The Facebook Ads platform occupies a unique position on the social media marketing landscape. Even with TikTok, the only rival of Facebook, rising quickly to match its capabilities in advertising, its ad platform yet provides the best reach and targeting options and, after going through lots of iterations over the years, its dashboard is easy to use and it serves millions of marketers around the globe. In fact, for any startup that launches a new product or service and needs to reach its potential customers, Facebook Ads is one of the two options, Google Ads is the other one, that they have to use to succeed in a market. That is all to say that answering the question “how much do Facebook ads cost?” is essential. Read on to learn about the current Facebook Ads cost and make informative decisions about your Facebook Ads ad campaign.
Because Meta, its parent company, also owns Instagram – the leading photo + video-sharing social media platform, WhatsApp – the leading messaging platform, advertisers are provided with a full spectrum of tools to reach multiple generations with specific interests chosen from a very comprehensive list built on data Facebook users provided the platform over the years.
To give you an example of the platform efficiency, running an app marketing campaign via Facebook Ads, app marketers can reach out to females 30-35 years old, who are moved to the city recently and looking for new furniture to buy. It must be said that Facebook’s immense database of information on its users, including their habits, likes, and dislikes has been a double-edged sword. Deliberate malign use of this data lead to many negative consequences and it forced Facebook to reduce the number of different targeting options it used to offer app marketers.
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According to eMarketer, in 2023 Facebook Ads held ~18% of the digital advertising spending. In April of 2021, Apple introduced its ATT ad framework with iOS 14.5, which led to Facebook’s loosing of information about Facebook and Instagram app users about their actions off-platforms, made a serious dent in the Facebook advertising revenue and slowed down its growth, only 0.4% in 2022 against 2% in 2021.
Now, to address the question – what is the cost of Facebook ads, we need to explain how its bidding system works first. The platform is built on a blind auction system, which implies that hundreds of thousands of advertisers bid for ad placements, both mobile and desktop, to reach specific audiences. To keep the bidding process fair, while advertisers may choose to set any bid they want if she or he wins the bidding, they will be charged by the system only 1 cent more than the top bid.
A quick example would be if the top bid for a particular ad spot costs $1 and the advertiser sets his bid equal to $2, she or he will actually be charged only $1.01. This applies to all business models supported on the Facebook Ads platform, such as CPM, CPC, and CPA.
Essentially, the Facebook Ads bidding platform serves ads, taking into account three major factors:
- a price for a bid advertisers are willing to pay to generate specific events such as view, click, install in-app purchase, or other action. As well as daily budget – how much advertisers are willing to spend daily
- relevance score for each ad, calculated based on how many interactions Facebook users have with a specific ad
- Facebook’s internal algorithm estimates if a specific ad will generate higher engagement if it’s given higher priority against other ads.
To be efficient with a given app marketing budget, you need to understand what factors affect Facebook advertising cost and how to reduce them.
Factors that affect Facebook Ads Cost & how to reduce it
Running a Facebook Ads advertising campaign, one would need to meet two goals – achieve the desirable outcome (e.g. generate sales, registrations, subscriptions, and so on) and do it at the lowest cost.
There is a number of factors that influence a cost of a particular Facebook ad. These go into three general buckets – targeting, placement, and creatives.
Depending on a specific goal, be it driving app installs or raising awareness of a particular brand via ad views, targeting options is what allows app marketers to be either very precise and reach out to a narrow segment of a population or very broad to appeal to a wide range of people. To apply the right set of targeting options, marketers need to have a solid profile of an app user or customer they are after for their brand. Today Facebook Ads provide marketers with the following ad formats – Image ads, Video ads, Poll ads, Carousel ads, Slideshow ads, Collection ads, Stories Ads, Reels Ads, instant Experience ads, Lead ads, and more. Without running A/B tests, it’s impossible to define what specific ad format will be the most efficient for a particular Facebook Ads campaign. It’s a given that a certain advertising budget needs to be allocated to run such tests.
