The Complete Resource to Understanding Facebook Ads Cost – 2017 Benchmarks!
There’s a question we hear all the time, and see plastered everywhere: How much do Facebook Ads cost?
We see the question a lot, and one of the only consistent answers we see is “it depends on a lot of factors.” This is absolutely true.
There’s a lot that goes into understanding Facebook Ads cost; everything from your audience to your bidding plan to ranking Facebook gives you directly affects and influences how much you’re going to pay.
We’ve just analyzed well almost 300 million dollars of ad spend (285M by the time we are writing this) during this past year!
This provides us with Facebook Ad cost averages for the entire 2017 year to compare across the quarters.
It might not be able to tell you exactly how much your specific campaign is going to cost, but it’s going to give you a good reference point of the current costs of Facebook Advertising today.
Keep in mind that what you spend on Facebook Ads is up to you and how you set your budget; this post is all about how to affect the cost of Facebook Ads and how to lower the individual rates.
We’re going to take a look at the most relevant data of Facebook Ads cost averages from all of 2017 (with an emphasis on Q4).
We also have all of our 2016 data available at the bottom of this post for additional reference benchmarks. If you’d like to skip ahead to the 2016 data, click here.
In this 2018 edition of our Facebook ads cost, we’ll cover:
For all of these, we’ll also cover differences based on gender, day of the week, hour of the day, and month-by-month breakdowns.
We’ll explain what affects the cost of advertising with Facebook Ads, and how you can reduce it.
If you want to keep this information on hand for you and your team, you can download our study in Pdf, it contains all the 2017 benchmarks for Facebook Ad costs.
How Does the Bidding Process Work?
It’s important to note that Facebook works like an auction. This is important because it’s part of the reason that there’s no set answer to “how much does Facebook Ads cost?”
What this means is that you, as an advertiser, will say how much you’re willing to pay for specific actions on an ad (like views, clicks, or conversions)—you can actually manually adjust this in 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.
Here’s the thing: Facebook Ads is a popular place, and you aren’t handing over a stack of cash and getting an ad. You are entering a bid.
Plenty of other advertisers are trying to get that same ad space in a users’ Newsfeed, too, and Facebook limits the number of ads each user sees.
This is only one reason why knowing how much Facebook Ads cost is so important.
There’s 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:
- The time of year, the day of the week, and even the specific hour your campaigns are running. There are peak times, and when competition is highest, costs go up.
- Your bidding strategy. You can set an average bid, or choose to set a bid limit on each individual bid.
- The placement you choose. Different ad placements will have different costs. Instagram, as you’ll see, often costs more than most other placements.
- Relevance. Your relevance score, which is calculated partially by engagement and clicks, can directly affect how much Facebook charges you.
- The audience you’re targeting. If other advertisers are trying to reach the same audience members, costs go up because their newsfeed space is not unlimited
Has Anything Changed Recently?
There’s a lot that’s changed in Facebook recently, and it’s unsurprisingly affected how much Facebook Ads cost. There are frequently small changes made to the platform, like different bidding options or new ad formats or placements that can change how things are running. There are also bigger changes that have gone down, causing bigger trickle-down effects.
The algorithm update that de-prioritized Page content was a big one. With organic reach sinking to an all-time low, many Pages have been relying more heavily on the ad system just to get their regular posts seen. There’s a problem though; users’ newsfeeds are limited, and ad space even more so, and the surge of submitted ads can (and has) raised prices noticeably.
This trend may continue, though there is hope that the new algorithm could mean more user engagement, which means more room for ads, evening everything out in the long run. I’d be surprised if we actually saw a true return to old ad costs with so many brands struggling so much with their organic reach, but if we stay relatively close, ads will still be affordable for most businesses.
It’s also worth noting that the amount of time users are spending on the site on average will also directly impact ad cost. If users scroll through their feeds for fifteen minutes a day, there’s a lot more ad space than if they only scroll for two minutes twice a day. In Q4 of last year, we saw Facebook site usage decline by about 5%, which was also likely a factor that caused ad costs to spike suddenly. You’ll see this reflected in the data below.
