What does a click cost on social ads right now? How much are advertisers getting back for every dollar they spend? And if you’ve already picked your platform, is it the one doing the most for your budget?

Ad platforms change by the week, but the data holds long enough to answer questions like these.

For the 2026 Social Ads Report, we analyzed 628,969 campaigns from 44,355 advertisers running ads on Meta and TikTok, worth $471 million in spend, and lined up the same six months of 2025 and 2026 side by side. It adds up to a clear, benchmark-by-benchmark look at where social ad money goes, what a dollar buys on each platform, and how that has changed since last year.

What’s inside

You’ll find the full Meta vs TikTok comparison, stage by stage of the funnel: what it costs to be seen, to earn a click, and to drive a lead or a sale, with year-over-year changes and a breakdown by account size, from advertisers spending a few hundred dollars a month to those spending tens of thousands.

A few of the numbers that stood out:

$0.03 buys a click on TikTok, less than half what you pay on Meta, and the same campaign brings in almost eight times the clicks.

91% of advertisers run their paid social on Meta alone, so most are spending without ever testing the other option.

$2.42 is what the average US brand earns back for every dollar on sales ads, below the $4.57 study average.

70% of the ad budget we tracked goes to the bottom of the funnel, chasing the sale over reach or awareness.

It comes down to knowing where each dollar tends to work before you spend it, so your budget follows the results instead of habit.

That’s what the report is for. If you spend even a dollar on social ads, we think you should read it.