One of the most burning questions any advertiser asks themselves is: “How much should I be paying for my Facebook Ads?”
As you’ll soon see, the only true answer is “It depends.”
The truth of the matter is that your costs will vary depending on the month, day, hour, and location (and those are just a fraction of the variables at play).
As an advertising platform, AdEspresso has managed over $636 million in ad spend. In this article, we’ll use this information to provide you Facebook Ad cost averages for 2019 and Q1-3 of 2020.
We’ll also include the previous year’s information to give you a leg up on the competition!
And yes, you will NOT FIND these Facebook Ads Cost benchmarks anywhere else!
Before you read any further, keep in mind that this article will not tell you exactly how much your specific campaign is going to cost, but it will give you some benchmarks to set your own KPIs.
If you are interested to know how much you need to spend to achieve your own targets, you can use our handy Ads Cost Calculator to do so.
In this 2019/2020 edition of our Facebook Ads cost, we’ll cover:
We’ll cover differences based on the month, day of the week, and hour of the day. We’ll also explain the top factors involved in the cost of advertising with Facebook and the steps you can take to reduce them.
If you’d like a shareable guide for your colleagues or clients, you can download our PDF of this study. It contains all the 2019 and 2020 benchmarks for Facebook Ad costs you see here.
How Does the Bidding Process Work on Facebook?
Before we go into costs, it’s important that we take a second to talk about the bidding process.
Because advertising on Facebook is more like an auction house than a guaranteed bet, there will always be a change in your cost that you cannot control. However, you can set the odds in your favor by using smart bidding strategies.
When you create a campaign, you can adjust your bid on the pricing and bidding section. If you don’t, Facebook will automatically calculate a bid for you based on your budget and how long you choose to have your ad run.
As we mentioned before, it’s important to remember that this is an auction and you are bidding against every other advertiser on the platform. This means that at any given time you have hundreds upon hundreds of other advertisers all going for the eyes of Facebook users.
Ensuring you have a good bidding strategy in place will allow you to remain competitive, and give your ads a better shot at delivery.
There are a large number of factors that can affect how much your Facebook Ads cost, and bids are only one of them.
These factors can include:
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The timing.
The month of the year, the day of the week, and even the specific hour of the day can affect ad costs. There are peak times and when the competition is highest, the costs go up.
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Your bidding strategy.
Whether you select the lowest cost or choose a specific bid cap can ultimately determine your ad delivery and cost.
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The placement you choose.
Different ad placements will have different costs – the more competition a certain placement has, the higher the cost.
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Relevance metrics.
Facebook has 3 separate metrics to determine the quality of your ad – Engagement Ranking, Quality Ranking, and Conversion Ranking. Having a low score in any of these areas will increase your costs.
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The audience you’re targeting.
If other advertisers are trying to reach the same audience members, costs go up as newsfeed space is not unlimited.
At the end of this post, we’ll link some resources to help you decrease your Facebook ads costs by addressing some of the issues we mentioned above.
Facebook Ads Cost: AdEspresso 2019 and 2020 Benchmarks
Now that we’ve got a clear idea of how the bidding system works and what factors currently are most heavily affecting the cost of our Facebook Ads, let’s take a look at the data.
This data was pulled from all AdEspresso users from all quarters of 2019 and the first three quarters of 2020, we converted all currencies to USD.
While all the statistics in this post are coming from real campaigns, you should be using these numbers only as a reference or a guideline.
Now, onto the good stuff!
Cost Per Click Results
This data reflects the average Cost per Click for 2019 and 2020.
This information is limited to campaigns with website clicks or website conversions as the objective unless otherwise noted. The currency is in USD.
Cost Per Click by Month – 2019
The average CPC rose from $0.31 in 2018 to $0.45 in 2019. The reason behind this increase lies in the supply and demand of ad space. The thing is: Facebook has more demand for ad space than it can supply. And what happens when demand exceeds supply?
You guessed right—costs increase, and that’s exactly what happened to Facebook CPC. Now, because the average CPC in the year 2019 was $0.45, one might expect a further increase for the year 2020. Well, that’s not quite the case.
As of September 2020, the CPC average stands at $0.39.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused panic among a lot of business owners who had to decrease their ad spend almost immediately. For this reason, the ad cost has been lower from March 2020 till September. It’s safe to assume that the 2020 average will be lower even if we don’t take Q4 into consideration.
Now, let’s rewind back to the year 2017. The average CPC in 2017 was $0.40, and now, in 2020, it’s $0.39. If the CPC of the fourth quarter of 2020 increases the aggregate for this year, we can assume that the average CPC for this year will approximately be near to that of 2017.
So, what was the magnitude of the price fluctuation caused by the coronavirus pandemic? Well, not much.
Take a look at the stats for April 2020. This is when the biggest drop occurred and the CPC came down to $0.33, which is 10 cents lower as compared to April 2019. Percentage-wise, the drop was 23%, which is substantial, but not as drastic as many claimed it was.
Cost Per Click by Month – 2020
Most importantly, if you look at the 2020 graph, it looks like the cost-per-click peaked in February 2020. However, this is not the case. In reality, it’s just that there was an unprecedented drop between the months of March and May 2020. So, the peak is an illusion, but the drop is real.
Cost Per Click by Day of the Week – 2019
In both 2019 and 2020, the CPC tends to be slightly cheaper during the weekend. At least, in this case, these two years have something in common. However, there’s one interesting trend that needs to be discussed.
Changes between weekday and weekend CPC got smaller during the COVID-19 peak. In 2019, the fluctuation in cost-per-click between weekdays and weekend days was up to ten cents, and in 2020, it was just two-three cents.
The reason behind this is simple.
The lockdown made Facebook users forget the difference between weekdays and weekends. Every day was the weekend because apart from essential workers, no one was going to the office and everyone was inside their homes spending lots of time on social media.
Cost Per Click by Day of the Week – 2020
In both 2019 and 2020, the CPC tends to be slightly cheaper during the weekend. At least, in this case, these two years have something in common. However, there’s one interesting trend that needs to be discussed.
