Get the Full Analytics Picture With Vista Social’s New Paid Performance Report

You’re running paid ads on Instagram, analyzing organic content performance on LinkedIn, checking Facebook Ads Manager for campaign metrics, and then trying to piece it all together in a spreadsheet to see the full picture of your social media performance.

Sound familiar?

If you’re managing both paid and organic social media, you know the struggle of jumping between platforms just to understand what’s actually working. Your organic posts are performing well, your ads are getting clicks, but how do they work together? 

And more importantly, how do you prove the ROI of your entire social strategy when the data is scattered everywhere?

That’s where a paid performance report comes in.

What is a paid performance report?

A paid performance report is a comprehensive analysis of your paid social media advertising performance. It tracks metrics like ad spend, engagement, impressions, and reach across all your paid campaigns in one consolidated view.

But here’s what makes a good paid performance report truly valuable: It doesn’t just show you how your ads performed in isolation. The best paid performance reports let you compare your paid results against your organic performance, giving you a complete picture of your social media ROI.

Think of it this way. Your organic social content builds relationships and trust with your audience. Your paid ads amplify that reach and drive specific actions. 

When you can see both in one report, you can finally understand which efforts are moving the needle and where to invest your budget.

Why does analyzing paid performance matter?

Let’s be real—paid social media advertising is expensive. According to recent data, digital ad spend jumped 10.3% year-over-year in 2025. That’s a significant chunk of your marketing budget.

So you need to know if it’s working.

Let’s go over why analyzing your paid performance is non-negotiable.

You can actually prove social media ROI

Unlike traditional advertising (remember billboards and TV commercials?), paid social media gives you detailed, trackable metrics. You can see exactly how much you paid for every click, lead, and sale. 

That means you can calculate social media ROI metrics like your return on ad spend (ROAS) and prove whether your campaigns are profitable.

For example, if you’re earning $5 for every $1 spent on an ad, your ROAS is 5:1. Pretty straightforward, right? But without proper reporting, you’re just guessing.

You’ll make smarter budget decisions

When you analyze paid performance regularly, you can identify which campaigns deserve more budget and which ones are underperforming. 

Maybe your Instagram carousel ads are crushing it while your Facebook video ads are falling flat. Without a paid performance report, you might keep throwing money at both equally.

You can optimize in real-time

Paid social media campaigns can be tracked and optimized in real time. Unlike organic content that relies on algorithms and timing, paid ads give you immediate feedback. If something isn’t working, you can adjust your targeting, creative, or budget on the fly—but only if you’re actually looking at the data.

You can connect paid and organic efforts

Here’s where it gets interesting: Analyzing paid performance alongside organic performance helps you see how the two strategies support each other. 

Research shows that organic engagement can actually improve paid ad performance. When someone’s already engaging with your organic content, they’re more likely to respond positively to your paid ads.

Pro tip: You can easily find top-performing organic posts in your reports, and then boost them to put some ad dollars behind it—all without leaving Vista Social.

Introducing Vista Social’s new paid performance report

Managing paid and organic social media in one platform has always been possible. But analyzing them together? That’s been the missing piece—until now.

Vista Social’s new Paid Performance Report brings all your paid engagements and reach directly into your analytics dashboard, right alongside your organic metrics. 

No more switching between Facebook Ads Manager, Instagram Insights, and your social media management platform. Everything you need to measure your social ROI is finally in one place.

Here’s what makes it game-changing:

• See paid and organic side-by-side. You can finally compare how your paid campaigns stack up against your organic content in the same view. This helps you understand the full impact of your social strategy.
• Complete engagement metrics. Track how much engagement is due to your paid campaigns versus organic posts to see your true engagement levels.
• Total reach insights. Understand your actual reach and impressions across both paid and organic channels. This is crucial for measuring awareness campaigns and understanding your true audience size.
• Real ROI clarity. Connect every dollar spent to actual performance. When you can see paid and organic together, you get a complete picture of what’s driving results.

The setup is straightforward, too. You can connect your ad accounts directly to Vista Social and start pulling in paid performance data alongside the organic metrics you’re already tracking.

Plus, you can track paid versus organic performance across the board in Vista Social. Open your published posts in the social media calendar to see how each one performed individually, as well as how much better your boosted posts did than when they were organic.

Organic metrics will always be seen in green while paid data appears in purple, helping you to easily distinguish performance differences at a glance.

How to analyze paid vs. organic performance

So you have access to both your paid and organic data in one place. Now what? Here’s how to actually use that information to improve your strategy.

1. Compare engagement rates

Start by looking at engagement rates for both paid and organic content. Engagement rate is calculated by dividing your total interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves) by your reach or follower count.

You might notice that your organic content has higher engagement rates but limited reach, while your paid content reaches more people but gets lower engagement. 

This is actually pretty common—and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Organic content typically generates higher engagement because it’s shown to people who already follow and trust you. Paid content reaches cold audiences who need more nurturing.

The key is understanding what’s normal for each and optimizing accordingly.

2. Track reach and impressions

How many people are seeing your content due to your organic posts versus your paid ads or boosts? Make sure the ad dollars you put behind your strategy are actually helping you to reach a wider audience.

With Vista Social, you can see both reach and impressions for your paid and organic strategies and easily compare to get an understanding of which tactics and which platforms work best for your brand.

3. Identify your best-performing content

Here’s where paid and organic data becomes really powerful together: You can use your organic performance to inform your paid strategy.

Look at your top-performing organic posts from the past month. What topics, formats, or themes are resonating? 

These are your goldmine for paid campaigns. 

If a LinkedIn article about social media trends got tons of organic engagement, turn it into a paid ad campaign. If your Instagram Reel showcasing your product got thousands of organic views, boost it with paid promotion.

You’re not guessing what might work—you’re investing in content that people have already proven they’re interested in.

And the best part is that you can easily boost a post right inside Vista Social. Open up a recently published post in your calendar and click the Boost button at the bottom to get started:

4. Calculate true ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) tells you how much revenue you’re generating for every dollar spent on advertising. But to get the full picture, you need to consider how your organic efforts contribute to conversions too.

For example, someone might discover your brand through organic content, engage with it a few times, then finally convert after seeing a paid retargeting ad. Your paid performance report should help you connect these dots and understand the full customer journey.

5. Test, measure, repeat

The best paid vs. organic analysis happens over time. Set up a regular cadence—monthly is ideal—to review your paid performance report and look for trends:

• Are your paid campaigns getting more or less expensive over time?
• Is your organic reach increasing or decreasing?
• Which platforms are giving you the best ROI for paid spend?
• How does seasonal timing affect both paid and organic performance?

You can easily schedule reports to hit your inbox at a monthly cadence with Vista Social. Just head to Reports > Schedule report to get started.

How to get the most from your paid performance report

Ready to start analyzing your paid performance like a pro? Here are some practical tips and best practices to set off on the right foot.

Start with clear goals

Before you dive into the data, know what you’re trying to achieve. Are you focused on awareness, engagement, traffic, or conversions? Your goals will determine which metrics matter most.

Set benchmarks

Look at your historical performance or industry benchmarks to understand what “good” looks like for your business. A 3% engagement rate might be amazing for one industry and disappointing for another.

You can easily track industry benchmarks in Vista Social. When you set up your account, our tool will automatically apply the industry it believes suits your brand best. But you can head to your settings to change this.

Then open up Reports > Industry benchmark report to see how your social media platforms fare against others like yours:

You can also compare your social media performance to direct competitors on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These reports helps you set goals that are actually realistic for businesses like yours.

Look for patterns, not just numbers

Don’t just track metrics—look for trends over time. Is your organic reach declining while your paid reach increases? Are your engagement rates improving month over month? These patterns tell the real story.

Compare across platforms

Instagram might give you better engagement rates while LinkedIn drives more qualified leads. Understanding which platforms work best for different goals helps you allocate your budget wisely.

Don’t forget qualitative insights

Numbers are important, but so is the quality of engagement. Are people leaving thoughtful comments? Are they asking questions about your products? Are they sharing your content? These qualitative signals matter too.

Review regularly and adjust

Set aside time each month to review your paid performance report and make adjustments. Social media moves fast, and what worked last quarter might not work today.

Start analyzing your paid performance today

Managing social media without a comprehensive paid performance report is like driving with one eye closed. Sure, you can probably get where you’re going, but you’re missing half the picture and making it way harder than it needs to be.

When you can see your paid and organic performance side-by-side, everything changes. You understand what’s actually driving results. You can prove ROI to stakeholders. You make smarter budget decisions. And you stop wasting time and money on strategies that aren’t working.

The best part? You don’t need to be a data analyst to make sense of it all. With tools like Vista Social’s new Paid Performance Report, all your social media analytics are in one intuitive dashboard. Connect your ad accounts, and you’ll see exactly how your paid campaigns are performing alongside your organic content.

Ready to get the full picture of your social media performance? Stop piecing together data from five different platforms and start analyzing what actually matters with Vista Social.