Glossary

Cost per Result (Meta)

Cost per result is Meta's efficiency metric: total spend divided by results, where 'result' is whatever the campaign optimizes for. For a sales campaign it equals cost per purchase; for a traffic campaign, cost per link click. It's Meta's generalized CPA.

Formula: Cost per result = Cost ÷ Results

How to read it

Track it per ad set to see which audience delivers the objective cheapest, and set alerts on it; it's the number that quietly doubles when an audience saturates.

Where it misleads

Same trap as results: only comparable between campaigns with the same objective and optimization event.

Related terms

Results (Meta) →

Results is Meta's umbrella metric for the outcome a campaign was optimized for: purchases for a sales campaign, leads for a lead campaign, link clicks for a traffic campaign. The same column means different things across campaigns, depending on each campaign's objective.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition) →

CPA (cost per acquisition, also cost per conversion) is the average amount you spend to get one conversion. It's the efficiency metric for lead and signup campaigns: as long as a customer is worth more than their CPA, the campaign makes economic sense.

Cost / Spend →

Cost (or spend) is the total amount an ad platform charged for a campaign, ad group, or account in the selected period. It's the denominator of every efficiency metric (CPC, CPA, ROAS) and the number that has to match the client's media budget.

Metrics explained are nice. Metrics watched are better.

HeyMetrix monitors all of these across Google and Meta, with alerts and a nightly AI briefing.

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