Placement reporting shows where Meta delivered adverts, such as Instagram Reels, Stories, Facebook Feed or Audience Network. It helps identify creative-format problems and unusual spend patterns, but a cheap placement is not automatically better if it produces weak customers.

Read the breakdown

1. Open Ads Manager and set the right dates. Select the relevant campaign, ad set or advert and use a period with enough spend to make comparison useful.
2. Add commercial columns. Include amount spent, impressions, CPM, link clicks, landing-page views, purchases, cost per purchase, purchase value and return on ad spend. Add contribution data outside Meta where possible.
3. Choose Breakdown. Select By delivery, then Placement. If you need more detail, also review platform and device, but avoid splitting the data so far that every row has tiny volume.
4. Check spend distribution. Meta may put most budget into one placement. A placement with no conversions after £3 spend is not comparable with one that received £500.
5. Compare the journey. Look from CPM through click and landing-page view to purchase. High clicks with weak landing-page views can indicate accidental taps, slow pages or low-quality traffic.
6. Inspect the creative in that placement. Preview the advert in Reels, Stories and Feed. Check cropping, captions, safe zones, first-frame clarity and whether buttons cover important text.
7. Change creative before excluding placement. Supply placement-suitable versions where the format is the problem. Exclude a placement only when there is enough evidence and the commercial case remains weak.

Do not overreact to attribution

Placement rows use Meta's attribution model, so they do not prove that one placement caused every sale assigned to it. Compare trends over a meaningful period and check GA4 or store data where possible.

Record exclusions and the evidence behind them. Automatic placements often find efficient inventory, so permanent exclusions based on one short test can increase costs elsewhere without improving total results.

Verification notes

In Ads Manager use Breakdown, then By delivery, then Placement or Platform and placement. Read spend, results, cost per result and conversion value together, and do not treat a low-volume placement as a winner from one conversion.

Source checked

This guide was checked against Meta Ads reporting help.