Most teams have two or three numbers they actually run on, and more often than not Atria doesn't ship them as standard — because they're yours. Contribution margin after your real COGS. Blended ROAS across the accounts you care about. Cost per new customer, calculated the way your finance team calculates it.
Custom metrics let you build those formulas inside Atria, the same way you would in Meta or TikTok Ads Manager, and then use them everywhere you report. No more exporting to a spreadsheet on a Monday morning to work out one number by hand.
Where your custom metrics show up
Once you've created one, it behaves like any other metric. You'll find it on the Overview dashboard, in Radar, in reports, and on any snapshot you share out.
That last one is worth pausing on: a client or stakeholder opening a snapshot sees your custom metric with your name for it. If you've built "Contribution Margin" the way your business defines it, that's the number they see — not a proxy you had to explain in the covering email.
How to create one
Go to Analytics & Launch and select your ad account.
On the Overview dashboard, find the Key Metrics card and click Metric settings.
Click + Create custom metric.
Give it a Name. Be specific and be boring — "CPA (paid purchases)" beats "CPA" six months from now when three people are building reports off it.
Choose a Format: Currency ($), Percentage (%), Number, and so on.
Build your Formula from base metrics — Spend, Clicks, Impressions, Purchases, Revenue, ROAS and the rest.
Set Performance direction — whether higher or lower is better. This is what tells Atria which way to shade the cell, so getting it the wrong way round makes your best ads look like your worst.
Set Summable — whether the metric can be added up across rows. Spend can. CPA can't: summing a ratio gives you a number that means nothing. If you're unsure, ask yourself whether adding two of them together would produce something you'd put in front of your CFO.
Click Create metric.
That's it. It'll now appear alongside the standard metrics wherever you build a report.
Some formulas worth stealing
Metric | Formula | Format |
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) | Spend ÷ Purchases | Currency ($) |
CTR (Click-Through Rate) | Clicks ÷ Impressions | Percentage (%) |
AOV (Average Order Value) | Revenue ÷ Purchases | Currency ($) |
Cost Per Click | Spend ÷ Clicks | Currency ($) |
Profit | Revenue – Spend | Currency ($) |
Profit ROAS | (Revenue – Spend) ÷ Spend | Number |
What we'd tell you on a call
Build fewer than you think you need.
The temptation is to recreate every column from your spreadsheet on day one. Don't. Build the two or three you'd genuinely make a decision on, live with them for a fortnight, and add more when a real question forces you to. A metric list nobody trusts is worse than a short one everybody does.
They update themselves. Custom metrics recalculate as new data lands — there's nothing to rebuild or refresh.
Agree the definition before you build it.
Nine times in ten, when someone tells us a custom metric is "wrong", the formula is fine and the base metric isn't what they assumed — most often a purchase event that counts something slightly different from what their finance team counts. Sort that out first and the formula takes thirty seconds.
Edit and delete freely.
You can change or remove a custom metric whenever you like from the same Metric settings panel, or from Custom columns above the table, which opens the Customize table columns panel.
Put your regulars where you can reach them.
Save the ones you use constantly into a column preset so they're one click away in any report.
A few things people ask us
Can I use custom metrics in a snapshot?
Yes. Anywhere you report in Atria, including snapshots you share externally.
Which base metrics can I build from?
Any standard metric available in your connected ad accounts — Spend, Clicks, Impressions, Purchases, Revenue, ROAS and more.
Is there a limit on how many I can create?
There's no hard limit. Build as many as your reporting genuinely needs — though see our note above about restraint.
I can't see custom metrics in my account.
Custom metrics are only available on Business & Enterprise plans. Get in touch with us to discuss.
If you tell us the two or three numbers your team actually argues about in its weekly meeting, we'll happily help you build them properly. Just email us at support@tryatria.com.