Changes between weekday and weekend CPC got smaller during the COVID-19 peak. In the year 2019, the fluctuation in cost-per-click between weekdays and weekend days was up to ten cents, and in 2020, it was just two-three cents.
But even if it wasn’t for the pandemic, the CPC during the weekend would still be lower than weekdays. Again, it’s all about supply and demand. The number of advertisers remains almost the same throughout the week, but the number of active social media users increases on the weekend which increases the size of the ad space and makes the CPC more affordable.
That being said, the day of the week should not be a deciding factor when setting up your Facebook ads campaign. You should rather strategize your campaign based on the nature of your business and high-demand seasons in your industry.
Cost Per Click by Hour of the Day – 2019
In the 2020 graph, we can see another created trend by the pandemic. As each quarter passed, the evening hours became more and more affordable. Here are the most expensive hours for every quarter in 2020:
- Q1 – 8 AM – 11 PM
- Q2 – 7 AM – 7 PM
- Q3 – 9 AM – 5 PM
Because of the Q3 numbers, the shape of the CPC-by-hour graph is slowly taking a bell curve.
In 2018, the hours between 8 AM to 10 PM were the most expensive. In 2019, the costly hours started a couple of hours late, meaning that the hours between 10 AM to 10 PM were the most expensive ones.
And in 2020, the expensive hours all happen to be daytime hours between 9 AM to 5 PM. Yes, you’re right. It is because of the pandemic.
Again, your approach to CPC-by-hour should depend upon the nature of your business. For example, ice creams and cold drinks are more likely to sell when it’s hot outside. People are more likely to order fast food on Friday nights.
Cost Per Click by Hour of the Day – 2020
You should understand how seasonality affects your customer’s behavior. Their buying cycle should also be taken into consideration. You should consider the CPC by Hour investment only after you have analyzed the former points.
For example, if you decide to run Facebook ads to sell air conditioners during cold months just because the CPC is cheaper, then you’ll probably end up wasting your ad spend because the demand for air conditioners is low during winter. The same logic applies to all other businesses.
Cost Per Click by Campaign Objective – 2019
For the past few years, the CPC for every single campaign objective has been on the rise (source). But not in 2020, as you might have already expected looking at the usual trends for this year.
Even for the CPC by campaign objective metric, the cost seems to decrease month by month, just like other CPC-related metrics. If you compare the campaign objective CPC of 2019 with that of 2020, you’ll find that it is lower across the board for the latter year. Literally, every single objective is more affordable this year.
After doing a rigorous analysis of CPC costs around campaign objectives, we conclude that it’s really important for the advertisers to have clear intent when it comes to the goal of the campaigns.
Your campaign objective should be determined by the stage of the funnel your potential customer is in. Using the wrong objective might result in unnecessarily high ad costs. From our years of experience, we can say with certainty that when it comes to driving traffic, impressions and reach objectives come with the highest cost.
Cost Per Click by Campaign Objective – 2020
Simply put, you get the least amount of people clicking through using incorrect objectives. However, if you use the right objective at the right time, you’ll most likely see the expected results. You’d be delighted to know that CPC for the conversion campaign objective has been decreasing for three consecutive quarters in 2020.
But keeping the 2019 and 2018 stats in mind, expect an increase in CPC in Q4 of 2020. It’ll probably be lower than in 2019 though, as the CPC for conversion objective for every quarter of 2020 has been approximately 50% lower when compared to 2019.
Cost Per Like Results
Running a campaign for page likes can be valuable in certain situations; it can get you followers quickly, however, it can also be a huge resource drain if done inefficiently.
This data shows the findings of all campaigns created with the Page Like objective in 2019 and Q1-3 of 2020.
Cost Per Like by Month – 2019
Having its lowest point in April, the cost-per-like metric follows a pattern similar to that of CPC. Even though the average cost-per-like for 2020 ($0.20) is currently lower than the 2019 average ($0.22), and Q4 of 2020 is yet to finish, it’s safe to predict that the cost-per-like will stay stable for this year.
However, the cost-per-like increased from $0.16 in 2018 to $0.22 in 2019—which is quite a noticeable difference.
Cost Per Like by Month – 2020
Did you want to improve your online social proof by getting more likes on your page? Well, even if you missed the opportunity during March, April, and May, there’s an opportunity for you right now.
During the last month, September 2020, the cost-per-like was a measly $0.15, which is significantly lower than what it was in 2019, and even lower than September 2018. So, if you want to increase your page following, then right now might be the best time to do it.
Cost Per Like by Day of the Week – 2019
Well, this one’s a bit tricky. Looking at the patterns for different quarters of the year 2020, it’s hard to categorize days as expensive or affordable.
Cost Per Like by Day of the Week – 2020
In Q1 2020, Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were the most expensive days, leaving Tuesday and Wednesday as the most affordable days to generate page likes.
In Q2, however, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were the most affordable days of the week. While in Q3, the weekend seems to be the most affordable when it comes to page likes.
The pattern is weak and unpredictable, so it’s best not to rely upon the day of the week and let Facebook handle it. It’s not wise at this point to spend time strategizing the best days to get the most page likes.
Cost Per Like by Hour of the Day – 2019
Luckily, CPL by Hour is a bit more predictable as compared to CPL by day of the week. Turns out that during Q1 of 2020, the cost-per-like by Hour was astronomically high with 12:00 AM being the most expensive time.
Unlike Q1, Q2 and Q3 had the cheapest CPL by hour during night time. Starting from 11 PM in the night, these affordable rates were available until around 11 AM in the morning. A nice 12-hour window for ad managers who wanted to increase Facebook page likes.
Cost Per Like by Hour of the Day – 2020
As opposed to CPC, CPL by Hour has a significant variation between quarters. However, during the first quarters of both 2019 and 2020, the cost-per-like was most expensive during night time.
Cost Per App Install
Facebook Ads can be exceptionally effective when you want to increase mobile app installs. This data is limited to campaigns that used the objectives “Mobile App Installs” from 2019 and 2020.
Cost Per App Install by Month – 2019
Metrics like cost-per-click and cost-per-like are important while considering customers who are at the top or middle of the funnel. But cost-per-install is only relevant when targeting the customers who are in the BOFU stage.
