A lot of work goes into developing and executing a successful Facebook Ads campaign. There’s research, analysis, selection of ad type and bidding strategy, proper identification of your ideal customer type and their interests, and monitoring of your ad once it’s underway.

By default, Facebook presents you with data on how many total users have seen your ad, what your overall CPM or CPC rate is, and your overall click-through rate. You can choose to dig deeper into the data to learn more about the people who have interacted with your ad by selecting some additional columns within the Ads Reporting area.

It’s through this deeper look at the data that you gain additional insight into what type of customers you are actually attracting through Facebook ads.

“Through Facebook ads” is the key phrase in that last sentence. It’s important to note that Facebook ads are only 1 form of marketing or advertising that your company can choose to employ. Simply because you have a Facebook page doesn’t mean that Facebook ads are always going to be the best answer to every advertising decision. Your ideal customer may range in age from 25-65. Facebook Ads might be excellent at reaching 25-44 year olds, but a different method of advertising may get your product or service in front of more eyeballs of the older half of that age range.

Here are a couple examples.

(To view the report of an existing or past ad campaign, visit your Ads Manager, select that campaign, and then click on the “View Report” button.)

In the screen that opens, choose “Edit Columns“.

The box that pops up gives you the opportunity to select or deselect all kinds of data breakdowns. For the purposes of this example, we’re going to select “Age” from the “Data Breakdowns” dimension (these ads was targeted to Females only).

You’ll see that the report refreshes to include the changes/additions you just made.

You can rearrange the columns in the report by dragging and dropping.

In the example above, you can see that the 45 and older Facebook users had a higher click-through rate than the 25-44 year olds. However, the cost per 1,000 impressions and people grew significantly higher the older the Facebook user got.

Here’s another example. In this ad, you’ll see that all age brackets besides 18-24 had an above average click-through rate. Also, note that the cost per click rates were comparable with the exception of the 18-24 year old bracket. However, you’ll see that the majority of the Reach and the bulk of the clicks were made by women who are 25-44, with 45-54 year old women also responding pretty well.

This is a great example of why you need to look beyond just the overall click-through rate and overall cost per click to decide how to best target customers ages 55 and older. Sure, the click-through rate is a lot higher than the younger age breakouts; however, if you are trying to reach a significant number of people in the the older demographic, a different advertising or marketing tactic may be a better option for you.

It’s wonderful that Facebook provides these additional data points to help you understand your current ads better, build better future ads, and make smarter strategic advertising and marketing decisions. Knowing where and how to dig deeper into your Facebook Ads reports will help you to be a better, more effective business owner.