Solved: More Landing Page Views Than Link Clicks on Meta

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

That's an interesting one you've spotted with your Meta campaign metrics. It's the kind of thing that can send you down a rabbit hole trying to figure it out. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts. While the metric discrepancy itself has a few logical explanations, I believe it's actually a symptom of a much bigger, and more important, strategic issue with how your campaign is set up. Getting that right will have a far greater impact on your results than solving this particular reporting quirk.

Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at the metric mystery first (but not for long)...

So, why would Meta report more landing page views than link clicks? It seems impossible on the surface, but there are a few straightforward reasons for it. A "Link Click" is counted when someone clicks any link in your ad. A "Landing Page View" is counted only when your Meta Pixel successfully loads on the destination page.

The discrepancy happens because one click doesn't always equal one unique page load. Here are the most common culprits:

• Page Reloads: A user clicks your ad once, lands on your page, and then hits the refresh button. That's one link click, but two landing page views. They might also navigate to another page on your site and then hit the 'back' button, re-triggering the pixel on the landing page.
• Link Sharing: This is a big one. User A clicks your ad (1 link click). They love what they see and copy the URL (which contains Meta's tracking parameters) and send it to User B via WhatsApp or email. User B opens that link. Now you have 1 link click but 2 landing page views. If User B shares it with two more people, you've got 1 click and 4 landing page views.
• Attribution & Reporting Lag: Sometimes a user sees your ad, doesn't click, but remembers your brand name. They search for you on Google a few hours later and land on your page. Meta's attribution model can sometimes (though less commonly for this specific issue) credit that visit back to the original ad view, resulting in a landing page view with no corresponding click. There can also be simple reporting lags between the click action and the pixel fire event.

As you can see, there are logical explanations. But honestly, digging deeper into this is a waste of your time and energy. It's a distraction. The real question isn't *why* the numbers are strange, but *why* you are measuring link clicks and landing page views in the first place.

I'd say you're paying Meta to find non-customers...

This is the crux of the issue. You mentioned you're running a "Traffic" campaign. When you select this objective, you give Meta's algorithm a very simple, very direct command: "Find me the most clicks for the lowest possible price."

And the algorithm is incredibly good at its job. It will diligently search through the billions of people on its platform to find the specific segment of users within your targeting who have a demonstrated history of clicking on ads... and doing absolutely nothing else. These are the people who are curious but not serious. They click on shiny objects but never pull out their wallet. They are bored scrollers, not buyers. Why does Meta show them your ad? Because their attention is cheap. No other advertisers are competing for them, because they don't convert. You are, in effect, paying the world's most sophisticated advertising machine to find you the absolute worst possible audience for your product.

This is why optimising for traffic is almost always a mistake for any business that needs to see a return on its investment. It fills your analytics with vanity metrics—impressions, clicks, high landing page views—that make you feel good but don't translate into revenue. It's like having a shop full of people who are just browsing to get out of the rain; they look like potential customers, but they have zero intention of buying.

The solution is to change your campaign objective. You MUST optimise for conversions. Whether a conversion for you is a lead, a free trial signup, or a direct purchase, this objective tells the algorithm something completely different. It says: "I don't care how many clicks it takes. Go find me people who are likely to actually complete this specific action on my website."

The algorithm will now ignore the cheap-click crowd and focus on users whose behaviour patterns indicate they are buyers, or sign-er uppers. Yes, your cost per click (CPC) will almost certainly go up. Your number of link clicks will probably go down. But the quality of that traffic will be infinitely higher, and you will start seeing the business results you're actually after. Awareness is a byproduct of making sales and having a great product, not a prerequisite for it.

You probably should calculate your customer's worth...

Switching to conversion campaigns leads to a crucial question: how much can you afford to pay for a customer? Chasing a low Cost Per Lead (CPL) is just as foolish as chasing cheap clicks. 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 is found by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

The LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire duration of their relationship with your business. Once you know this number, you can make informed, aggressive decisions about your ad spend. Here's how you can calculate a basic LTV:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer pays you per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

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

Let's take an example. Say you run a SaaS business where customers pay £200/month, your gross margin is 75%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month.

