Facebook Ads 2023 Study: Improve Your Strategy With This Data

The Facebook Study allows you to position yourself in the market, which data such as the average CPC or the average CPM in the Facebook Ads, as well as to see what advertising objectives are most useful for brands and professional accounts, across the world. 

We have provided the data and the main conclusions, for you to improve your Facebook Ads strategy. 

Through Facebook Ads you can create Instagram, Faceboook, Messengar, and WhatsApp campaigns. Therefore, the analyzed data refers to all campaigns and platforms that are manageable within Facebook Ads.

The sample of this study is based on the analysis of 491,150 campaigns worldwide, conducted from 29,137 advertising accounts. In total these accounts invested $126,830,865.08 USD*, which includes reach, impressions, click, and cost data. The cost is further divided into the average CPM and average CPC. 

*Each campaign is configured with a different currency, but in order to compare the data, we have made the conversion into USD, so we can add or compare costs and investments between different countries.

These are the results of the analyzed Facebook Ads campaigns. 

Facebook Ads Study: Main Learnings to Apply to Ad Strategies 

Most of the campaigns had objectives to increase their reach as well as interactions with posts. 

However, these are the campaigns in which the least amount of money is invested, on average. $89.78 compared to the average of $955.70 spent on campaigns with sales objectives. Therefore, Meta receives more money for sales-related campaigns. 

Facebook Ads campaigns evolve from engagement to sales 

Compared to the previous study, where Meta made more money from interaction campaigns, now we can see that sales-driven campaigns bring in more profit for Meta. This shows the evolution of Facebook Ads.

The cheapest Facebook Ads campaigns are brand awareness campaigns. 

The cheapest campaigns (per 1000 impressions) are brand awareness campaigns, and the most expensive are for lead generation and sales campaigns. This investment is 10 times more expensive for ads targeted to attract clients (3.14 USD CPM) or sales (2.39 USD CPM) compared to brand awareness campaigns (0.34 USD CPM).

Types of objectives in Facebook Ads [Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger]

Let’s take a look at the different objective options available in Facebook Ads, before we get to analyzing the study. 

Sales 

This objective is aimed at finding new customers and increasing sales on the advertiser’s website through conversions, messaging, and catalog sales.

Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. 

Leads

The goal here is to generate leads and drive them to the end of the buying process through forms, calls, messages, and registrations. 

Engagement

Boost video plays, likes on your page, and participation in your events. This is recommended for those wanting to increase interactions on posts, replaying your videos, or communication between your community. 

Traffic 

The goal of this campaign is for viewers to click on a link, or to visit a landing page. These lead the users to a website or landing page, with hope they perform a specific action. 

Brand Awareness

Put yourself in the mind of your target audience. Allow your brand to become more recognizable or have more video views to resonate with viewers.

App Promotion

As the name suggests, this objective aims to increase the number of app downloads, or app events.

Analysis of Facebook Advertising Data

Now that we have covered the types of objectives in Facebook Ads, we can see the data from the analyzed sample.

Most used campaigns 

Of the 491,150 Facebook Ads campaigns analyzed, the objectives of campaigns have been ranked as followed: 

• Engagement, account for 41.7%. 
• Traffic with 32.1%
• Brand awareness with 10%. 
• Lead generation with a total of 8.5%.
• Sales with 7.4%.
• App promotion with 0.2% total. 

Here is the ranking of the most used campaigns by brands on Facebook Ads:

Campaigns with the highest investment 

Now we are viewing investment, which we will order from the objective on which the largest amount of budget is spent, to the objectives that the least amount of budget is spent. 

• Sales with 29.3%.
• Leads with 25.6%.
• Traffic with 19.4%.
• Engagement with a total of 15.4%.
• Brand Awareness with 9.1%. 
• App Promotion with 1.2%.

In this case, sales, lead generation, and traffic are at the top of the ranking. In short, these are the campaigns that take up most of the budget. These campaigns receive the most direct ROI and are business-performance focused.

Average investment budget per campaign type 

If we compare both data, the number of campaigns and the cost dedicated to each objective, we can see how much budget is invested, on average, in each type of campaign: 

• Engagement: An average of $89.78 is invested in each campaign to achieve a higher number of video views, likes, and participation. 
• Traffic: Campaigns to achieve traffic, clicks on sales pages, or visits to a website, have an average investment of $147.12 per campaign. 
• Brand Awareness: For raising awareness of your brand, and allows users to recognize who you are, the investment increases to an average of $220.52 per campaign. 
• Leads: The average investment to attract new customers is $731.06. 
• Sales: On average, $955.70 is invested in each campaign with the objective of increasing sales.
• App Promotion: App promotion downloads has the most expensive investment budget, with an average of $1,897.95 per campaign. 

