How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

by | Jul 30, 2019 | Facebook advertising

How Much Do Facebook Ads CostOne of the big questions I hear from businesses who want to advertise on Facebook or Instagram is “How much do Facebook Ads cost?”
That is a challenging question that depends on so many factors:
 
1. How the ad is optimized – traffic, conversion, reach, video views, etc.
2. The industry or niche – a dentist is going to get a different response than someone who works with B2B marketing.
3. The placement – Facebook News Feed can be very different from Instagram Story placement or Messenger.
4. The creative – having compelling text or images or video is going to make a big difference on how the Ad does.
5. The targeting – if you target a wide audience you will have different costs then if you target a narrow audience or local audience.
 
Ultimately, you need to determine your own baseline costs with testing and then work to bring those costs down by improving your ads, targeting, placements etc.
Also, you can spend even just a little bit on Facebook Ads and have them be effective.  Your related question may be “How should I set my budget for Facebook Ads?” and that can also depend on a lot of factors including your overall marketing budget and where you are in your business.

General Facebook Ad Costs

You can spend as little as $5 or $10 on Facebook ads and still accomplish a marketing goal you have but typically you need to spend a little more to fully test your Facebook Ads.

You also have to be careful of comparing yourself to “industry averages” because those may be skewed with different types of marketers with big budgets or more advanced tactics.

But with those caveats in mind, you probably still want to know what’s “normal” so that you have something to shoot for.

One of my favorite resources for general ad costs is AdEspresso’s Understanding Facebook Ad Costs post.

Here are a couple highlights of the numbers that are most interesting.

Facebook Ads Cost 2019 by Objective

Another great source for information on average Facebook Ad Cost is Wordstream’s Facebook Advertising Benchmarks for Your Industry

Average CPC Facebook Ads by Industry

Split Test Your Facebook Ads to Get the Lowest Costs

While benchmarks are good, I often see very different results because we are optimizing the ad differently.

To improve your results you have to split test your ads to see what works best for you.

Split Test Your Facebook Ads

When you do this, you’ll have an ad or audience that will perform better and you can turn off the ads that are not performing as well.

Facebook Ad costs are increasing in general but Facebook is still one of the best places to advertise online.

Want more great tips on running Facebook ads?  Grab my Facebook Ads Made Simple book now!

Facebook Ads Made Simple