Having people install your application through Facebook ads is equivalent to closing a sale. For this reason, cost-per-install tends to be a bit more expensive as compared to other metrics.
Keeping the pandemic in mind, most people would guess that the CPI for 2020 might be much lower than in 2019. However, it’s kind of the opposite. The average CPI in 2019 was $1.45, but in 2020, it went all the way up to $3.40, which is more than twice as compared to 2019.
Cost Per App Install by Month – 2020
It’s not surprising that the CPI was high during summer. The same thing happened in 2019, and the years before that. Maybe because people tend to unplug from social media and enjoy the outdoors during summer.
This might increase the demand and limit the supply, as explained before. However, 2020 has been a bit different, as usual. Surprisingly, the CPI fell to a record low in July and August. First of all, it’s odd that it was so low during the summer. And on top of that, the costs were lower as compared to the same months in 2019.
It’ll be interesting to follow how CPI changes in Q4 of 2020. Will it go up or down during the holiday season? Time shall tell. Generally, it’s the retailers who spend a large amount on ads during Q4. But keeping the pandemic in mind, it’s hard to predict it confidently.
Summary of 2019/2020 Data (Overall)
If you’re looking for an abbreviated version of everything we just said, here’s a quick summary of our findings:
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of business owners decreased their ad spend, which is why the ad cost has been lower from March 2020 till September.
- Changes between weekday and weekend CPC got smaller during the COVID-19 peak.
- Because of the pandemic, daytime hours were the most expensive for advertisers in 2020.
- The CPC for Conversion Campaign Objective has been decreasing for three consecutive quarters in 2020.
- The cost-per-like in September 2020 was lower as compared to the same month in 2019 as well as in 2018.
- The pattern for cost-per-like by Day of the Week is unpredictable. For this reason, we recommend that you do not rely on this factor.
Want to take a look at our past findings on Facebook Ads cost? Keep on reading to check out our 2018 and 2019 study.
But first, download the whole Facebook Ads Cost 2020 eBook. It’s completely free!
Facebook Ads Cost: AdEspresso 2018 Benchmarks
Cost Per Click Results
This data reflects the average Cost per Click for 2018 and Q1 of 2019.
This information is limited to campaigns with website clicks or website conversions as the objective unless otherwise noted. The currency is in US dollars.
Cost Per Click by Campaign Objective – 2018
On average the CPC rises throughout the year for impressions, reach and clicks, as the overall volume of ad spend increases towards the holiday season.
However, for performance marketing – leads and clicks – the prices go down as the year progresses.
Cost Per Click by Campaign Objective – 2019 Q1
The CPC for conversions has seen a reduction for four consecutive quarters, dropping from $2.55 in Q1 2018 to $0.55 in 2019. This is great news for anyone doing performance marketing, where your aim is to get leads or purchases instead of brand awareness.
Last year, some advertisers were experimenting with optimizing for link clicks instead of conversions because of the high CPC for conversion campaigns.
With the current low price, it makes sense for a majority of conversion campaigns to be optimized for conversions, with optimizing for traffic only used for remarketing campaigns with small audiences.
Cost Per Click by Month – 2018
In December 2018, CPC peaked at 44 cents, nearly three times the lowest price in 2016. 😮 This tells us is that we can no longer rely on cheap clicks and the sheer volume of traffic to achieve our marketing goals.
We also need to consider running lead generation ads to nurture leads with an email sequence, making it cheaper than relying on Facebook ads when it comes to retargeting.
Not sure what lead magnet works best for you? Check our Lead Magnet Guide here.
Cost Per Click by Month – 2019 Q1
As expected, the overall cost per click dropped at the beginning of the year after the peak costs incurred by the holiday season.
However, the chart above shows us that the costs are already rising again. This means that we should expect this theme to continue throughout 2019 and beyond as advertisers invest more of their marketing budget on Facebook.
Cost Per Click by Day of the Week – 2018
Although it’s only a weak trend, we can see that the cost per click is slightly cheaper over the weekend.
A likely explanation for this is that people have more time during weekends to browse their social feeds and pay attention to the posts, resulting in users clicking and engaging with more of your content.
Cost Per Click by Day of the Week – 2019 Q1
In 2019 the trend of clicks being cheaper during the weekend continues.
However, with the difference only being less than 5 cents, this shouldn’t be the most important factor in deciding your campaign schedules
Cost Per Click by Hour of the Day – 2018
Daytime is more expensive and the early hours of the morning are the cheapest for clicks.
Be careful with the way you interpret these results though, as the volume of traffic will be smaller overnight.
Unless you have a very small budget, it’s worth paying the daytime premium as the number of users online are far higher.
Cost Per Click by Hour of the Day – 2019 Q1
As we saw in 2018, the overnight CPC lower, but there will be far less volume – which means we cannot rely on nighttime traffic alone to reach our marketing objectives
With mobile device usage on the rise (now accounting for 93% of Facebook ad volume) and some countries like the US having multiple time-zones, we’re seeing more 24-hour connectivity. Using dayparting, even in B2B marketing, is no longer an option.
Cost Per Like Results
Running a campaign for page likes can be valuable in certain situations; it can you to get more followers quickly, however it can also be a huge resource drain if done inefficiently.
This data shows the findings of all campaigns created with the Page Like objective in 2018 and Q1 of 2019.
Cost Per Like by Month – 2018
The cost per like rises during the year, peaking during the holiday season.
If you want to build your brand for the long term, consider running your page like campaigns just during Q1 when prices are at their lowest, then in Q4 focus on conversion campaigns when it’s time to convert these fans into actual customers.
Cost Per Like by Month – 2019 Q1
By March of this year, the cost per like has already hit the peak level seen during 2018, and chances are it will go even higher as the year progresses – especially during the holiday season.
With organic reach for page followers going down, relying on Page Like campaigns to increase your organic reach is not as cost efficient as it once was
Cost Per Like by Day of the Week – 2018
As we mentioned above, getting page likes is generally a long term play so it’s good to keep the cost as low as possible.
We would advise considering running Page Like campaigns Saturday to Monday when pricing is lower, unless you need a very high volume of page likes.
