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My TikTok campaign goal is store visits: which of the five metrics should I watch, CPM, CPC or CPA?

For a traffic campaign, watch CPC first and CTR second, because that is what the campaign is optimised to deliver. The general rule: reach campaigns are judged by CPM, traffic campaigns by CPC and CTR, and sales campaigns by CPA and conversion rate. The calculator gives you all five together; you pick the one that matches the goal.

Published · 3 min read

Each goal has its metric

  • Reach and awareness: CPM, because you are buying views.
  • Traffic: CPC and CTR, because you are buying people arriving at your store.
  • Sales or sign-ups: CPA and conversion rate, because you are buying orders.

The platform optimises for what you asked it for. A traffic campaign looks for people inclined to click, not necessarily to buy. Judging it by CPA is like blaming the receptionist because the customer did not buy from the sales desk.

Example: one traffic campaign, all five numbers

A TikTok traffic campaign was shown 200,000 times and got 1,400 clicks for a spend of 2,500 AED, with 20 orders recorded.

Worked example

CPM 12.5 and CTR 0.7%.

CPC 1.7857, the campaign's headline number since its goal is visits.

CPA 125 and conversion rate 1.43%.

Look at the CPA of 125 on its own and you would call the campaign a failure. But it is a traffic campaign, and the right question is whether 1.7857 per visit is a good price for you compared with your earlier traffic campaigns. If it is, the campaign did its job. The high CPA tells you something else: either traffic-campaign visitors do not buy easily, or you need a sales campaign if selling is your real goal.

When the other metrics matter

  1. CTR in a traffic campaign shows whether the video gets people to tap. Low CTR with a high CPC usually points to the ad itself.
  2. CPM shows what it costs to reach this audience. If it rises while CTR holds, CPC rises with it automatically.
  3. Conversion rate shows whether the visitors suit your store, even if selling was not the campaign's goal.

The steps

  1. Note the campaign objective as you set it in TikTok Ads Manager, not as you wish it were.
  2. Enter impressions, clicks, spend and orders in the Campaign performance calculator.
  3. Read the metric that matches the objective first, and compare it with your earlier campaigns of the same kind.
  4. If your end goal is sales, work out return on sales in the ROAS calculator before deciding to raise the budget.

To see in your store analytics that these visits came from TikTok and from this campaign in particular, add parameters to the link with the UTM campaign link builder.

Common questions

Should I switch to a sales campaign if CPA is high?

That is a business decision; the calculator only gives you the numbers. If sales are what you really want, it makes sense to test a campaign with a sales objective and compare its CPA.

Why is CPC shown with four decimals?

The calculator shows amounts with two to four decimals, so small differences in a low CPC are not lost to rounding.