How much does social media advertising cost? This question will have an answer similar to what many questions in marketing have; it depends. Now, what does it depend on? To answer this question, in this article we analyze the advertising rates on social networks according to some studies carried out on the matter. For this guide, we’ve prioritized Facebook and Instagram as the top social networks that are highly worth creating and running ad campaigns on.
To talk about advertising budgets, we must start from understanding that your digital ad campaigns work from a minimum daily budget or a total budget for a certain period of time (configured by the advertiser himself), on the other hand, the cost can be based on metrics such as impressions, clicks, likes, reproductions, physical visits or even conversions and sales. Let’s start with the list of average ad budgets for Facebook and Instagram in 2023.
Average ad budgets for Facebook and Instagram
Facebook and Instagram Ads charge in different currencies, but for practical purposes, we will express the costs in US dollars.
Clarification: It is worth mentioning that these prices are approximate and are not intended to be more than a point of reference for advertisers, these prices may vary depending on different factors such as the industry, temporality, trends, among others. Learn more approximate prices of these and more social networks in this article on social media advertising costs in 2023.
CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions, is a bidding option for advertisers looking to increase the visibility of their ads without thinking as much about clicks, it’s worth keeping this metric in mind when calculating the rate of people who click on your ads based on the views they receive.
- Facebook: $7.19 per 1,000 impressions
- Instagram: $7.91 per 1,000 impressions
CPC, or cost per click, is a bidding option for advertisers looking to increase the number of clicks (or visits) their ads receive. Companies often prioritize researching the average CPC by industry when analyzing and projecting their advertising costs.
- Facebook: 0.97 per click
- Instagram: 3.56 per click
In addition to CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (Cost per click), companies usually measure other important indicators in their advertising campaigns on social networks, for example Cost per Like (CPL) or Cost per view (CPV), Depending on the business objectives we can talk about Cost per Lead (CPL as well), Cost per acquisition (CPA) and Return on advertising spending (ROAS).
How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
In the words of Facebook itself : You tell Facebook how much you want to spend on advertising. We will try to provide you with as many results as possible for the specified amount. If you want to spend $5 per week, you can. If you want to spend 50,000 USD, you can do that too.
The way in which Facebook Ads charges is defined in two different ways; the total amount of money that you want to invest or the cost of each result that you obtain with your campaign, results such as impressions, clicks, likes, reproductions, physical visits or even conversions and sales.
Other ways in which Facebook allows you to control the investment you make in your advertising campaigns are the following settings:
- Campaign spending limit: It allows you to configure the total amount of money you want to invest in an entire advertising campaign during the time it is activated, it is worth mentioning that this campaign activity time can be configured yourself.
- Account spending limit: Allows you to configure the total amount of money that you want to invest in all the advertising campaigns that you have activated since the charge will be made from the total amount of money that you configure as available in your Facebook advertising account.
- Bid spending limit: You can set a bid value for your ads to be displayed or set a specific budget for Facebook to manage in the best possible way, seeking to get the best results from your campaigns.
Facebook, as an advertising platform, works with an algorithm that auctions the way ads are displayed within its platform, thus allowing the execution of a bidding strategy to help advertisers obtain better results based on the objectives of their campaigns. bells.
Here are some approximate costs of different metrics in Facebook campaigns.
Average cost per click (CPC) of Facebook ads by month of the year in 2023
A comparative report shows us the approximate cost per click of Facebook ads by month of the year:
- January: $0.30
- February: $0.33
- March: $0.42
- April: $0.46
- May: $0.44
- June: $0.47
- July: $0.46
- August: $0.47
- September: 0.5 USD
According to this report, the average cost per click for Facebook ads across all industries is $0.44, slightly more than last year’s $0.38.
Facebook ads Cost Per Click (CPC) by Campaign type in 2023
According to studies, the average cost per click across all campaigns over the past year is $1.01, a slight increase from last year’s $0.97.
- Brand awareness: 2.32 USD
- Lead Generation: $1.74
- Traffic: 0.43 USD
- Conversions: $1.33
Average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) of Facebook ads by Industry
According to some studies, the average cost per lead on Facebook ads across all industries is $19.68.
- Beauty and fitness: 38.33 USD
- Business and industry: 23.80 USD
- Finance: $41.28
- Food and drink: 12.91 USD
- Hobbies and leisure: 21.99 USD
- Home & Garden: 44.23 USD
- Internet and telecommunications: 29.95 USD
- Jobs and Education: 18.36 USD
- News: $56.89
- People and society: 33.21 USD
- Pets: 15.29 USD
- Real estate: 16.52 USD
- Science: $12.67
As we have already mentioned previously, all these costs are approximate estimates based on different studies that have been carried out in this regard, which is why it is highly probable that there will be variations in said costs given different variables that we must not leave aside, variables that allow us to keep such prices in context.
Context that is necessary given that, as we have already mentioned, social advertising platforms work mainly from auctions and bids to display ads, for this reason, the variables that determine the price of your ads on social networks are many, among which we can mention:
- Temporality of your advertising campaigns
- Date, day and time of activity of your ads
- Number of users you target with your ads
- Target geographic locations of your ads
- Relevance and quality of your ads
- Industry, professional and work context to which you are addressing
All of these variables (and more) can make ads in one sector or industry more expensive than in others.
How to Reduce the Costs of Facebook Ads
Here are 4 ideas that can help you optimize the costs of your Facebook ads:
- Support your advertising strategy with the creation of sales funnels, that is, create appropriate ads for each stage of the funnel in which your customers are and that respond to your business objectives.
- Use the automatic placement settings, Facebook promises to optimize your advertising budget to offer you better results, trusting its algorithm may be a good idea to start your campaigns
- Use the pixel and remarketing campaigns, effective measurement allows the execution of effective campaigns, once you gather enough data, also create remarketing campaigns to reach people who visited your Landing Pages, that is, who were interested in your offer and promote the conversion
- Do not stop experimenting, carry out A/B tests to validate commercial hypotheses and discover what works best for your campaigns, try making changes to the titles, texts, images and videos of your ads. What you want to discover is what attracts the attention of your users in a better way.