Cost Per Like by Day of the Week – 2019 Q1
With only 3 cents difference between the cheapest and most expensive day of the week, deciding which day of the week to run Page Like campaigns is not an issue you need to worry yourself with
There will be more significant savings to be made by split testing your ads, or trying a range of different audiences
Cost Per Like by Hour of the Day – 2018
There’s a very strong trend for page likes to cost more during peak daytime hours. As with the CPC pricing, there will be a tradeoff as the early hours of the morning have a far lower number of users online
If you want to build up a fanbase slowly but cheaply, and are only using a low to moderate budget, it would be worth spending a majority of your budget overnight.
Cost Per Like by Hour of the Day – 2019 Q1
As we see in the chart above, not too much has changed in relation to the time of day tips from 2018.
In this case, we still recommend spending the majority of your budget overnight if you want to reduce your costs
Cost Per App Install
Facebook Ads can be exceptionally effective when you want to increase mobile app installs. This data is limited to campaigns that used the objectives “Mobile App Installs” from 2018 and Q1 2019.
Cost Per App Install by Month – 2018
The Q4 spike is to be expected, as Facebook Ad pricing rises due to the large amounts being spent by retailers. But why do July and August see an increase?
This is just anecdotal, but during the summer people spend more time outdoors or on vacay. So they’re not looking to install games and spend hours playing Candy Crush!
Cost Per App Install by Month – 2019 Q1
Although 2019 started off with cheaper app install prices than in Q4 2018, so far this year the price has been rising month over month.
It’s too early to spot any trends, but definitely keep an eye on your app install costs as there’s a chance it could keep on increasing throughout the year.
Are app install campaigns still going to be sustainable as we get into the 2019 holiday season? We’ll find out soon enough. 🙂
Cost Per App Install by Hour of the Day- 2018
There’s not a clear hourly trend, but the graph reinforces the conclusion above that app installs cost more in Q3 and Q4
For Apps using a “freemium” model, consider spending more of the yearly budget in the first half of the year, and reduce it during the second half when Facebook ads get more expensive due to getting saturated with eCommerce ads
Cost Per App Install by Hour of the Day- 2019 Q1
Once again, we’re seeing the same results as 2018 for hourly app installs.
We still recommend spending more early on, and reducing your ad spend during the peak costs in Q3 and Q4
Summary of 2018/2019 Data (Overall)
If you’re looking for an abbreviated version of everything we just said, here’s a quick summary of our findings:
- The CPC for conversion campaigns has decreased four consecutive quarters. Optimizing for conversions with Conversion objective campaigns is recommended
- Overall, the day of the week has little effect on the cost per click
- While the nighttime price for CPC is lower, the traffic is much smaller. This means using dayparting is not as effective as it once was
- The cost per page like has been on an increasing monthly trend from 2018 into 2019 – now more than ever is the time to nail down your page like strategy
- As with the CPC, the cost per page like has little change by day of the week
- Although 2019 started off with cheaper app install prices than in Q4 2018, 2019 has seen a monthly increase. Keep an eye on your app install costs as we draw closer to Q4
Final Thoughts
If you’ve made it to the end of this post, congratulations – you’re now a Facebook cost analyst. 🙂
As we mentioned before, there are plenty of factors that can affect how much you’ll be paying for Facebook ads, including your audience, relevance scores, and bidding strategies
If you want to decrease your overall Facebook ad costs, we recommend optimizing your target audience, improving your ad relevance metrics, and studying up on the latest bidding strategies for starters!
Madis Birk is an independent Facebook Ads Consultant. A lean, mean, growth-focused Facebook advertising plug-in to your existing A-team. A digital marketing expert integrable into your winning strategy. If you want to get in touch with Madis, you can find him by going to www.madisbirk.com.
Great Article about some thoughts never read anywhere else.
I would also love to know how FB deals the target group “roll out” on each new (but same target group) campaign.
Assuming I start a new campaign each week, will always the the same first people in my target group see the new Ad – or will the people be mixed by random?
Hi Ana,
Could you please share how we can get Facebook invoicing as a payment method instead of a credit card? Please guide.
Once you start spending enough money ( tens of thousands of dollars per month but it change by country ) you’ll qualify to get a Facebok Rep following you and you can ask them to open a credit line if that’s what you meant!
There are only two Facebook blogs that I make a point of reading and paying attention too. One of them is AdExpresso.
My criteria; get one actionable idea from a post. In this AdEspresso never disappoints.
Thanks.
From a big fan
Darryl
Thanks Darryl! We do our best to keep the quality high and always provide value in each post!
Is there a way to post ads based on geofencing in Facebook?
What’s the other Darryl?
Great article and insight to see how you stack up against the average! Thank you!
Thanks, Serg!
Wow– another really impressive data analysis from AsEspresso. I’m bookmarking this for referencing when I setup my next campaign.
Also, it’s good to hear that Facebook has restored truer split-testing. That update slipped by me.
Thanks Massimo, this is a super article! Just last week, I was asking your team why I was experiencing such a large difference between the CPC in Spain and in New Zealand, for essentially the same type of advertising. Do you have enough data to say where New Zealand would be on the country graph, or even to give a guess?
Hey Ewan, New Zealand is crazy expensive on average 😛 the average CPC is $0.54 (based on > $400,000 of adspent)
Thanks For the Article,
I want to start a campaign, I will target 6 European Countries:
England,Germany,France,Netherlands,Austria,Switzerland.
and 1 OP Country
Australia.
My Question is, How Can I create each image for each country, Because For Each country I will put there country flag on the imge, I think it will work better than Non-affiliation image.
Second Question how much the a verage cost will be based about European coutries .
thank you so much
Hey David, you’ll have to create one AdSet and on Ad for each country to do this kind of campaign.
Ad for the cost you can see the averages in the post 🙂
Hey quick question,
I have started tons of ads… and recently I did one targeting video views (from a video ad I ran before). So I did a normal (conversion goal) ad using an image and it started out amazing getting me .40 cent leads. I figured it would lower raise and not stay at this and it did. However I figured worst case scenario it would still stay around $1.00 or even less. But my ads ALWAYS just keep on rising and rising….
