Solved: Graphing Cost Per Result Trend in Facebook Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts. Your question about graphing Cost Per Result in Ads Manager is a common one, but it actually hints at a much bigger, more important issue that trips up most new advertisers. I'll give you the quick technical fix, but then I want to walk you through a completely different way of thinking about your ad performance. It’s the framework we use for all our clients, from startups to established brands, and it’s what separates the campaigns that burn cash from the ones that build profitable businesses.

First, the quick fix (and why it's the wrong question)

Right, let's get the technical bit out of the way. The reason "Cost Per Result" is greyed out in the chart view is because it’s a calculated metric, not a primary one. Facebook Ads Manager’s charting tool is a bit basic and can only plot primary metrics like 'Amount Spent', 'Impressions', 'Link Clicks', or 'Results'. It can't do the division on the fly to show you 'Cost Per Result'.

The workaround is to go into Reports -> Create custom report. Choose a 'Trend' chart. For your metrics, select 'Amount Spent' and 'Results'. Then, in the top right of the chart, you'll see a little settings cog. Click that and tick the box for 'Plot on a dual axis'. This will give you two lines on your graph – one for spend and one for the number of results. You can see how they trend against each other day-by-day. If the spend line goes up while the results line stays flat, you know your cost is rising. It's clunky, but it works.

But honestly? This is the wrong thing to be focusing on. Obsessing over the daily fluctuation of your Cost Per Result is a classic rookie mistake. It's like staring at the speedometer while driving off a cliff. A low CPR means absolutely nothing if the "results" you're getting are low-quality leads that never convert or one-off customers who never buy again. I've seen campaigns with a £2 CPR that were losing thousands, and campaigns with a £250 CPR that were printing money. The cost itself is meaningless without context. The real question isn't "How low can my CPR go?" but rather, "How high a CPR can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" To answer that, we need to dig a lot deeper.

We need to look at your ICP, which is a Nightmare, not a Demographic

Before we even touch a single number in Ads Manager, we have to talk about who you're selling to. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain.

You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of frustration with a broken workflow. For a legal tech SaaS, for instance, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's 'a partner missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the firm to a malpractice suit.' Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can find them. Find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired'; the industry newsletters they actually open, like 'Stratechery'; the SaaS tools they already pay for, like HubSpot or Salesforce. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin on Twitter? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. For example, I remember one campaign for a B2B software client in the medical recruitment space where we reduced their Cost Per User Acquisition from £100 down to £7. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need to Calculate Your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

This is it. This is the single most important calculation you can make for your business, and almost nobody does it before they start advertising. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).

It sounds complicated, but the basic formula is quite simple. You need three numbers:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month on average?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Don't use your revenue number, use your gross profit. If your product costs £100 and it costs you £30 to deliver it (cost of goods sold), your gross margin is 70%.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? If you have 100 customers at the start of the month and 4 leave, your churn rate is 4%.

The calculation is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's play with some numbers. Use the calculator below to figure out what a single customer is actually worth to your business in profit over their entire lifetime.

Suddenly that £50 Cost Per Result doesn't seem so bad, does it? If a customer is worth £10,000 to you, paying £50 to get them is an incredible bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads.

You probably should focus on the LTV:CAC Ratio

Now that you have your LTV, we can introduce its partner: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This is your total cost to acquire one new customer. It's not just your ad spend; it's your ad spend, agency fees, sales team salaries, software costs—everything that goes into winning that customer.

The magic happens when you compare the two. The LTV to CAC ratio tells you the health of your entire marketing and sales operation. For every pound you spend, how many pounds of gross margin do you get back over the customer's lifetime?

Here's a general guide we use:

• Less than 1:1 - You are actively losing money with every new customer. Stop everything immediately.
• 1:1 - You are breaking even on each customer. You have no money left for overheads, salaries, or profit. This is a fast track to going bust.
• 3:1 - This is the sweet spot. You're profitably acquiring customers and have a solid engine for growth. You're making enough to reinvest in product and operations.
• 5:1 or more - This sounds great, but it might actually be a sign you're not spending enough. You could likely be growing much faster by increasing your ad spend and accepting a slightly lower, but still very healthy, ratio.

Using our earlier example, if your LTV is £10,000, a healthy 3:1 ratio means you can afford a CAC of up to £3,333. Think about that. You can spend over three grand to get a single customer and still have a fantastic business model. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead. This is your new target, not some arbitrary low CPR.

You'll need to know what conversion price to expect

Now that you have a target CAC based on your own business maths, we can look at some industry benchmarks to see if your goals are realistic. The cost per result can vary wildly depending on your objective and the countries you're targeting. Below is a rough guide based on what we typically see across many accounts.

Remember, these are just ballpark figures. Your actual costs will depend on your industry, your offer, your creative, and your targeting.

For something like an email signup or a simple lead form (what we'd call a top-of-funnel conversion), you're looking at something like this:

• Developed Countries (UK, US, AUS, etc.): Expect to pay anywhere from £1.60 to £15.00 per signup. This assumes a CPC of £0.50-£1.50 and a landing page conversion rate of 10-30%.
• Developing Countries: Costs are much lower, maybe £0.33 to £5.00 per signup. However, the quality of these leads is often significantly lower, and you'll get more bots and less engagement.

For a direct sale on an eCommerce store or a highly qualified B2B lead (a bottom-of-funnel conversion), the costs are much higher because the commitment is greater:

• Developed Countries: A typical eCommerce conversion rate is 2-5%. With the same CPCs, your cost per purchase could be anywhere from £10.00 to £75.00. I remember one of our eCommerce clients selling women's apparel, where we achieved a 691% Return On Ad Spend, which is what really matters for sales.
• Developing Countries: The cost might be lower, from £2.00 to £25.00, but again, quality and average order value can be an issue.

One of our B2B SaaS clients, using LinkedIn Ads to target very specific decision-makers, was happy to pay around $22 per lead (£17ish), because they knew their LTV could easily support it. Another SaaS client using Meta Ads got 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each. The goal isn't to hit the lowest number on this list; it's to hit a number that works for *your* LTV:CAC ratio.

We'll need to look at how to pay Facebook to find *customers*

Here is the uncomfortable truth about awareness campaigns on platforms like Meta. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, in its infinite wisdom, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. Unless you're a massive brand like Coca-Cola with millions to burn, this is financial suicide.

The best form of brand awareness for a startup or small business is a competitor's customer switching to your product or service and raving about it online. That only happens through conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. That is why, for 99% of businesses, you must switch your campaign to optimise for a conversion, like sales, leads, or appointments. You have to tell the algorithm what you actually want, and it will go and find people who are most likely to perform that action. It'll cost more per impression, but you'll be reaching the right people.

You'll need a proper campaign structure

Okay, so you've defined your ICP, calculated your LTV, set a target CAC, and chosen a conversion objective. Now, how do you structure your account? Most people just throw a bunch of interests into one ad set and hope for the best. This is a recipe for wasted spend and messy data.

We structure our accounts based on the marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). Each stage has a different audience and a different job to do.

For a new account, you start at the top. You'd create a ToFu campaign and inside it, create multiple ad sets, each testing a different audience. Maybe one for interests related to your competitors, one for interests related to industry publications, and one for a Lookalike of your email list (once you have enough data). You run them against each other and see which performs best against your target CAC. Once you find winners, you scale them. The data you gather from your ToFu campaigns then feeds your MoFu and BoFu retargeting campaigns. It's a systematic process of testing and iteration, not guesswork.

This is the main advice I have for you:

This is a lot to take in, I know. We've gone from a simple charting question to a full-blown business strategy session. But this is what it takes. Paid advertising isn't just about pressing buttons in Ads Manager; it's about understanding business fundamentals. Here is a summary of the steps you should take.

Getting this right is complex. It involves deep analysis, constant testing, and a level of experience that takes years to build. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about understanding your audience, optimising your targeting, creating compelling ads, and fine-tuning your entire business model.

That's where professional help can make a huge difference. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the advertising landscape, we can help you implement this entire framework. If you'd like to have a chat and walk through how this could apply specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your strategy together. It’s often a real eye-opener for people.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh