One of the most common questions I hear asked about Facebook Ads is, “how should I setup my ad sets?” At a macro level, the structure of your account should be able to provide clear views into performance at each layer – exposing areas of opportunities and weakness.

When asked this question, I often turn to an underutilized, but powerful view in Facebook. Within a table view, the ‘breakdown’ tab reveals clear options for split testing and analysis.

Carving Out Refined Ad Sets

Breakdown metrics act much like AdWords's dimensions views, offering ways to slice your data into segments. Use these viewpoints to explore possible ways to partition your ad sets, to drive efficiency.

Segmenting out ad sets provide many benefits:

• Dedicated budgets
• Hone in on creative by medium or target audience
• More flexible control over your bids

Let's take a look at some of the most impactful views into your performance data.

Placement

Several days after a new campaign launch, it will be clear if there’s enough volume to segment out your targeting into refined ad sets. One of the most impactful structures is to breakout targeting by placement and device.

Within an existing campaign, select the ‘placement’ option from the breakdown column. If multiple placements are being targeted, you should notice a sizable difference between the cost per result from one placement to the next.

For acquisition campaigns, right column ads tend to have lower cost per conversion results. While for engagement themed campaigns, mobile Newsfeed might be the best choice since the post includes social impressions and mobile sharing is seamless.

In the above example, you'll notice that Right Column Ads are generating conversions at about a third of the cost of News Feed ads.

By creating a dedicated ad set for Right Column Ads, we can take advantage of the lower cost conversions and drive up volume.

Device

Not only can performance vary by placement, it can also fluctuate by device type. Even if you only have News Feed placements selected, there can be a difference in cost per conversion by type of device and the operating system. Select the 'placement by device' option from the Breakdown menu to reveal insights.

Geography

Your campaign performance can vary significantly by geo. Should your brand or offering serve an International customer base, it's worth splitting out ad sets or campaigns by country. The United States is the most mature Facebook market, but also is often the most expensive.

Learn how your ad sets perform in a particular geography using either the country or region breakdown metrics.

In the example above, you can see there's a stark difference in the cost per engagement between Brazil and the United Kingdom. With multiple geos rolling up to one ad set, I have very little flexibility to align my budget to particular areas. This would be worth breaking out into separate ad sets by country.

Final Thoughts

The breakdown metrics provide clear views into areas of optimization and refined ad set structure to maximize conversions. Providing you greater control of budget allocation, bidding, and messaging.