To the point where they became useless and they cost around $2.00 now… And I’m targeting 250,000 with not much money per day so it’s not like there would be ad fatigue.
Any ideas?
thanks
What was the frequency Joseph? Even if the audience is big sometimes it may be very competitive and you may be able to reach only a small percentage of it.
Also Facebook takes in accounts many factors. If they considered your ads’ performances below the average or received negative feedback that would negatively influence your costs
Thanks for this Massimo, really great article. I’m loving your site so far, one of the best places to get information on Facebook Ads.
I have a question though. I’ve been running Facebook Ads for a client, and when I run multiple ads within an ad set (totally different copy and images, this is a Post Engagement Campaign), only one of them seems to be delievered. Read through your article and you mentioned Facebook is supposedly distributing ads within ad sets more evenly. Would like to know what you think about this.
Thanks, Massimo!
Hey Reinart, Thanks, glad you liked the article!
The announced some month ago that they were going to start distributing impressions more evenly but I agree that often this is not happening.
If you want to test more reliably the design you’ll have to create one ad per adset so each design has its own allocated budget 🙁
Great article and helped clarify a few things.
I have noticed the past week or two that the cost to covert is higher than normal. I am assuming this is because of superbowl week. Just like the Xmas season. Anyone else seeing this?
thanks!
From personal experience and data collection. Facebooks ads are not as effective as they used to be. Even when they did “work” facebook ads drove engagement and visibility. Both of which are a very roundabout inefficient way to get “sales” (if that is your goal). It’s like being a girl’s friend and doing chores for her before asking her out. The direct approach is more efficient and effect.
HOWEVER, facebook ads Used to be great for Social Currency. SMM branding may not results in sales as well as a direct marketing campaign, but social currency has intrinsic value. Not financial value, but intrinsic social feel-good value. That is important, it’s not always about $ profit.
NOW, as of Feb 2016. FB ads get a LOT of impressions at a pretty good cpm. But the engagement is weaker than it used to be, and I’ve found this across many clients in several categories. Even major ones. Still the cheapest CPC on the market, but that “click” may be a video view or a pic view or a very useless page view. Likes/Shares/Comments etc. are hard to come by these days from sponsored posts.
In fact, with one major client we tested out not making any posts whatsoever. NOT only not advertising But not even having any FB activity at all for a period of time. Did not make a difference one bit. Well, except their profits went Up because they weren’t spending on social media. But even from a social currency/branding standpoint – no difference.
It seems that facebook is for users. period. If we want to get the word out about something we need to find a better place to do it. So FB is dying in that sense.
Hey Andy, thanks for weighing in your personal experience.
I personally don’t agree and the data we have show a pretty different story honestly. Simply, like every marketing channel, Facebook is no longer the cash cow it used to be for early movers.
With more advertisers jumping on board (either because it works or because they’re all crazy) getting great results requires more skills and it’s more expensive than before. It’s the natural evolution of every channel:
If a brand doesn’t see any decrease in performances from abandoning a marketing channel then that’s probably the right thing to do. But given that more and more advertisers (small and big) are moving budget from Google to Facebook, I’d seriously question my strategy so far if it didn’t generate any result at all.
Thank you Andy. So what is your strategy right now for clients? Are you back to Google? Thank you.
If I understand the article then the cost can vary hourly over a 24 hour period depending the varying factors mentioned.
It would seem ads would have much more engagement during hours of leisure rather than say during working hours where one quickly catches up with friend posts rather than take up limited time on a break. Correct or no?
The cost can change for sure based on days and hours but right now in this post we’ve not released any data on the time/day distribution 🙂
Cheers,
Max
It helps to know the rules of the game before trying to jump in and compete. I expect to earmark a portion of my marketing budget for Facebook in the second quarter. Thanks for the information.
you need to re-evaluate your pricing. Facebook at increased its pricing in some areas (esp in the US) so that its 100 times more expensive now. I used to use facebook post boosts all the time. Now for what i used to spend 10-25 dollars on now cost over 500 to 1000 dollars on. how is it worth it to pay $20 per page like or conversion? Until fb comes down to reasonable pricing, i wouldn’t bother using it.
Mike we’ve analyzed hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook Ads and while prices are increasing as more advertisers are jumping on board, we never saw a 20x/40x increase. I’d rather think the product you’re promoting is saturated on Facebook on there are some other reasons for the price increase.
hi Max, im having the same issue as Mike. Do you have any idea where we can complain and log the issue?
Hi guys
I am running a Facebook ad. It is set up with the objective “Send people to your website”…and is to run on “Desktop News Feed” only.
I then choose the “Links clicks to your website option” and set it to automatic bidding for link click (CPC).
All I want to be charged for are clicks that go to me website…but I’m also being charged for clicks such as when someone “likes”, “shares”, and “comments” on my ad.
As a result Facebook is giving me two costs….it shows a cost per website click…and a cost per click for all clicks to the ad.
For example the ad I am currently running it shows that I have 36 website clicks and that the cost per click of these are $1.43. Then it also shows “Clicks (all) and that number is 62 and that the CPC is 0.83.
The issue here is this….I just want to be charged for clicks to my website only which in the example above would be for 36 clicks…but I am also being charged for 26 other clicks that are made up of “likes”, “shares”, and “comments”
What can be done to stop them from charging me for those 26 other clicks…and any clicks for “likes”, “shares”, and “comments”
Chaney I am about to start my third FB campaign for a non-profit and this is the question running through my mind. Let me know how this is going for you. I would like to add this for you to see: “The way clicks are measured has changed for some objectives. For website clicks and website conversions objectives, you can now choose to optimize and get charged for link clicks. Link clicks are clicks on your ad that takes people off Facebook. Other kinds of clicks on those ads will not be counted and you won’t be charged for them if you’ve chosen to be charged for link clicks.” ( From Jon Loomer )
use website conversions objective to acheive what you mentioned
I have a question. Recently I paused a large number of my adgroups for a few days. Since I have restarted them my CPI, CPM etc have increased on nearly all of them really drastically, around 50% more. Could this be because Facebook has started from scratch checking my CTR etc and not looking at all the history? If not, what could have caused this increase in cost? Thanks
Hey Debs, yes that may likely be the cause. Even if there’s nothing official about it, it’s likely that the history, even if not totally ignored after pausing your ads, may be considered less relevant and so the learning process restart.