Ad placement defines at what specific moment Facebook users will interact with the ad and hence how likely it will persuade them to take a desirable action. There are total 19 ad placements across Meta’s multiple assets – Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. Specifically, ads are displayed in Feeds, Stories, In-Stream, Search, Messages, In-Article, and Apps.
Ad creatives, just like with any other advertising platform, are extremely important because, at the end of the day, the best targeting and placement wouldn’t be sufficient to persuade people to install an app, make an in-app purchase or buy from a brand if the ad creatives don’t appeal to that individual. You can listen to a conversation about ad creatives in one of the episodes of Business Of Apps podcast.
Facebook Ads Cost Statistics:
- Facebook Average CPM (Cost Per 1,000 views) – $8.96
- Average CPC (Cost Per Click) – $0.58
- Average CPI (Cost Per Install) – $1.00
- Average CPA (Cost Per Action) range – $8 – $55
Facebook Ads CPM (Cost Per a Thousand Views)
Analyzing any online advertising platform, one needs to begin with establishing an average CPM (Cost Per Mile or per 1,000 impressions cost).
Looking at the last 5 years, we see the average Facebook Ads CPM fluctuating from ~ $5 in 2020 to ~ $9 in 2024. These numbers represent an average value across multiple verticals and locations, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 the rate fluctuated severely but overall was down at $5.31 per 1,000 ad views mark.
Facebook Ads average CPM, 2020-2024
Source: Revealbot, WordStream, AdEspresso, Statista, Databox
Going from the average CPM for the whole market over time to CPM for various locations, we get the following picture.
According to Lebesque, The SR Zone data for 2024, the absolute leader in CPM rates is US with $21 per 1,000 impressions, followed by Canada and Ireland with $14.03 and $11.08 respectively. Other countries on the chart offered lower CPM rates, in France app publishers could expect $8.05 per 1k views, $10.05 in Germany, $6.74 in Japan, $10.31 in the United Kingdom, and only $2,6 in India.
Facebook Ads average CPM, by location, $
Source: Lebesque, The SR Zone
Next up is the benchmark that is highly relevant for app publishers that own a portfolio of mobile games. Specifically, let’s review CPM for mobile games.
According to Lebesque, Shopify data for 2024, the absolute leader among popular categories of mobile games was Simulation, which allowed mobile game publishers to make $24 per 1,000 views, followed by Adventure and Arcade which generated CPM equal to $22 and $18 respectively. The opposite side of the spectrum was presented with the Board genre that was capable to bring only $5 per game ads 1,000 views.
Facebook Ads average CPM for mobile games, by genre
Source: Lebesque, Shopify
Moving from mobile games to non-games, which in 2024 generated $86 billion versus $93 billion generated by mobile games. Meaning today the non-games sector is pretty much on par with the gaming one, which is quote different from the 2020 situation, when non-gaming apps generated $32 billion versus $79 billion generated by mobile games.
In 2024, app publishers with apps from the Finance category are clear leaders with CPM – $15. The opposite end of the 9 category non-gaming CPM spectrum belongs to Video Players, which generated $7 per 1,000 views.
Facebook Ads average CPM, mobile non-gaming apps, $
Source: Varos, Shopify, Wordstream, and Enhencer
Moving from CPM rates – the favorite benchmark of web and app publishers, because with this model they are paid for ads exposure, regardless if those ads triggered any action or not, to CPC rates – Facebook Ads benchmark that is on the financial radar of any app marketer as one of the factors that define how efficiently her or his app marketing budget is being spent.
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Facebook Ads CPC (Cost Per Click)
Crunching together the numbers for Facebook Ads Cost Per Click over the last five years, we get the following picture. Despite significant fluctuations we see on the Facebook Ads CPM rates chart for the same period, Cost Per Click rates tends to hover around 50 centers per click, ranging from $0.39 in 2020 to $0.63 in 2024.
