Facebook Ads: Global costs and trends in advertising campaigns
Every campaign is a world of its own. Across the 491,150 analyzed, less is invested in engagement and more in sales.
An exhaustive Facebook Ads study carried out by Metricool reveals key information for optimizing advertising strategies. Discover the data on average CPC and average CPM, and the objectives most used by brands. Learn the main conclusions of this global study analyzing more than 491,000 campaigns, including data on investment, reach, clicks and costs.
The following analysis was carried out based on a sample of 491,150 campaigns worldwide, run by 29,137 advertising accounts. These campaigns covered different platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp, and total investment reached 126,830,865.08 US dollars.
The data collected included information on reach, impressions, clicks and costs. In particular, two important metrics were analyzed: average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and average CPC (cost per click).
While every campaign is a world of its own, it is always useful to have some reference data to understand how to put together a campaign budget and what results to expect. Although we insist that there are far too many factors influencing and determining these costs, so the analysis has to be approached with caution.
- Total accounts: 29,137
- Total campaigns: 491,150
- Total investment: 126,830,865.08 USD
- Total impressions: 101,445,212,185
- Total clicks: 1,493,260,137
- Average CPM per campaign: 1.25 USD
- Average CPC per campaign: 0.085 USD
- Average spend per campaign: 258.23 USD
- Average campaign duration: 17 days
- Median campaign duration: 6 days
From the analysis carried out, some key learnings were identified that can be applied to improve advertising strategies on Facebook Ads:
- The most frequent campaigns look to increase reach and engagement on posts, but they are the ones that receive the least investment on average (89.78 USD), compared with sales-oriented campaigns (955.70 USD). Therefore, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) earns more revenue from campaigns focused on sales.
- An evolution is observed in Facebook Ads campaigns, where sales-oriented ones currently generate greater profits for Meta compared with earlier campaigns that focused on engagement. This reflects the transformation of advertising on Facebook Ads.
- The cheapest campaigns on Facebook Ads are those related to brand awareness, with a cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) of 0.34 USD. On the other hand, campaigns aimed at obtaining leads and sales are the most expensive, with a CPM of 3.14 USD and 2.39 USD respectively. This indicates that the investment needed to show ads aimed at acquiring customers or at sales is roughly ten times greater compared with brand awareness ads.
Calculating profitability in Facebook Ads campaigns
To determine which type of campaign may be most profitable in each case, the data has to be analyzed and some calculations made. The relevant data is presented below
Average CPM on Facebook Ads: The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) in Facebook Ads campaigns is 1.25 USD.
It is very important to remember that campaign performance varies according to the objective selected, since Facebook Ads looks to show your ads to a broader or a more segmented audience.
The average CPMs by campaign objective are shown below:
- Leads: 3.14 USD per thousand impressions.
- Sales: 2.39 USD per thousand impressions.
- Engagement: 1.12 USD per thousand impressions.
- Traffic: 0.95 USD per thousand impressions.
- App promotion: 0.74 USD per thousand impressions.
- Brand awareness: 0.34 USD per thousand impressions.
This data provides a reference for the costs associated with each campaign objective in terms of CPM. Analyzing it will allow more informed decisions and the design of an advertising strategy that fits the needs and the budget.
Average CPC on Facebook Ads: The average cost per click (CPC) in Facebook Ads campaigns is 0.085 USD.
Knowing the average cost of each type of campaign can help guide the advertising strategy on Facebook Ads.
Cost per click across different advertising objectives
- Leads: 0.20 USD per click.
- Sales: 0.13 USD per click.
- Brand awareness: 0.12 USD per click.
- App promotion: 0.12 USD per click.
- Engagement: 0.05 USD per click.
- Traffic: 0.04 USD per click.
It can be seen that obtaining leads has the highest cost per click, while traffic represents the lowest. A relevant learning is to consider the possibility of running a traffic campaign with an attractive landing page and a good conversion rate, instead of investing in lead generation.
Average costs by country
The previous figures are averages from campaigns run in many countries. Country-by-country data is presented below, although it is important to know that this information is an average across all campaign objectives and can vary substantially, as we said before, according to the objective of each campaign. Even so, they are an interesting reference:
Average CPC on Facebook Ads by country
| Country | Average CPC (USD) |
|---|---|
| Australia [AU] | 0.32 |
| United Arab Emirates [AE] | 0.31 |
| Canada [CA] | 0.31 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [GB] | 0.28 |
| United States [US] | 0.25 |
| New Zealand [NZ] | 0.24 |
| Germany [DE] | 0.22 |
| France [FR] | 0.17 |
| Netherlands [NL] | 0.15 |
| Spain [ES] | 0.15 |
| Belgium [BE] | 0.10 |
| Singapore [SG] | 0.09 |
| Italy [IT] | 0.09 |
| Panama [PA] | 0.08 |
| Chile [CL] | 0.08 |
| Brazil [BR] | 0.08 |
| Portugal [PT] | 0.07 |
| Uruguay [UY] | 0.07 |
| Turkey [TR] | 0.07 |
| Peru [PE] | 0.05 |
| Mexico [MX] | 0.05 |
| Colombia [CO] | 0.04 |
| Argentina [AR] | 0.04 |
The overall average CPC is 0.085 USD, and the countries above the average are Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Singapore and Italy.
Average CPM on Facebook Ads by country
| Country | Average CPM (USD) |
|---|---|
| Canada [CA] | 5.96 |
| Australia [AU] | 4.86 |
| United States [US] | 4.69 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [GB] | 4.38 |
| Netherlands [NL] | 3.59 |
| Germany [DE] | 3.42 |
| New Zealand [NZ] | 3.24 |
| United Arab Emirates [AE] | 3.08 |
| France [FR] | 2.14 |
| Spain [ES] | 1.78 |
| South Africa [ZA] | 1.52 |
| Greece [GR] | 1.51 |
| Belgium [BE] | 1.48 |
| Romania [RO] | 1.46 |
| Italy [IT] | 1.35 |
| Chile [CL] | 1.08 |
| Puerto Rico [PR] | 1.08 |
| Malaysia [MY] | 1.01 |
| Turkey [TR] | 0.98 |
| Peru [PE] | 0.94 |
| Mexico [MX] | 0.88 |
| Colombia [CO] | 0.82 |
| Argentina [AR] | 0.44 |
The overall average CPM for all countries is 1.25 USD. It can be seen that countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and France have a cost above the average.
Some learnings and conclusions
Evolution of Facebook Ads campaigns
Compared with five years ago, Facebook Ads campaigns have evolved, increasing the number of ads aimed at capturing traffic and sales. Previously, objectives centered on promoting posts, gaining followers and increasing video plays. Today, however, a shift is observed in Facebook Ads advertising, where less is invested in engagement and more in campaigns focused on business performance, such as sales and acquiring new users.
We could say that the type of advertising that impacts the last stage of the sales funnel is used more and more, with the goal of driving conversions, just as happens with Google Ads.
Increase in cost per click (CPC) on Facebook Ads in 2023
The average CPC has risen both overall and by country, with an increase of 60%.
Decrease in cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on Facebook Ads in 2023
The average CPM, on the other hand, has seen a slight decrease, going from 1,26 US$ in 2018 to an average CPM per campaign of 1,25 US$, which amounts to a reduction of 0,79%.
Increase in cost per campaign and reduction in impressions
On average, 258,23 US$ is assigned to each campaign, which makes it possible to obtain 206.543,3 impressions on top of those obtained organically. By comparison, in 2018 the average spend per campaign was 7,86 US$ and 7.777 impressions were obtained.
At Argency, we design the strategy of each campaign, taking into account all the variables of the context and the particular objectives of our clients. Even so, we are always hungry for data that validates our experience and lets us make better decisions. We believe the findings of this Facebook Ads study deserved to be shared.