If an ad variation is higher cost per click but getting a lot more clicks than the other variations, would you keep it running or turn it off?
This is a tough call. Stopping the ad that is getting most of the traffic does not guarantee that the traffic will be re-routed to better performing ads. And actually the low volume/high performance ad could see a decrease in performances if you drive more traffic to it.
I’d say it really depends on how big is the spread. If the high traffic one is much more expensive, I’d probably stop it. But this is a very personal decision 🙂
Hi Massimo
you said : ” And actually the low volume/high performance ad could see a decrease in performances if you drive more traffic to it”
Does this mean that if I have a good performing ad, it’s getting worse if I raise the budget?
How do I purchase your service? I am past the free trial!
Just Login in your old account and you’ll be redirected to the subscription page. If you did the trial a while ago you can open a support ticket and ask for few days more of trial!
Cheers,
Max
Ciao Massimo,
great post, however I think it misses statistics about average CPM (or CPV) for Video Ads by Country, that’s exactly why I landed here 🙂
I’m desperately searching around for this info, with no luck till now.
Is it something you can share?
Grazie 😉
Hey Valerio 🙂 We’ll try to add them in the next update for Q2!
This site is absolutely invaluable!! I was totally nervous about a Facebook ad campaign. After reading this I feel more confident in how to proceed effectively. Thank you!!
Glad to hear that Lena!
Hey there guys,
I came across this article looking for info on a recent price hike that I came across on a client site. The Q1 2016 and April 2016 dates were the closest I could find regarding pricing, to my current situation.
The issue I’ve got is we’re seeing rates of $6-$11 PER CLICK on average from Facebook. We set the ads up in May and I recorded all of the estimated CPCs there to estimate the budget breakdown and get the client team to sign off on. The prices in 3 weeks’ time have skyrocketed over 10X – from nearly everything under $1 to everything costing several dollars per click.
I’ve run campaigns for this client and others in the past and I’ve never seen anything like this on Facebook. Have you seen anything similar recently?
My only targeting is to exclude people who already engage with the brand, and I’ve segmented the ad groups by placement, so it should be broad enough that I’m not seeing jacked up rates for super specific targeting. Screencap of Facebook’s recommended prices vs our manual bid amount: http://screencast.com/t/8zjPZzomeCQ
Thanks for any insight and feedback.
So much great info in this post. I’m always getting asked this question by clients. Thanks for summarising it all for us to geek out over 🙂
Hey,
Nice Article.
Just wondering if you could elaborate a little on the even spend per weighted for each ad you’re testing in a an adset.
Do FB weight spend evenly for a certain time then optimise. I notice that some of my ads when testing are served twice as much as another, but have a poor CTR subsquently high CPC. While other ads have an excellent CTR, high relevance score and low CPC – yet FB still serve the other underperforming ad?
It’s like they optimise too early. Does anyone find this?
I’m doing paper for a college assignment and this site is kick ass I have to compare social media services to see which will be better to advertise on for my “Company” and provide a contrasting essay or Informal report to my “employer” so this site will at least give me a great start to figuring out which social media site is best and will get our company name and product to the right audience… thanks Ad Espresso if I use any of your info you will be cited and all credit to you.. Fb page was confusing thanks again
Thanks Quincy, we’re so glad to hear this post helped you!
I’ve just begun to educate myself about FB advertising. Would you please explain the difference between “CPI” and “Spend” in your “Hourly Cost Per App Install 2015-1016” chart? Why doesn’t “Spend” track “CPI”?
Great and in depth article, if I can add my 2 cents to the topic, I think the most important part to be successful in general with media buying/PPC is being granular. Yes it is a lot of work setting up one ad for one demographic group, targeting and lading page, but this is the only way for truly uncovering the best ads/keywords/landingpage/audience combinations. You don’t even have to spend thousands of dollars, just set up a small budget for each ad to get some impressions and first glimpse of performance and the optimize further.
Hi! Thanks for tracking and sharing the data. One thing I noticed is that Singapore dropped from being the most expensive country in Asia Pac in 2016 with CPC of ~$0.80+ almost 3X higher average. However, In Q2 2016, this dropped significantly to about $0.40, which is below average. Do you know what is driving this decline? YOU did mention in your post that CPC has declined, but from #1 to below average is a massive change. Thanks!
Hi Deborah,
Good eye! I’m not sure what caused such a massive dip in CPC for Singapore – it does seem out of the ordinary. I’ll be asking our Marketplace Services team about their theory on this!
Tim
Hi Tim,
Any update on the SG cpc? I’m from Malaysia so this data is actually quite surprising would like to know what they did to achieve this.
Hey Cyrus, these are aggregated data on thousands of advertisers, we cannot provide specific insights on what was done the campaigns.
Max
What about the massive discrepancy between what facebook calls a click and what google analytics calls a visitor? Shouldn;t this factor in?
And if so, is there an aprox. across the board premium (ie multiple ) that you could boil down from your research? For instance, in our case we see 3302 facebook clicks translate into 503 referrals in google analytics.
We see very few trackable conversions coming facebook however we assume that this traffic has “top of our funnel” value and we may gain sales from some sales from those visitors through retargeting.
If you have any thoughts or links on attribution models for this, that would also be appreciated!
Thanks!
Jeremy
Hey Jeremy, have a look at this article on fake clicks. We did a pretty comprehensive experiment on the discrepancies between Google Analytics and Facebook, hope it’s useful!
Thank you for a great post!
I am a new marketer and you just got a new fan 🙂
I would love to see an article about targeting for local/small businesses.
Thanks for this useful article.
I have one question.
Can you tell me how can I reach to maximum audience in less money. Means which country or location, age group, gender, etc have to select for maximum like or post engagement in my facebook page.
If you show any graph who tell maximum reach through country wise, age group wise, gender wise etc in fixed money (i.e. $5) then its good.
Thanks
Hi Massimo Chieruzzi.. geat work.. wanted to ask one thing..if i have a low budget ad runing and its performing well and i want to increae the budget but scale it rite how an i increase the budget of a good performing ad??