Facebook Ads average CPC, over time
Source: Revealbot, Hootsuite, Varos
Essentially, CPC rates represent app marketers paying capacity and because it correlates with overall economic conditions in a specific country, the picture for Facebook CPC rates in multiple locations looks quite diverse. Hands down, the absolute leader is the United States with $1.12 per click, followed by Canada with $0.93 per click on a Facebook Ad, Australia – $0.85 per click, UK – $0.78 per click, the lowest cost belongs to the Indian market – only $0.15 per a mobile app install generated via Facebook Ads.
Facebook Ads average CPC, by country
Source: Revealbot, Hootsuite, Wordstream
Now, there is a number of objectives that brand marketers can focus their Facebook Ads campaigns on, among these relevant to our analysis are – Brand Awareness, App Installs, and Video Views. With Brand Awareness objective, marketers aim at raising awareness of their brands and don’t persuade achieve any specific action such as sales, in-app purchases, subscriptions, registration, and so on. The App Install objective is specifically aimed at acquiring mobile app users and with Video Views marketers are interested in increasing the number of views videos they are promoting are getting.
Looking at the numbers crunched with Revealbot, Hootsuite, Varos data, we see the following picture. Since 2020 and to this day, the CPC rates for raising awareness are stable – it takes around $0.20 – $0.35 to generate a click that leads to increased awareness about a particular brand.
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With App Installs, the most expensive objective to achieve, it hovers around $1.00 per click, in 2020 cost of a click that lead to an app install was $1.12 and today it’s $1.3. Among these last five years, only 2021 breaks the pattern – it had a lower CPC than the previous year, $1.05 against $1.12.
Facebook CPC for Video Views demonstrates stable grow, from $0.15 in 2020 to $0.25 in 2024. This historical increase fits nicely into the general trend of a video ad format popularity grow powered by TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Facebook Ads average CPC, by campaign objective
Source: Revealbot, Hootsuite, Varos
Facebook Ads CPI (Cost Per Install)
Moving from rates for views and clicks to mobile app installs as the objective for a Facebook Ads campaign.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world, the average cost of a single mobile app install was $1.96. Next year, because of a dramatically increased demand for mobile apps to assist people with activities that now, at the time of a global pandemic, needed to be done remotely, the CPI jumped up to $2.24 per install. By 2022, the world has managed to defeat the pandemic but the demand for mobile apps was still higher than before the pandemic, meaning the competition between apps was as high as the previous year, it resulted in CPI rising to a new high – $2.6 / install.
In 2023, the Facebook Ads CPI growth slowed down significantly – it rose to only $2.7, a mere $0.1 increase from the previous year. This year, the rate has been growing even slower – the current Facebook Ads CPI is roughly $2.75 per a mobile app install.
Facebook Ads average CPI, over time
Source: AppsFlyer, Growth Marketing Genie
The last benchmark we’re taking a look at is the Cost Per Action for Facebook Ads.
Facebook Ads CPA (Cost Per Action)
Let’s analyze numbers for how much it costs to generate an action associated with a mobile app, such as in-app purchase, subscription, registration, and more. Looking at all Facebook Ads costs, app marketers and brands, in general, should realize that this is the most important benchmark for their ROI calculations.
The rates for generating an action via Facebook Ads vary significantly across different industries. There are many factors that influence the rate for a particular business vertical, among those the level of competition, the level of Facebook users engagement with ads representing products and services from various industries, and paramount of all pricing of products and services being advertised with those ads on Facebook. Meaning it’s small wonder that a Facebook Ad CPA for the Health & Fitness industry costs $61 per action, meanwhile for Sports & Recreation it’s only $15.
Facebook Ads average CPA, by industry
Source: WordStream, Enhencer, Lebesque, Mega Digital
Final Thoughts
Summing up all Facebook Ads benchmarks we’ve reviewed, it’s worth noticing that because the platform hosts millions of advertisers that represent a broad spectrum of industries, average costs for CPM, CPC, CPI, and CPA costs do vary significantly. For app marketers and brands to be efficient with Facebook Ads, they need to run multiple ads in parallel, do lots of testing and focus on ads that do generate desirable outcomes better.
Also, ad creatives are paramount to being able to stand out from the army of other advertisers who are on the same quest to reach out to new app users, new subscribers, new customers they hope will become loyal.