Value Optimization for Profit on Meta

Meta’s Value Optimization for Profit (VO for Profit) lets a Sales campaign optimise on the profit of each order instead of its revenue. ProfitMetrics calculates that profit from your shop’s real costs and sends it to Meta on the Purchase event, next to the revenue. Meta has opened VO for Profit for every ProfitMetrics customer on Conversion Booster for Meta, so there is nothing to request. This article covers the key terms, how the profit value is built, the requirements, setup, testing, reporting, the optional custom events and the most common problems.

• Key terms
• How the profit value is built
• Is your account ready?
• Choose what ProfitMetrics sends
• Set up a profit campaign
• Test and read the results
• Reporting in Ads Manager
• Optional: ProfitMetrics custom events
• Troubleshooting

Key terms

These five terms come up throughout setup and reporting.

NOTE: Two baskets that both paid 78.00 can leave 26.00 or 10.00 in gross profit. On revenue alone, Meta sees them as the same order.

How the profit value is built

ProfitMetrics starts from the paid order amount and subtracts each cost from your settings. An example order, in EUR excluding VAT:

Revenue (300.00) and gross profit (81.50) travel on the same Purchase event, sent from ProfitMetrics through Meta’s Conversions API. Meta receives, matches and attributes the order once, so the two values always describe the same orders.

NOTE: A flat margin, such as 30% of revenue on every order, gives Meta nothing new to learn from. The profit has to move with the real costs of each order.

Is your account ready?

Meta’s current guidance for VO for Profit:

NOTE: Low volume, or the same margin on every order, means the account isn’t a fit yet. Meta can change these thresholds and labels, so check Ads Manager before launch.

Choose what ProfitMetrics sends

In Conversion Booster for Meta, go to the Meta integration, open Meta events and edit the Purchase event. One dropdown decides what is sent.

NOTE: Already sending a Purchase from another setup? Choose Append Profit and keep your existing tracking. Two Purchase events with different values will confuse Meta.

Set up a profit campaign

Audience, creative and placements stay as they are. Only the conversion value changes.

1. Check your costs. Fallback Costs, product feed cost prices, shipping and payment rules, VAT treatment and handling costs should all be set in ProfitMetrics. The profit is only as good as the costs.
2. Set the Purchase event to Revenue & Profit or Append Profit, as above.
3. Check that profit reaches Meta. In Events Manager, open the Purchase event. Gross profit should appear among the parameters received, and profit coverage should be 100%: every Purchase in the last seven days carried a profit. Fix anything lower before you launch.
4. Create a Sales campaign. Use the Create a profit campaign link on the Profit row in Events Manager, which opens with the right defaults, or choose Sales as the objective and Website as the conversion location.
5. Set the performance goal to Maximize value of conversions, with Purchase as the conversion event.
6. Set Conversion value to Profit margin. This is the switch that makes Meta optimise on profit.
7. Budget for at least 30 conversions a day.
8. Add the profit column. It is off by default. Open Customize columns, search for “margin” and place it next to Amount spent.

Test and read the results

Treat the profit campaign as a test of one change: the conversion value. Keep the existing revenue campaign running as a baseline if budget allows, and use the same or comparable creative, audience and offer. Broad targeting usually lets Meta learn fastest from the profit value.

Run it for at least three weeks. Performance may dip in week one and improve after week two, so avoid edits and don’t judge it in the first few days. Look at POAS and gross profit after ad spend first, then revenue, ROAS, conversion volume, CPA, new-customer mix and average order value.

NOTE: Meta’s figures won’t match your webshop 1:1. Ads Manager counts conversions by Meta’s attribution settings and modelling; your shop counts every order when it is placed. Use Events Manager and your order counts to check delivery, and Ads Manager to judge campaigns.

Reporting in Ads Manager

Keep revenue and profit side by side so you can see when they move apart. These columns, left to right, give the full picture:

You can use these columns without switching any campaign to profit. Scale the campaigns that make money rather than the ones with the best ROAS, and cut or fix anything with a POAS below 1.00: the click cost more than the profit it brought in.

NOTE: POAS has no revenue in it, so VAT doesn’t affect it. If you show ROAS next to it, note whether revenue is sent with or without VAT, because Meta can’t tell the difference.

Optional: ProfitMetrics custom events

ProfitMetrics also sends eight custom events. Use them for reporting first. Once one has enough volume, you can bid on it for a narrower goal, such as profit from new customers.

To make them available, connect ProfitMetrics to the right Meta dataset (pixel) and allow the events if Meta puts them under Event Blocking. Then run a very small Sales campaign, about €1 a day or €1–2 per ad set, until the events register, which often takes around 20 minutes. Pause or delete it once the events appear in Ads Manager.

NOTE: Only bid on a custom event with at least 30–50 conversions a week. This is separate from Meta’s 100 purchases a week for VO for Profit: a shop with 200 purchases a week but only 18 new-customer profit events should keep that event for reporting.

Troubleshooting