Facebook Advertising Costs By CPM
Always fresh Facebook ad cost data from hundreds of millions of spend per month.
How Much Do Facebook Ads Actually Cost?
Just like other ad platforms, Facebook ads operate in an auction-based system, meaning the cost of advertising (and CPM) is primarily influenced by supply and demand.
When you create a Facebook ad campaign, you have several tools and options to help manage your ad spend. There are three main ways to think about Facebook ad costs: the total budget for your campaign, the cost per desired outcome (such as a click, conversion, or purchase), and the leading indicator costs like CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click).
You can set a specific budget for your campaign—whether it’s $10 a day or $10,000 a month—giving you control over your total spend. However, you don’t have direct control over the cost of each individual result.
While Facebook provides tools to help optimize your cost per result, there’s no guarantee that you will consistently achieve your desired cost per action.
Three key factors influence the cost of advertising on Facebook: the ad auction itself (driven up and down based off the competition), the offer/creative you’re using, and your relevance score (a determination by Facebook of how well its users like your ad).
Ad Auction
Offer/Creative
Relevance Score
Facebook’s main goal is to keep users engaged and active on the platform. If your ads are poorly received and clutter users’ news feeds with low-quality content, it could lead to users leaving. As a result, Facebook will charge you more to show those underperforming ads to their audience. On the flip side, if you create an ad that resonates well with users, Facebook will reward you with lower costs because you’re contributing to a better overall user experience.
Facebook uses several metrics to assess the value of your ad to its users. Two key factors are the ratio of negative to positive reactions (such as likes, comments, and shares) and how many users hide or report your ad. These help Facebook gauge how well your ad is being received. There are also some more secret “black box” metrics like “scroll stop rate” that are factored in.
To keep it incredibly simply, your CPM and CPC costs are based off your average bid, multiplied by your relevance score.
In simple terms, the cost of Facebook ads can be thought of as a formula based on how well your ad connects with users and achieves its objective.
The Facebook Ads Cost Equation
While we’re keeping this incredibly simple, there are tons of complicated factors that influence CPM and overall Facebook ads costs.
As an advertiser, all you need to do is set the budget for your campaigns and keep your focus on finding the right audiences for your product and making the best ads/creative you can. Doing these two things well will drive the cost of your Facebook ads down (especially the creative).
Use our Facebook ad cost charts above to find the average cost of Facebook ads by your campaign objective and see how you compare.
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1
What does Facebook CPM even mean?
Facebook ads CPM refers to the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions of their ad on Facebook. An “impression” is counted each time an ad is shown to a user, regardless of whether the user interacts with it.
CPM is a common pricing model used in Facebook advertising, where you could pay for exposure, rather than actions (like clicks or conversions). It’s calculated by dividing the total ad spend by the number of impressions (not reach), and then multiplying that by 1,000.
For example, if you spend $100 and your ad gets 50,000 impressions, your CPM would be calculated as:
CPM = (Total Spend/Impressions) × 1,000
CPM = ($100/50,000) x 1,000 = $2
This means you paid $2 for every 1,000 impressions of your ad on Facebook.
2
Why is my Facebook CPM so dang high?
If your Facebook CPM is higher than expected, several factors could be at play. Here are some common reasons why your CPM might be high:
- Highly competitive audience
- Targeting that’s too narrow (the more layers you use, the more expensive it can get)
- Poor relevance scores
- Ad fatigue
- Ad placements
- Inefficient bidding strategy
- Campaign objective issues
- Seasonality/world events
3
What is a good CPM for Facebook ads?
You’re not gonna like this answer. Because it depends.
However, it depends on what CPM ceiling you can max afford while balancing your business goals.
Most advertisers evaluate whether their CPM is good by comparing it against other campaigns or ad sets, or even the overall average for their ad account.
If you’re looking for a benchmark, refer to the Facebook ad cost charts above, using the same campaign objective you typically run to get an average CPM.
Alternatively, you can check with other advertisers in your niche by joining Facebook advertising communities to get a sense of typical CPMs in your industry.
4
How do I lower my Facebook CPM?
First, you need to figure out why your CPM needs to be lower. Normally, your better bet is to lower your cost per conversion first.
But the easiest way to lower CPM is to set more restrictive and lower bidding caps. Then you should focus on increasing your relevance scores by driving up your ad engagement.