What does Facebook advertising cost? There is no general answer to this question, because Facebook does not have a standard price list. The costs for an ad on Facebook vary – for example, depending on the target group, link target or competition.
Facebook’s cost structure explained simply:
Facebook advertising costs: billing models
Facebook offers 2 types of billing. You can choose to charge either by clicks or impressions:
- CPC (Cost per Click) – Here you pay per click on your ad. It doesn’t matter how often your ad is shown to Facebook users.
- CPM (Cost per Mile) – Here you pay per impression, i.e. per display. CPM represents the classic cost per thousand (CPM), i.e. the cost per 1000 impressions.
Basics of Facebook advertising costs: budgets
To understand Facebook advertising costs, it is important to know what budgets are and how they work.
Budgets are a way to control the total cost of a campaign or ad group. There are two types of budgets:
- Daily budgets: Here you specify what you want to spend on a campaign or ad group on average per day. You must set a daily budget of at least 1€. The daily budget is based on the 24 hours of the day – i.e. if you start your ad at 11pm, 1/24 of your daily budget will be spent on that day.
- Runtime budgets: Here you specify the amount you want to spend during a predefined period (e.g. 1 week).
As soon as the budget is used up, Facebook stops the ad. You can also specify whether you want to run the ads immediately or at a predefined start and end time.
Control costs with bids
With the bid value you determine how much a click on your website is worth to you. You can decide whether Facebook should automatically set a bid for you or – if you want to control your Facebook advertising costs yourself – you can also set a bid manually.
Facebook advertising is based on an auction model. The higher your bid, the better the ad will be placed. A low bid will result in poor ad placements – and this will have a negative impact on the click-through rate.
What does Facebook advertising actually cost now?
How much your Facebook ad costs now depends on several factors, some of which are, for example:
- Targeting: With the help of targeting, you can define your target group to which your ad should be played. For example, you can select factors such as language, location, age or interests such as “fashion”. The target group plays an important role in the calculation of Facebook advertising costs. The costs change depending on the selected target group.
- Competition: The more interest there is in a target group and the more advertisers want to advertise for your target group, the higher the CPC and CPM.
- Furthermore, the costs for Facebook advertising also depend on the industry and performance, among other factors.
Paying for Facebook advertising – payment options
Facebook offers you the following payment options:
- Credit card
- Paypal
- In Germany also direct debit
You must print out invoices yourself in the Ads Manager. Facebook does not send invoices.
You can find out more about Facebook advertising and Facebook Ads in our Insights.