Two numbers matter more than any other metric in a report: cost-per-lead, and what happens to that lead afterward. Everything else is context.
Impressions and reach tell you how many times an ad was shown — useful for diagnosing a campaign, not for judging whether it worked. A campaign can have excellent reach and terrible results, and vice versa.
Cost-per-lead tells you what you're actually paying to get someone interested. Conversion rate — how many of those leads become customers — tells you whether the leads were any good in the first place. A cheap lead that never converts is more expensive than an expensive one that does.
If a report leads with likes, followers, or reach, ask for the leads and cost-per-lead numbers instead. That's the conversation that actually matters.
One nuance worth knowing: a lead credited to "Google" in a report often saw two or three other touchpoints first — an Instagram ad, a WhatsApp message, a friend's recommendation — before searching and clicking. Single-channel attribution is a simplification, not the full story, which is exactly why channels should be judged as a system working together, not ranked against each other in isolation.
Impressions and reach without context are close to meaningless on their own — a number can look impressive while telling you nothing about whether the right people saw it or whether any of them cared. Ask what happened *after* someone saw the ad, not just how many people saw it.
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is worth understanding even in rough terms: it's simply revenue generated divided by what was spent to generate it. A campaign with a 4x ROAS returned four rupees of revenue for every rupee spent. It's not a perfect metric — it doesn't account for margin — but it's a far more honest conversation starter than "how many people saw our ad."