How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost in 2022? (New Data!)

Facebook ads cost per click by campaign type, 2022

Facebook ads cost per lead by industry

According to our benchmark data, the average cost per lead in Facebook ads across all industries is $19.68, ranging from $12.91 for food and drink to $56.89 for news.

Facebook ads CPM 2022

When you break the averages out by campaign, you see CPMs ranging from $2.28 (brand awareness campaigns in February) all the way up to $30.97 (lead generation campaigns in June).

If your CPMs are high, check out our post on how to lower your Facebook ads CPM.

Facebook ads cost per engagement, 2022

Also according to Revealbot, the average Facebook cost per engagement in 2022 is $0.12, one cent higher than last year.

When average cost per engagement is broken out by campaign objective, we see CPEs ranging from practically a penny to $0.58.

Factors that influence the cost of Facebook ads

1. Campaign objectives

Facebook campaign objectives are a prominent factor in pricing since they relate to the value of the desired goal and where in the funnel your users are.

For example, Brand awareness or Engagement campaigns will cost less than lower-funnel campaigns like Conversions that drive purchases. It’s easier to get someone to engage with an ad than it is to entice them to click through, open up their wallet, and complete a purchase.

2. Audience size

Facebook ads targeting larger and broader audiences will generally cost less than for smaller audiences.

You will typically see lower costs in prospecting, upper-funnel, cold-audience campaigns compared to retargeting, lower-funnel, warmer-audience campaigns, because the audiences of the latter tend to be more specific, smaller in size, therefore more competitive.

3. Daily budget

If your daily budget is on the lower end, it may take longer for Facebook’s algorithm to exit the Learning Phase. For this reason, costs for new ad sets are often higher up front while the system understands how your audience behaves with your ads and how to optimize them for the highest engagement. If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time.

4. Bidding strategy

Similarly, the way you instruct Facebook to spend your ad budget affects how much your ads cost. Bidding strategies include:

• Lowest cost
• Highest value
• Cost cap
• Minimum ROAS
• Manual

5. Click-through rate

Click-thru rate (CTR) can also play a role in you Facebook ad costs. If CTR is low, especially in a website traffic campaign, you may then see higher costs as Facebook understands that there may be some disconnect between your target audience and the messaging in your ads.

A healthy Facebook CTR is about 2%. More often than not, the higher your CTR climbs, the lower your CPCs will be.

6. Industry

As you saw in our benchmarks above, Facebook costs vary by industry, which also includes varying click-through rates.

It’s also important to look at the ROI by industry. For example, the average CPA for restaurants is $12.91. But if your customer spends $50 and keeps coming back for years to come, you’re essentially making money off of that ad.

7. Seasonality

Historically speaking, in the latter part of Q3 and Q4, costs tend to temporarily increase as the advertising landscape changes for the holiday ecommerce season. Competition ramps up as brands increase their budgets and gain more impression share, thus, increasing costs for all advertising brands.

In AdEspresso’s chart (also shown above), we can see the increase in costs from Q1 to Q4.

Keep that in mind as you budget for the year and if you aren’t in ecommerce or running promotions during the end of the year, you may want to strategize on whether to keep a presence or to scale back.

How to lower Facebook ad costs

1. Create a full-funnel strategy

To use your budget wisely, choose funnel-appropriate campaign objectives. In general, Awareness and Consideration campaigns are suited for the top of the funnel; Consideration and Conversion campaigns align with the middle of the funnel; and Conversion campaigns are best for bottom-funnel conversions.

In short, begin with upper-funnel campaigns to reach more people in your target audience at a lower cost, and then move your way toward conversion campaigns that optimize for your purchase-driving conversion events.

Learn how to create a full-funnel Facebook advertising strategy here.

Note that some brands can certainly run a Conversion campaign targeting upper-funnel audiences with lower priced products or something that may make for a good impulse buy.

People can and do make purchases upon first interaction with a brand on Facebook, however, most will need more touch points from a brand so you can gain their trust, showcase your benefits, and entice them to convert.

2. Use the Automatic Placements setting

While it can be tempting to pick and choose where you want your ads to appear within the Facebook network, the best way to save money is to start with the default Automatic Placements setting. In fact, not doing so is on our list of 7 Budget-Wasting Facebook Ads Mistakes.

By appearing on all placements, Facebook can get a better idea on where to best serve your ads, thus lowering your costs. You’ll also get out of the learning period faster so that you can apply data-informed money-saving optimizations as soon as possible.

Your targeting conditions will remain the same regardless of placement, which means Facebook can then serve ads to user in a lower volume, but lower cost placement that can help drive incremental revenue for you.

3. Broaden your audience

Ad mentioned above, audience size impacts how much Facebook ads cost. So while you want to keep your targeting narrow, you should strive to make those targeted audiences as large as possible. This has become trickier as a result of privacy measures, but we’ve got some recommended Facebook ad strategies to help you out with that.

4. Check audience overlap

Facebook’s audience overlap tool can be instrumental in saving money. Let’s say you have one ad targeting an audience of people interested in startups and another ad for people interested in entrepreneurship. You have different Facebook ad copy and creative to appeal to these different audiences. However, the overlap tool shows you that half of the startup audience overlaps with the entrepreneurship audience. Knowing this, you can use exclusions so those ads don’t overlap. Otherwise, you’d lose money bidding against yourself.

5. Use bid caps

This is the manual bidding strategy in Facebook ads, where you can set a maximum bid instead of allowing Facebook to dynamically bid based on your goals. But this should be used with caution. It’s for advertisers who have a solid understanding of the conversion rate and profit margin, and requires regular maintenance. If you set your bid cap too low, Facebook might have a hard time spending all of your budget.

6. Use the Pixel and the Facebook Conversions API

The goal of both of these pieces of technology is for you to track your ad performance. With visibility into what’s working and what’s not, you can allocate budget accordingly. You can also gain insights about the people viewing your ads, which you can use to further optimize your campaigns and maximize your budget.

The Facebook Pixel is still a thing, but it is losing its power since it’s cookie-based and cookies are crumbling. The Facebook Conversions API does not rely on cookies, but it doesn’t pick up the same exact information as the pixel. So, using the two together will ensure you capture the most accurate data. You can learn how to use the Facebook Conversions API here.

7. Run Facebook A/B testing

You can also help lower your costs at the ad level by A/B testing variables in your ads—one at a time—to better understand what is and is not working well. Test out the text, headline, images and/or videos, landing pages, and more.

Facebook is not the set-it-and-forget type of platform, so it is best to continuously test and aim for better results. Running tests at the ad level can help improve your engagement rates and CTR and stretch your budget further. Check out our Facebook ad examples to get ideas and inspiration.

8. Target your page fans separately

These are going to be your highest converting audiences, so by separating them out, you can allocate more budget to the campaigns that will yield the highest ROI. Plus, retargeting page visitors is one of the lesser-used Facebook ad strategies becoming more popular as a result of privacy changes.

What makes Facebook Ads worth the price?

Advertising on social media in general has its benefits, but let’s finish off with some of the money-saving advantages Facebook has over other platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Facebook is still the most popular