Facebook Ads Cost: AdEspresso 2017 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 2017 (note: all currencies have been converted to USD). While all the data and numbers in this post are coming off real campaigns, you should be using these numbers only as a reference or a guideline.
There are so many factors influencing Facebook Ads cost that there’s no way to know exactly what the cost will be for you until you run a few campaigns. Still, this data can provide a powerful point of reference and more concretely give a rough answer to the question “How much do Facebook Ads cost?” that doesn’t involve a shrug of the shoulders.
When breaking down the numbers in our research, we looked at how different factors like the age and country users were from affected how much they were spending and what the results of the campaigns were.
Ok, now it’s time to unveil our findings…
CPC Costs & Results
This data reflects the average cost per click, amount spent, and numbers for multiple variables for 2017.
This information is limited to campaigns with website clicks or website conversions as the objectives. The currency is in US dollars.
CPC by country:
The average CPC for all countries came in at $0.97, with Croatia, Cyprus, and Switzerland having the lowest CPC of $0.75.
While there will be a lot of variation in each individual nation based on industry, audience, placements, and a large number of other factors, it’s good to know going in how much your country averages.
If you have the ability to target audiences in lower-cost countries, great. Even if you can’t, however, $2.09 (the highest average CPC on the list) is still a great price to pay for potential leads for a number of different businesses.
CPC by Age Range:
Targeting older users costs more, with increases in age directly correlating with higher costs. Through most of 2017, it was most expensive to target users 65+, with the average CPC costing more than $.70 for users 65+ and only $.11 for users 13-17 in Q1. Towards Q4, though, prices dropped for users 55 and up.
While older users may cost more to target outright, they may also have higher income and less debt, meaning higher disposable income that they can spend with you.
CPC by placement:
Instagram has always been the most expensive placement, and that has consistently held true in 2017. Both Instagram newsfeed ads and Instagram story ads cost more than their Facebook counterparts. In Q4 this trend increased, with Instagram newsfeed ads (around $1.15) skyrocketing to almost double the CPCs of most Facebook placements (averaging around $0.50). Instagram also, however, has high conversion rates and high engagement rates, so it’s still worthwhile.
The audience network was easily the most affordable, as it has been for some time. Enabling this placement in your campaigns can therefore keep your cost average low, giving you more potential placements.
CPC by month:
We already know that there were a number of factors that drove up ad costs in Q4, and that’s exceptionally easy to see here. The Q4 prices were a sharp turn from the cost trends happening through Q2 and Q3, jumping to around $.50 after hovering closer to $.35 for most of the summer months.
CPC by day of the week:
There were big fluctuations in which day of the lowest CPC throughout 2017. In Q1, Tuesdays held the position for most affordable ad cost, costing around $.34 per click. By Q4, Sunday had the lowest CPC with an average of about $.40, and it was most expensive to advertise on Tuesdays and Thursdays with CPCs close to $.50.
CPC by gender:
In every quarter, it cost more to advertise to women than it did to target men. In each quarter except Q3, it cost around $.15 more to target women instead of men. Does this mean that you shouldn’t target women? Of course not! But if you’re running campaigns exclusively targeting women, know that they’ll cost more than ads not targeting women exclusively.
CPC by hour:
If you’re considering using dayparting for ads, this information should be of some help. The average CPC’s trends stayed relatively consistent in terms of the most cost efficient times of day for your ads to go live. Ad costs were consistently lower in the early morning hours. While Q2 and Q3 had bigger jumps in cost based on time of the day, Q4 saw that level out more, staying between $.45 and $.50 from 5AM to 11pm at night.
What does this mean? While each business is different, dayparting may not do much to help you save on ad costs.
CPC by campaign objective:
It’s easy to think that targeting for impressions will have a lower CPC than optimizing for link clicks, but that’s clearly not the case. Optimizing for link clicks actually had the lowest CPC at $.44 by the end of Q4, with conversions ($.66) and lead generation ($1.18) coming in second or third. There is something to keep in mind here; not all link clicks guarantee conversions, and not all lead clicks guarantee an actual submitted lead form with legitimate information. You may be paying for some results here that you aren’t getting, while reach and impressions give you exactly what you’re paying for.
The takeaway here: never try to cheat the system by hoping that choosing an objective or reach impression will be more affordable than optimizing for clicks outright.
Cost Per Like for Page Like Campaigns
Running a campaign for page likes can be valuable; it enables you to get more followers quickly, who will then get plenty of your information in their News Feeds without you having to pay for it.
This data shows the findings of all campaigns created with the objective to gain more page likes in2017. We have limited countries as we set the minimum spend to 50K or more.
Cost per like by country:
You’ll notice that there isn’t a lot of correlation between CPC and cost per like cost amongst countries.
Norway went from the middle of the pack for CPC up to the most expensive country for cost per like at $2.70. Sweden, on the other hand, fell from a high costing CPC to the middle of the pack for cost per like. Kazakhstan had the lowest cost per like at $.69, with Austra and Finland tying for second place at $.77.
Remember that if your audience just happens to be in Norway, there’s not much you can do if you have to target them. Focus on other areas to cut costs if necessary.
Cost per like by age:
Increased cost per like with age is one trend that stays consistent with CPC, with another clear correlation between age and cost. Q4 saw enormous jumps in cost per like for users 55 and up, even though it decreased for users 25-34.
Again, this does not mean that you should count out older users, because that’s just not the case. Many of these users have more income to spend, and you may be facing less competition overall for this audience.
Cost per like by placement:
The difference in trends between CPC and cost per like and placements is a fascinating one. While CPC stays close to the same between right hand columns and the Facebook feed placements, that’s not true for CPL towards the end of Q4 even though it was almost identical in Q1 and Q2. By the end of Q4, right column ads were almost $.10 more than their newsfeed placement. I think this is particularly interesting because there’s so much more flexibility with feed ads, it’s difficult to reason using right column ads heavily.
Cost per like by month:
The average cost per like by month was just over $.12, with the lower costs in Q1 balancing out the increasing prices in Q3 and Q4, rising up to $.16 in Q4. What’s interesting is cost per likes fell again in December back to the average, likely because Pages were optimizing for other actions from users during this time.
Cost per like by day of the week:
If you want to get more likes on your Page, Friday is currently your day for lowest costs at around $.12, with Tuesday and Wednesday having the highest cost per like costs at $.15. You’ll notice, though, that there’s variation in which days are least or most expensive for cost per likes throughout each quarter, so trying to schedule your ads for specific days may not do you much good as this continues to fluctuate over time.
Cost per like by gender:
There isn’t much of a surprise here; it still costs more per like to target women than it does to target men, with a difference of about $.05 between the genders each quarter.
Cost per like by hour:
Unlike CPC, cost per likes have significant variation by hour, and huge jumps from quarters 1-3 to Q4. The early morning hours have the lowest cost per click, hovering between $.13 and $.19. Costs then continually rise from 7AM at $.20 to 4PM at $.33. Then ad costs decrease again continually, sinking back to $.20 at 11 PM.
These costs reflect peak activity hours for many users on social media, likely accounting for these pricing trends.
Cost per App Install
Driving mobile app installs is a great reason to use Facebook Ads. This data is limited to campaigns that used the objectives “mobile app installs” and “canvas app installs” from 2017.
Cost per app install by country:
App install costs have the most significant variation in average cost per country, climbing from a CPA of $3.70 in the United Kingdom to $10.39 in Panama. If you’re targeting users in a high-cost country, try to use a strong combination of placements and device targeting that have lower costs. Creating hyper-targeted campaigns that are relevant to niche audiences can increase your relevance score, decreasing these costs to keep your overall ad cost lower.
Cost per app install by age range:
The highest costing CPA for app installs was around $2.70 for users 65+, increasing in Q4 after costing less than $2.25 for all three other quarters. Ad costs fell, on the other hand, for users in age groups from 13-44 from the previous quarters.
This is one case where following low cost may be a good way to go, as younger users are overall more likely to install more apps on their mobile devices, and to be using their phones more regularly.
This is one case where following low cost may be a good way to go, as younger users are overall more likely to install more apps on their mobile devices, and to be using their phones more regularly.
Cost per app install by placement:
Instagram placements typically cost more on average for most ads, but mobile apps installs are the exception.
Instagram placements for app installs actually have a lower CPA of under $2 in Q4 than Facebook newsfeeds ($2.60). This makes sense, since Instagram mobile usage is higher than Facebook mobile usage, and users are significantly more likely to download an app if they see it on their mobile device.
Note that audience network CPAs stayed relatively consistently, while they jumped big time in Facebook newsfeeds and Instagram increasing close to a dollar for both.
Cost per app install by month:
Cost per app install by day of the week:
If you’ve been stressed about costs per app installs going up in Q4, you can at least take some comfort in seeing that they consistently decreased significantly when looking at costs based on days of the week.
Again, notice that there are significant changes happening in lowest costing days and high costing days. By the end of Q4, Wednesdays had gone from the most expensive day of the week with a CPA of around $1.26 to the day with the least expensive CPA at around $.60.
Trying to predict these fluctuations over time would likely be impossible, so don’t worry about scheduling mobile app install ads based on cost.
Cost per app install by gender:
While Q4 saw huge jumps in CPA for women in mobile app installs (reaching $2.59), it actually cost more in Q2 and Q3 to target men. The CPA for men in Q4 sank from $1.44 to $.93, which is actually a more significant divide between the genders than we saw in the above sections.
Cost per app install by hour:
This is another example showcasing how much things can change in ways you wouldn’t typically expect, with CPAs for mobile app installs based on hour falling from highs in Q2 to significantly lower CPAs in Q3 and Q4.
The time of day with the lowest CPA is 2AM at around $.75, and the time of day with the highest CPA is 11pm at around $1.35.
Cost per app install by device:
This is a pretty significant one to watch for mobile app installs: CPA by device.
Apple devices (excluding the iPhone) cost more in general throughout the year, but jumped significantly in Q4 above Android devices and others.
As of Q4, it costs an average of at least $.75 more to target Apple users than Android users, with iPads having the highest CPA at almost $6. When compared to Android’s average of around $2.40, that’s a major cost difference.
Again, this doesn’t mean that Apple devices shouldn’t be targeted, but you should be mindful going in that it will cost more to target these users. Make sure these campaigns are on point and sending them right to the Apple store to download.
Summary of 2017 Data (Overall)
For a quick 2017 summary, and to help us all notice a few interesting trends, we found (on average) that:
- Instagram Ads are expensive overall, but good choices for mobile app installs. The CPC and CPA on Instagram for most objectives are higher on most campaigns on average. This was consistent through all four quarters. The exception to this was mobile app installs, where Facebook was more expensive. This is likely because Instagram users are predominantly mobile, making it a stronger platform for mobile app ads.
This does not mean that you shouldn’t advertise on Instagram, because it’s an incredibly valuable platform. Instagram gives us the opportunity to extend our reach to a new audience– particularly a younger audience– and to grow your brand awareness. - Impressions have surpassed reach as the priciest objective. In 2016, reach was the most expensive objective to target when looking at CPC, but in 2017 impressions easily replaced it. Impressions cost more in almost every single quarter, with the exception of Quarter 2.
- It consistently costs more to target women. Towards the end of Q4 in 2014, CPC by gender had evened out and it cost close to the same to target men and women. That’s no longer true, with CPCs lingering around $0.10-0.15 more to target women instead of men.
- It costs more to target Apple products except the iPhone for mobile app installs. Throughout all of 2017, it costs more to target Apple users than Android users for app installs. The iPad CPA is higher than the iPhone. The iPod is the exception here, being lower in CPA than other Android devices.
- CPCs and CPAs increased dramatically in Quarter 4. This isn’t overwhelmingly surprising. We had the holiday season spike hit at the same time as when Facebook started announcing changes in the algorithm and we saw organic reach going down. That being said, this isn’t always a good thing. More costs means more competition, and there have been problems in the past during high competition times where businesses are unable to get proper delivery of their ads due to the competition levels.
- It costs more, on average, to target older users for likes and mobile app installs. This is different than our findings from 2016, and shows a changing trend. It costs more on average to target users over the age of 40 for likes, clicks, and app installs.
- Link clicks was the cheapest objective to choose. The CPC for the link clicks objective clocked in at the lowest CPC for all objectives throughout all of 2017.
- https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-ads-cost/