We continue with the study to see the performance of each campaign type, from the total 491,150 campaigns. We also look to know, on average, what the price is to receive 1000 impressions (CPM) and to get a click (CPC).

Average CPC in Facebook Ads

The average CPC per campaign is $0.085. 

Knowing the average cost of each type of campaign can help guide you on what may be the most profitable strategy when investing in Facebook Ads. 

When calculating which of the advertising objectives costs more per click, we have the following data: 

• Leads $0.20 per click. 
• Sales $0.13 per click. 
• Brand Awareness $0.12 per click.
• App Promotion $0.12 per click.
• Engagement $0.05 per click.
• Traffic $0.04 per click.

We can see here that lead generation has the highest cost per click, while traffic is the lowest. A good tactic could be to try generate a traffic campaign, using an attractive landing page and good conversion, instead of investing in lead generation campaigns. 

Now that you have this data, it’s time to crunch the numbers and see what type of campaign is most profitable for your particular case. 

Average CPM in Facebook Ads

The average CPM per campaign is $1.25.

The performance per campaign differs depending on the type of objective, since Facebook Ads seeks to show your ad to a larger audience, or more ‘qualified’ people. 

For example, if your goal is to generate more leads, it might be cheaper to focus your campaign on boosting traffic and lead potential customers to a landing page, instead of trying to do this through forms or direct registrations. 

These are the average CPMs per campaign objective. 

• Leads $3.14 per thousand impressions. 
• Sales $2.39 per thousand impressions. 
• Engagement $1.12 per thousand impressions. 
• Traffic $0.95 per thousand impressions. 
• App Promotion $0.74 per thousand impressions. 
• Brand Awareness $0.34 per thousand impressions.

Let’s go one step further with the Facebook Ads Study. 

To establish a comparison between the investment by country, we have separated CPC and CPM by country. We have divided the analyzed campaigns by each country that ran a Facebook Ads campaign.

Average CPC in Facebook Ads, per country

This data alone can lead you to make hasty decisions about which counties are more optimal to run successful campaigns. It may be more expensive to attract customers in the United States than in Spain, but perhaps this is because the average American customer spends more money on each purchase than customers in Spain. 

Therefore the optimization of campaigns should be based on your customers, and not only focused on the average CPC. 

However, this data is interesting to have a global scale, especially if you use multiple languages and audiences in your campaigns.

The average CPC is $0.085, and the countries that are above the average are Australia, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Great Britain, United States, New Zealand, Germany, The Netherland, Spain, Belgium, Singapore and Italy.

As you can see, there are big differences between countries. For this reason, it’s recommended that when you run a campaign, you should separate the audience by countries with similar costs. 

If you combine very different countries within the same campaign, Facebook Ads will publish your ad in the most profitable country, however you will not achieve your objectives for the other countries. 

Take into account the type of customers you gain with your campaigns. The type of customer is more valuable than the cost to obtain them. 

Average CPM in Facebook Ads, per country

The average CPM for all countries is $1.25, which means that countries like x, y, z, have a higher cost than average. 

Facebook Ads learnings: investment on professional accounts

Despite the fact that the 2018 Facebook Ads study sample is smaller than respect to this sample, we can draw some generic conclusions about the evolution of campaigns over time. 

Compared to 2018, Facebook Ads campaigns have evolved to become more traffic and sales oriented 

While five years ago the main objectives were based on campaigns to promote posts, gain followers, or increase video views, now we can observe that Facebook Ads campaigns have undergone a change. Today less and less is being spent on campaigns to boost engagement, and more is being invested into campaigns related to business performance, such as boosting sales, generating new users, and increasing traffic. 

We could say that the type of advertising that helps guide people to the end of the selling process is increasingly used with the intention of boosting sales, as in Google Ads. 

In 2023 advertising investments are more expensive in Facebook Ads

Regarding CPC, we see that the average CPC has increased both overall and by country by 60%.

Although, the average CPM on Facebook Ads is going down in 2023. 

The CPM has gone from an average CPM in 2018 of $1.26 to average of $1.25 per campaign, equivalent to a drop of -0.79%. Although, since this sample is much larger, this would most likely remain similar to the previous study. 

As a conclusion, we can say that the CPM has decreased in relation to the CPC which has had an increase of 60%.

The cost per campaign increases while impressions are reduced. 

On average, $258.23 is spent on each campaign and this yields 206,543.3 additional impressions to those gained organically. In 2018, the average campaign was $7.86 and 7,777 impressions were obtained.

Let us know in the comments how you are going to apply this Facebook Ads study to your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp advertising strategies!

Isabel Romero , 19 June 2023