Any chances that the estimated number of likes (for Page promotion) will decrease if I compare same adverts published on a regular weekday VS the same advert published on a weekend? All of the choices remain the same (image, text description, demographics, etc) but I get different estimated number of likes on a Thurs vs a Friday.
AdEspresso articles seem to be invaluable, so many insights! I have a query and would be grateful for your thoughts:
If the ultimate objective is for people to create an account on your website, is it better to optimise the ads for conversions or website clicks?
Also, what’s the best objective to run video ads?
Great article, read it all the way through!
One complaint though –
“Cost per click (CPC): You are paying only for each user that clicks on your ad. They do not have to complete the conversion and purchase on your site or sign up on your landing page; they just have to click. That being said, you aren’t paying for users who viewed your ad and didn’t convert.” –>You say users don’t have to convert, yet you’re not paying for any users that visited the ad and didn’t convert. Sooo in reality, aren’t you effectively paying only for users that convert?
Thank you for publishing and sharing a much needed benchmark.
Just curious, did you see a strong correlation between CTR and relevance scores? From my much smaller data of a few million we saw that CTR had no statistical correlation, so I am wondering if it has to do with other factors.
Hi
Thx for the great article.
I have a question thought. What do think of dramatic variations on CPA, from one day to another, running exactly the same ad.
Example
Day 1 : CPA = 12,5€ (made 40 conversion and spent around 500€)
Relevance score = 4
Day 2 : CPA = 55 €, (made 3 conversions and campaign seem to stop delivering at 10 am… ).
Relevance score = 6 !
No changes made on the campaign beetween day 1 and day 2.
Note: i have been running the same campaign for 1 year with stable results from one day to another.
Since october I have variations like this almost every day (seems like there is no historiscal data used to optimize the delivery).
I use ocpm campaign.
No doubt, a great information.
Hi Ana,
I am running Facebook campaign from last two months, i just want to know “why Facebook campaign CPC (Bid) high on week days”, Please suggest me how to keep it same as weekdays.
Thanks
There is a easy way_Allavsoft which can download all facebook 360 videos and other Facebook videos to any video format with any video resolution.
It may sound odd, but we’ve found last year that the Page Category has an impact on CPCs. We discovered it by mistake, when we had to change the Page Category of one of our clients because it was not accurate. We had the surprise to see the CPC go up instantly.
We run the same experiment many times with other clients and saw the CPC fluctates everytime.
THX for Information
Hello,
Does anybody have a list of the lowest cost per click cities or zip codes in the U.S.?
Is there a limit on how much you should spend on each ad set? also what should your limit spend be per 1million people? example would it be pointless to spend 5k on reaching a million people etc..
This is fantastic info however i’m still left with the question i came here to solve, i am hoping this comment will help. Why is it that everyone keeps stating such low numbers when referring to optimising for conversions but when i create an audience of 11 million or 11 thousand of specific niches or completely broad i cant get the Facebook suggested bid price below $15 per conversion for multiple sites in multiple industries. It seems no mater how much i experiment to find how to get it as low as website clicks i just cant see a viable number. However everyone who is selling Facebook ads training or FB ads software states number in the cents range. If you could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers
Can Facebook tell me how many total US users have specified sur-names, based on a list of sur-names I provide? If they can tell me, can they then tell me the cost(s) of as Ad campaign to touch them?
Hey, great article!
Just wondering, do you have any specific data about video costs on FB? Would be nice to get a CPM benchmark for the video views objective. Anyone with a rough average?
Thanks
Hi! I live in Australia and I see the costs are much higher here. However it is not obvious from your graphs whether the cost is drawn from advertisers who run their business from Australia or the cost is for targeting Australians. In many cases this may be the same, but not always. Please could you clarify?
Lovely and great post here Josh. I am inclined to believe that this will work totally. Because I am giving it a trial ritght away. Some folks who claim to be expert suggested I target the high ranked countries like the US, UK Canada directly by duplicating post with 0.005$ CPC. But with this honest and sincere guide, it shows total truth without selfishness. I must confess most successful entrepreneurs will not display this secret. Once again thanks so much
Hi, I have a question, I’m trying to create a traffic ad, and I’m wondering why the suggested bid by FaceBook is so high compare to this study?
So here is a test to show you what I mean:
Audience: United States, 18 to 65+, All gender,
Potential reach: 197 000 000 people
Suggested bid by FB: $2,10 USD or this gap: $1,62-$2,88
In this study, the CPC is $0,26 for US, so why the suggested bid by FB is near to 10 times bigger?
Thank you for your answers!
I think i am doing ok – i am a new page 1 year old, first 100 likes cost approximately 50p per like, grew the site with content and the next 200 likes cost me £20. I am at 380 likes now and spending just £3 a day at 10p per like. My likes are from the UK only. Email list is also growing slowly – Question is, it seems like i can buy 100,000 likes for £10,000 (at current running rate). Is there any resale value in my UK based Facebook page? I am also on google adsense and website is monetised. I want 100,000k fans to sell to.
Most of the comments here are of January 2016 and the data is of Q42016 – how is that possible? Also what could be the reason that the Q1 CPC be higher than the Q4CPC?
Really Informative. Thank you.
This is very helpful – are the figures all in US dollars or the local currency?
US dollars Paul
Great article. I didn’t take a deep dive into the Facebook auction till now. Very helpful
Hi all,
I’ve been comparing the estimated reach between the Brand Awareness campaign and Traffic campaign (CPM) and I’ve found that the figures presented were strange. The estimated reach for Brand Awareness campaign were always lower than the Traffic campaign (see below for e.g.). I’ve tested this using different saved audiences. I just want to know, why are the numbers between the 2 campaigns different? and what makes them different?
Brand Awareness (CPM): Est daily reach results up to 46,000
Traffic (CPM): Est daily reach results up to 340,000
Could you please explain me this:
1. Impressions (CPM): You’re paying for cost per 1,000 impressions. The cost per impressions is much lower than a cost per click, and when you want to get a lot of eyes on your ad, this can be a good way to go.
