We end up writing a lot more about the established social platforms than I’d like, but the truth is that as an organization, we come to it honestly. We spend as much time as we do on the more mature social networks because, over the past year, they’ve managed to grow somehow increasingly predictable. That stability has become something I value in a platform.

Over the last few years, one of the most consistent elements of working with the next generation of publishing platforms has been change. New has become the standard.

The trouble with this is, over time, useful tactics stop being so — and I can’t think of any contemporary case where this is more evident than the fact of off Facebook link click ads.

There are several great articles about why you might want to start exploring the power of platform side loading techniques like Instant or AMP. While I could use this post to advocate for the benefits of faster load times across your advertising funnel, I wanted to suggest instead one thing to consider when you’re evaluating Facebook CTRs.

When you log into the ads platform frequently, there’s a good chance you’ll get into the habit of reconfiguring your default views to show you exactly what you generally prefer.

There’s an equally good chance that in doing this, you’ll entirely miss the “breakdowns,” button, which is just off to the side near where the report export features are.

Missing that button is a shame, as in missing this breakdown, you’ll also be neglecting one of the best tools you’ve got for diagnosing misbehaving Facebook click ads.

One of the more common explanations I see is out of control location targeting. The breakdown menu will make short work of this sort of problem. By selecting from the location options in the menu list, you’ll be able to quickly access a report of the markets in which your Facebook ads are performing, and where they are underserving.

Knowing that one or two regions are dragging down your costs gives you a good bit of insight that can further refine your approach.

It won’t work in every circumstance but from time to time you may find breakdowns is just the insight you need to keep from yelling about Facebook CTRs.