10 Meta Ads Numbers to Read Before You Raise Your Budget

Meta ads · Guide

Why is ROAS alone not enough to judge Meta ads?

ROAS only tells you how many pounds of sales Meta credits to itself for every pound spent, before returns. It hides where the money leaks and it ignores orders Meta does not see. A store can show a healthy ROAS and still lose money on every order once returns and acquisition cost are counted.

Sara Advertising uses ROAS as one of ten numbers, read in order. Each number answers one question, and the first number that looks wrong is where the fix starts. The example below comes from The Sports Zone, a sportswear e-commerce brand in Egypt, comparing June 2026 with 16–31 August 2026.

Which numbers show where the money is lost?

The first six numbers follow the money from the impression to the purchase. Read them from the top: each one only makes sense once the number above it is healthy.

Which numbers show what the business really earned?

The last four numbers compare ad spend with the store’s own results, so they still hold after returns and after orders Meta did not see.

How do you check that Meta tracking is working?

Compare the purchases in Ads Manager with the orders in your store for the same dates. In June, Meta counted 50 purchases against 70 store orders, a 71% match; in late August it counted 161 against 168, or 96%. Below roughly 80%, fix the pixel and the Conversions API before reading anything else (Meta Conversions API documentation).

What do CPM and CTR tell you about an ad?

CPM is the price of being seen; CTR is the share of people who click after seeing the ad. When CPM is normal and CTR is low, the audience is fine and the ad is the problem.

In this example CPM barely moved, from EGP 110 to EGP 107, while CTR tripled from 1.47% to 4.44% after the creative and the copy changed.

How do CPC and conversion rate decide the cost per purchase?

The cost per purchase equals the cost per click divided by the conversion rate. In June that was EGP 8.99 ÷ 0.75%, or EGP 1,198 per purchase. There are only two ways to make an order cheaper: a cheaper click, through a better ad, or more buyers per click, through a better offer and product page.

What is MER, and why is it more honest than ROAS?

MER, the marketing efficiency ratio, divides the store’s net sales after returns by total ad spend. It uses your own sales report, not the platform’s attribution, so returns and orders Meta missed are both counted. In this example MER rose from 2.55 to 12.46 while returns fell from 24.0% to 15.3% of gross sales (Shopify sales reports).

What is the difference between CAC and new-customer CAC?

CAC divides ad spend by every store order, including repeat buyers who might have bought anyway. New-customer CAC divides spend by first-time customers only, so it shows what growth really costs. In the example, CAC fell from EGP 856 to EGP 163 and new-customer CAC from EGP 1,394 to EGP 234, with 117 new customers in 16 days.

When is it safe to raise a Meta ads budget?

Raise the budget only when tracking matches, MER is comfortably above the margin you need, and one campaign clearly leads.

The rule Sara Advertising applies on this account is no scaling below a ROAS of 10, then 15% more budget every 72 hours, and a fresh creative ready by day 14, because winning ads in this account tire after about three weeks.

Read the full story in The Sports Zone case study, or ask Sara Advertising’s digital marketing team to review your account.