LTV = (£200 * 0.75) / 0.05 = £150 / 0.05 = £3,000

Each customer you acquire is worth £3,000 in gross profit. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can comfortably afford to spend up to £1,000 to acquire a single customer. If your sales team converts 1 in 5 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £200 per lead. Suddenly that £50 CPL from your conversion campaign doesn't just look good, it looks like an absolute bargain you should be scaling as fast as possible.

This is the maths that separates professional advertisers from amateurs. It shifts your mindset from cost-saving to investment and unlocks true growth.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

A great campaign objective is useless without a compelling offer and message. The number one reason campaigns fail, even with the right technical setup, is a weak offer that doesn't resonate with the audience. This starts by truly understanding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), not as a demographic, but as a person with a painful, urgent problem.

Forget "Companies in the tech sector with 10-50 employees." That's generic and leads to boring ads. Instead, define your customer by their nightmare. What keeps them up at night? For a project management SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing better organisation'; it's 'the CEO asking for a project update and you have no idea what the real status is.' Your ICP isn't a job title; it's a problem state.

Once you've identified that nightmare, you can craft a message using a proven framework like Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Describe their current world of pain. "Your team's updates are scattered across Slack, email, and three different spreadsheets. You spend more time chasing information than actually managing the project."
• After: Paint a picture of the promised land. "Imagine a single dashboard where every project's status, budget, and timeline is crystal clear in real-time. You walk into every meeting with complete confidence."
• Bridge: Introduce your product as the vehicle to get them there. "Our platform is the bridge that turns chaos into clarity. Get your first project organised in under 10 minutes with our free trial."

This approach speaks directly to their pain and positions your solution as a source of relief. This also ties into your call to action. The "Request a Demo" button is one of the worst offenders in B2B marketing. It's high-friction and low-value. It screams "I'm about to sell to you for 45 minutes." Instead, your offer should provide instant value. A free trial, a freemium plan, a free tool that solves a small part of their problem—these things let the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You're not generating leads for a sales team to chase; you're creating product-qualified leads who are already convinced.

We'll need to look at structuring your account properly...

Finally, once you have the right objective and a powerful offer, you need to structure your campaigns to effectively reach people. A common mistake I see is lumping all audiences into one ad set. A much better approach is to think in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

You should have separate, long-term campaigns for each stage.

• ToFu (Top of Funnel - Prospecting): This is where you reach cold audiences who have never heard of you. Your goal is to introduce them to the problem you solve. Here you'd test audiences based on detailed targeting (interests, behaviours). For instance, if you sell high-end camera gear, you might target interests like "Landscape Photography," "Nikon," or followers of famous photographers. You could also create Lookalike audiences based on your best customers once you have enough data.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel - Retargeting): This is for people who have shown some interest but haven't taken a key action. You'd retarget people who have visited your website, watched a certain percentage of your video ads, or engaged with your social media pages. The goal here is to build trust and educate them further. You'd show them case studies, testimonials, or different product features.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel - Closing): This is for people who are on the verge of converting. You'd retarget people who have added a product to their cart, initiated checkout, or visited the pricing page. The ads here should be direct, maybe with an offer of a discount or a reminder about what they left behind, to encourage them to complete the purchase.

By structuring your account this way, you can tailor your message to the user's level of awareness, guiding them from a stranger to a paying customer much more effectively. For smaller budgets, you can combine MoFu and BoFu, but the principle of speaking differently to different audiences remains.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To put it all together, here's a table summarising the key shifts in thinking and strategy that I'd recommend for your advertising efforts.

As you can probably tell, effective paid advertising is much more than just setting up an ad and watching the clicks roll in. It's a combination of deep strategic thinking, understanding platform mechanics, and constant testing and optimisation. Fixing these foundational issues is where you'll see a real transformation in your results. We've seen this approach work for clients across many niches, from generating over 5,000 software trials at a low cost for one software client to achieving a 1000% return on ad spend for an eCommerce subscription box.

It can be a lot to implement correctly. If you'd like to go over your specific situation and see how these principles could be applied to your business in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your account and strategy together.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh