How Much Does Facebook Advertising Cost in 2023?

The cost of Facebook advertising can differ significantly from year to year. As one of the most popular social networking platforms, Facebook has many users willing to pay a high premium for ad campaigns.

Below, we'll take a comprehensive look at the Facebook ad cost, including:

• The factors that affect your Facebook ad spend, such as:

• • Advertising budget
  • Ad frequency
  • Target audience
  • Bidding strategies
  • Ad relevance score
  • Click through rate

• What Facebook ad auctions are and how they work
• Average Facebook cost for an ad campaign
• How to use Facebook ads manager for the best effect on your ad budget
• Ways you can lower Facebook ad costs

Let's get into it.

Facebook Ads Cost in a Nutshell

Many different factors affect your Facebook advertising cost (we'll take a closer look at those later), but in 2022, most users reported an ad spend of around:

1. $1.07 per like
2. $0.94 per click
3. $5.47 per download
4. $0,012 per impression

Since Facebook advertising costs differ significantly based on the ad campaign objective, we can only give you a cursory price indication before delving into the details.

Facebook Ad Auction: What is it and How Does it Work?

The Facebook ad auction is one of the most significant factors in how successful your ad campaign is. But what is it, and how does it work?

The ad auction is an algorithm-based mechanism that helps determine which ad campaigns to show at which times. Every time Facebook displays an ad to anyone, the auction runs to decide which Facebook ad is best.

Facebook determines the best ads to show based on:

• Ad quality
• The available ad space
• How likely is a user to interact with a specific company or type of ad
• The bid that each client is willing to pay for their Facebook ad

Factors That Affect Facebook Ad Costs

One of the reasons why the Facebook advertising cost is so variable is the sheer amount of influencing factors. Below, we'll take a closer look at some of the things that affect the ad spend on your campaign.

Target Audience

While it's probably not one of the first things that come to mind, your target audience network is one of the significant factors affecting Facebook ad costs.

The more specific you want your target audience to be, the more your ad campaign will cost. This is especially true if you're trying to reach a niche target audience.

Broader audiences are easier to reach, which brings your Facebook ad spend way down. However, the higher Facebook ad costs might be worth it if the niche market brings in more income for you.

Facebook Ad Budget

Your Facebook ad budget has a tremendous effect on how much your ad placement costs. If you have a larger budget, it translates to more successful results on the ad auction.

Better auction results lead to more click-through and more regular displays. Therefore, while your target audience is seeing your Facebook ads more often, a larger ad budget also leads to higher ad costs.

Campaign Objective

As much as your target audience affects how much your Facebook ads cost, your campaign objective does as well. The type of effect you want with your campaign further narrows down the amount of Facebook users they'll show the ad to.

This type of narrow audience targeting significantly affects Facebook ads cost. If you're trying to get users to download your app, for instance, you'll pay more than if you're trying to get traffic to your website. If you're doing brand awareness campaigns, they'll cost more than lead generation campaigns.

Ad Quality

Facebook uses several criteria to determine your ad quality. Your ad quality then affects your Facebook ads cost.

Higher-quality Facebook ads cost less than those that Facebook considers less relevant or engaging.

The relevance and engagement score is the main factor affecting your ad quality rating. Your Facebook ads may earn a score of between one and ten, with ten being the highest. Facebook will base your score on positive and negative feedback received about your ad.

It's worth noting that Facebook only gives you a score after your first 500 impressions. Once you've passed this benchmark, you can easily check the score for any ad from your ad manager:

1. Open Facebook ads manager
2. Choose the appropriate advert
3. Use the dropdown menu labeled columns
4. Select customize column, then relevance score
5. Click on apply and view your score

Industry

Whether you're looking at Google ads, Instagram ads, or Facebook ads costs, the value varies significantly depending on the industry involved. Before setting up your own Facebook ad campaigns, it's worth researching the average costs for your industry.

For illustration purposes, the average cost-per-click (CPC) may be as little as $0.63 in the hospitality industry or as much as $3.77 in the insurance industry.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

As with many other elements of Facebook ads campaigns, the platform takes careful note of the click-through rate on your Facebook ads.

A relatively healthy average is a CTR of around 2%. Generally, your Facebook ad cost decreases as your CTR increases.

Facebook ads algorithms consider a low CTR indicative of an inadequate advertising campaign. Chances are that the ads lack the appropriate language or aren't getting to the right target audience network.

Season of Ad Placement

As with traditional advertising campaigns, your ad spend will be lower in certain seasons than in others.

Particularly in the third and fourth quarters, ad costs tend to increase. This happens when Facebook advertising costs shift in preparation for the Festive holidays.

Traditionally, many companies start pushing their Facebook advertising and traditional advertising as the Christmas season approaches. Depending on the industry you're in, you may also see a rise in ad costs around holidays like Easter, Halloween, or Valentine's Day.

If you're in the tourism or hospitality industry, you'll likely also see a rise in the cost of Facebook ads around popular tourist seasons.

The average CPC for a Facebook ad varied significantly throughout 2022. For example, in January, it was around $0.9, but by the end of November, it was over $1.40.

How to Lower Your Facebook Advertising Costs

If you have a strict campaign objective and a low budget, you want to keep your Facebook ads as affordable as possible.

Fortunately, Facebook advertising is a fairly variable field. There are several ways to cut down on Facebook advertising costs. Whether you're an online store or a bed and breakfast, optimizing your Facebook ads for cost efficiency may mean less efficiency elsewhere.

Let's take a closer look at the options:

Strategy One: Keep Your Audience Broad

While broadening your target audience seems counterintuitive, it's one of the easiest ways to keep your costs low. As we mentioned earlier, Facebook advertising costs are generally less when the field of prospective Facebook users is broad.

That probably raises the question: will your Facebook ads be equally effective if your audience is broader? That's where the give and take comes in. Thanks to the ad auction system, it's unlikely that your advertisement will appear to many unnecessary people.

No, the ad may not be entirely as effective, but it should still be effective enough - at a lower cost.

Strategy Two: Take Advantage of Automatic Placement

It's tempting to try and be in absolute control of every aspect of your Facebook advertising cost, including where to place the ads. However, that technique is far from cost-effective.

The best way to have effective Facebook ads at affordable prices is to use the automatic placement function. This approach helps to maximize your budget by showing the ad to more people. It also allows the Facebook ads algorithm to learn where best to place your ads.

Strategy Three: Pay Special Attention to People Who Interact With Your Page

People who already interact with your social media accounts are one of the most viable audiences for Facebook ads. They're also one of the most overlooked.

When Facebook users interact with you or like your products, they're already likely to click on your ads. This type of audience targeting cuts down on failed ads and improves your CTR, leading to a lower cost per click (CPC).

Strategy Four: Run Facebook Ads Using Comparative Testing

Comparative testing, or A/B testing, is one of the best ways to optimize your Facebook ads and reduce costs. Change small things between one ad and the next, and see how the results differ.

Some of the things you can play around with include:

• The writing style and visual design of the title
• The font and text layout of the ads
• Incorporating or excluding links and landing pages
• Whether you use images, how you use them, and the kind of images you use

Depending on the industry you're in, your targeted audience may have different tastes from another industry's audience. For instance, a graphic designer or interior designer's target audience may have higher visual standards than a builder or plumber's target.

Running these types of tests on variables won't cost you any more than you're paying for the ad anyway. Once you find a style and layout that appeals to your target audience, you'll improve the CTR on your Facebook ads, thereby lowering the cost per click.

Strategy Five: Practice Ad Auction Bidding Strategies

As we mentioned above, the ad auction is partially responsible for determining how many and which people see your Facebook ads. Since more interaction and a higher CTR lead to lower rates, being successful at the auction is foundational to lowering Facebook advertising costs.

Here are a few strategies you can use to help you come out on top of the Facebook ads auction:

• Use a bid cap - Facebook advertising allows you to set a maximum bid cap on each of your Facebook ads. Instead of Facebook dynamically bidding against your competitors, this allows you to decide precisely how much you're comfortable paying for a single advert. While this may mean your ads display less often, it also means that you won't pay an outrageous amount for a single advert.
  
  
• Highest value - This strategy allows the algorithm to focus your Facebook advertising on purchases, conversion campaigns, or other results with the highest value. Rather than trying to get you the most conversions possible, it tries to get you the best conversions.
  
  This approach will help to spend your entire budget while converting that budget into the best possible results. Simply set the optimization and delivery settings to 'value' rather than conversions or views.
  
  
• Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) - If you run an online store, eCommerce program, or another ad campaign that translates into direct revenue, then RoAS is ideal. This bidding strategy allows you to focus your Facebook advertising on profitable ad space within your desired audience network.
  
  This strategy won't necessarily spend your entire budget, but it will ensure that you only get entered into the most profitable auctions. You'll need to either verify your business account or run ads for several weeks (in some cases, both) before taking advantage of this bidding strategy.

Save Money: Develop a Comprehensive Plan for Ad Placements

One of the best ways to save money is to have a plan detailing precisely what you want to accomplish and how many resources you can dedicate to the task. This will help you to determine how to proceed and keep unnecessary costs to a minimum.

Some of the most important factors to consider include:

• Your campaign objectives (what you want to accomplish) - Do you want to increase app installs, get more traffic to your Facebook page or website, or maybe just sell more products? Perhaps you're trying to create brand awareness and let more people know your company or brand exists.
  
  
• Whether the time of year is important to your goals - Since the average CPC increases at certain times of the year, considering this is crucial. Do you sell your products year-round? Do you particularly need to advertise during peak season? If not, you can easily develop your plan so you can lessen your ad frequency and ad delivery during peak seasons.
  
  
• How big your budget is - This is one of the most significant factors affecting the average CPC. You need to decide how much you're willing to spend on advertising costs and how much you're willing to spend on a single ad. Once you've decided that, you can choose a bidding strategy that either spends your entire advertising budget or spends it as wisely as possible.
  
  
• Which audience you're targeting - As you've seen throughout this article, the people you hope to reach have a huge impact on how much you spend. This, again, links back to your campaign objectives. If you just want to increase business, you can easily run retargeting campaigns and promote your products to people who already know you.
  
  If you want new customers or to raise brand awareness, you'll need to decide exactly which people you want to target. A broader audience network is more affordable, but narrower audiences may be more effective.
  
  
• How involved you want to be in the ad delivery process - Involvement is one of the essential factors when advertising on a social media platform.
  
  You can be entirely detached from the process and allow Facebook to determine ad relevance, who might be interested in your mobile apps, and even to practice automatic bidding till your ad (hopefully) becomes the winning ad.
  
  However, detachment comes at a price, and you can easily spend your entire budget on a few ads by being so.
  
  
• Whether you want to be responsible for the advertising process - Not everyone is cut out for the advertising world. If you don't enjoy working through ad formats, experimenting with design and language, and trying to run retargeting campaigns, you may need help.
  
  While Facebook marketing is easy, and almost anyone can do it, not everyone can do so equally effectively. Hiring ad creatives to run your campaigns will cost you money.
  
  However, you may waste less time and money on experimentation if you hire someone who's already good at creating targeted Facebook offers and deciding when to use carousel ads.

Final Thoughts

Facebook advertising is a worthwhile investment, and the right ad space can give your business a boost. But the advertising costs are far from stable.

Everything from your ad objective to the audience you target with your ad placements can affect the advertising costs.

For best results, it's best to work out your entire ad budget before you start advertising. That way, you can optimize all the ads you place. In the end, it comes down to having the right campaign objective, a good budget plan, and keeping your engagement and relevance score high.

For a rough cost of between $0.012 and $5.47 per click or engagement, you can easily generate sales, raise brand awareness, and sell products. Facebook offers some of the lowest prices for the advertising options available to you.