2. In just the USA, the average cost per click (CPC) of Facebook Ads in Q3 2016 was 27.29 cents (and 27.40 cents for ALL objectives). The cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) based on Q3 was $7.19 (and $7.34 CPM for ALL objectives).
So, you’re firstly telling us the CPM cost is much lower than CPC, and then you’re telling us that average CPC is $0.27 while CPM is $7.19. It appears CPM is 26x higher than CPC.
Which is true?
CPC is cost per 1 click
CPM is cost per 1000 impressions
For 1000 clicks you’d pay $272.9, which is 38x higher than 1000 impressions.
Dear Massimo/Adespresso team where can I check average CPC for México
You say that Q4 is the most expensive because of big brands using it for winter sales but the graphs and numbers seem to indicate different … How did you come to the conclusion then?
Great informative article which is perfect for our audience of new startup companies. I will definitely share this with our growing community of entrepreneurs who can absolutely benefit from your studies and the ebook. Thanks!
Hello,
I want to know what will be the average cost of like on the facebook page.
Hi Massimo,
Great article !
In 2017, why is the gap so wide between the cost per app install by gender (lower than $2.59 for women or $1.44 for men), compared to by country (higher than $3.70) ?
Thanks
Such an awesome post. Loved it.
Why are the CPC by placement costs so different in this graph than in the graph on the IG CPC by placement table in this article: https://adespresso.com/blog/instagram-ads-cost/
It has the same time frame and channels. Which one is right?
Hi,
can we get full list of the average CPC by country? There are a lot of countries missing.
Thank you
I have a question.
I have movie website in my native language. And I am using AdSense on it. Unfortunately cpc is bad so I earn about 0.05 – 0.07 per click.
I was wondering about something else.
To make Facebook page, target worldwide audience speaking English that like movies.
Make another web page, put AdSense on it and try to earn that way as well.
My worldwide target would cost about 0.003 per page like.
And I don’t know how much I can get cpc for AdSense from that low paying countries, but let’s say 0.01 (I haven’t seen less) with 100 clicks on ads per day I would earn close to what I am earning now with my page that has about 100k a month.
And this would be much easier to get people.
Do you think it worked worth it?
And don’t forget, I am not looking to earn big money, 3-5 $ a day would be great for me. I currently earn about 3 $ a day and I am pleased with it.
With 0.003 and 150$ in Facebook ads I get about 45-50 000 Facebook likes.
Would it be worth it?
Your blogs are really contains very important information. Thank You
This post was really very informative. Thank You
I have a little question about the measuring of the CPC, did you use CPC (cost per link click) or CPC (All)?
Because Facebook allows to report both of these, but there is no saying which one was used through your insightful reporting.
Thank you very much for the clarification 🙂
I have some questions about how this data is calculated. To me it looks flawed, particularly the Cost Per Like data. For example:
1) Based on the dotted red line in the chart, the AVERAGE cost per like by country appears to be $1.08 per like.
2) In the very next chart, the HIGHEST average cost per like by age range is somewhere slightly less than $0.35.
3) The AVERAGE cost per like by month is only $0.13.
These three outcomes are appear to be mathematically inconsistent, and logically impossible. Could you please explain how the above 3 are possible?
Thanks,
Lee
Great data being shared here on CPM and other ad costs. Thanks for all the insight and time spent putting all this together in 1 place.
This post was very informative. Thx
I have a question.
Great article. Have you found any research/data on global and country average CTR’s?
Does anyone know if there is an average / typical cost per conversion, for a startup e-commerce site on a budget? How much do i need to spend per day and how many conversions will that give me on average? Lets say I only spent $5 per day for 2 weeks every month on fb desktop ads. And my profit per sale item on my site is $10 average. Is it possible to get a good return on investment there?
Why is Australia excluded from allot of data reported but places like kazakhstan included? Maybe Borat is using Facebook Ads?
Thanks for this insightful blog. Its true that estimating facebook ad spent is really difficult.
good post
Great article, any chance to get some ads cost info for the 2018?
we’re working on it! 🙂
Awesome Post… Enjoyed… 😃
Things now make a lot of sense to me.
It costs soo much to show your ads on tier one countries. The cpc is very very high. Facebook even charges for impressions.
Thanks for this, i appreciate.
A great information that you shared. I learned a lot!!
Nice way of explaining the complete Facebook advertising strategy, Helped me so much to gain more Information about this.
What a fantastic article. Before reading this article I myself did not know the fact that CPC can vary even by hours and months. I used to wonder why sometimes I get very higher CPC when promoting my blog post for the same audience that has given me much less CPC in the past. Thanks for all those graphs related to CPC Statistics. It is very helpful. It would definitely help me to come into better conclusions in relation to my facebook ads campaign cost per click.
Good article, as someone said above, this helps you to know game rules before jumping and compete. I’ve only used Instagram for paid ads but I’m considering to start working with Facebook. I’ve had no issue with IG but anyway you can get larger traffic and raise up the conversions isn’t bad trying, especially if fees are lower. Thank you!
I appreciate you shedding some light on my Facebook marketing spend.
Another awesome post, as usual guys. Thanks.
Here’s my $0.02:
Understanding what doesn’t work is hugely important when you’re launching a brand, because it tells you which campaigns to shut off quickly, so you can shift the budget to the next iteration of the insight you want to learn, i.e., value propositions, price testing, model testing, and any number of other valuable data points.
This iterative process takes time. Facebook, for example, requires a certain amount of conversions to go through an ad set for the algorithm to start to work and ultimately find other people to purchase your product. There’s no hard number for this rule, but 50 conversions a week is a smart place to start.
For example, if you need 50 conversions a week per ad set, and your product costs $100, you need to spend $5000 in a week to get that ad set to work how it should. From there, you can back out your budget and estimate out how much you need overall.
We blogged about this today if you’re curious: https://bit.ly/2YedYkF
Hope that’s useful!
Great read! I recently started advertising my business on Facebook and it has not been without challenges. This article is super helpful, I can’t wait to try some of these tips. This article really helped me figure out my budget so I’m happy to learn more.
Amazing information actually I want to run facebook ads for real estate so will it be worth it.
This blog was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something which helped me. Cheers!
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