first, I try to not look at "performance" metrics", and focus on scope and funnel:
- scope: what kind of scale (amount spent, events completed), big trend over time (overall age, seasonality, recent trends.. which periods are most relevant?), geographic & OS spread, mobile UA only or also remarketing, web, promoted social...

- funnel: which events are tracked within Facebook (+which are used for AEO?). is value tracked? (and is it reliable, if often doesn't match internal numbers). What are the different step completion rate.

Once there, I do a "maturity" check
- how solid is the naming convention

- which bidding types have been used/iterated on (mainly MAI/AEO/VO, but also bidding type within)

- number of different creatives

And only then do I start looking at performance (CPI, CPA, ROAS). But to seize if I see improvement in the short/mid term, the 2 bits I put quite a lot of attention on are:
- creative performance (IPM or impression to install ratio)

- audience building, size vs budget. (see Shamanth answer)

TP