There’s one company that has come under a lot of fire these last couple of years.
Facebook seems to be making the news headlines for all of the wrong reasons.
As privacy laws have increased, there has been more pressure on Facebook to change its advertising policies.
The iOS 14 update also dramatically damaged Facebook’s ability to accurately track users on iOS devices.
All of this combined has affected Facebook’s advertising platform significantly.
And the worst part?
Facebook advertising costs have been going up year on year for the last 10+ years.
So the BIG question is…
“Are Facebook ads still effective today?”
Below are the latest Facebook advertising statistics that show:
What Will I Learn?
Think Facebook is dying?
Guess again!
The latest Facebook statistics show that the platform is growing – especially when it comes to advertising.
These are the latest Facebook advertising statistics you need to know:
Facebook still has a stronghold in online advertising. And if you include Instagram (which is managed by the same advertising platform) the results are even stronger.
The success of Facebook advertising comes from Facebook’s user base.
Facebook is the third most visited website in the world, attracting approximately 1.6 billion users every day.
The Facebook app is also the third most visited app in the US.
What’s more?
36.8% of the entire world’s population uses Facebook at least once per month. Social media addiction statistics show that Facebook has about 3 billion monthly users.
Bottom line – Facebook still has a huge volume of users.
And that’s not including the 1.3 billion users that Instagram has which are included in the Facebook advertising platform.
All of this has made them a lot of money.
In fact, over the last 10 years, Facebook’s annual revenue has increased by a massive 2,203%. Despite the privacy and iOS drama, Meta has continued to grow Facebook’s advertising revenue.
In 2023, Facebook was also considered the 3rd most valuable media brand in the world after:
Here is a breakdrown of the brand value worldwide from 2020 to 2023:
| Date | Value (in USD) |
|---|---|
| 2020 | $79.8 Billion |
| 2021 | $81.48 billion |
| 2022 | $101.2 Billion |
| 2023 | $59 Billion |
But there’s a good reason that Facebook is worth so much.
Over 3 million businesses actively advertise on Facebook regularly or always.
A study by Hootsuite estimated the potential reach of Facebook ads was 2.11 billion users out of their 3 billion monthly active users.
That means Facebook ads can reach about 72.5% of the total Facebook audience.
Who is the largest Facebook audience for advertising?
Men aged between 25-34 account for 19% of all potential Facebook ad reach. This means that they are the biggest demographic available for targeting on the Facebook advertising platform.
Facebook ads have historically held the reputation of delivering the best performance for advertisers out of all the platforms available.
And the latest Facebook advertising statistics support this.
In HubSpot’s 2021 state of marketing report, they found that:
What does that mean?
70% of businesses experienced their highest ROI with the Facebook advertising platform. A further 1 in 3 business owners listed Facebook ads alone as their best performer in terms of ROI.
This was ahead of Google Paid Search and LinkedIn ads.
Despite all the challenges, Facebook still clearly provides the highest return on investment of all paid channels for most companies today.
But not every Facebook ad works effectively.
What are the most effective Facebook ad strategies?
An experiment conducted by AdEspresso found that mobile ad placements outperformed desktop ad placement by as much as 45%.
Also, adding a call-to-action button to your Facebook ads boosts click-through rates by 2.85x.
Choosing the right ad placements and configurations has a significant impact on performance.
Not all Facebook ads are designed to generate leads and sales.
Although these might be the most popular objectives, there are a ton of campaign objectives that Facebook allows advertisers to choose from.
Other popular objectives include brand awareness and engagement ads.
70% of tests showed that vertical ads have an incremental boost in brand lift and about a 3 to a 9-point increase in ad recall overall.
A study conducted by Buffer also found that spending just $5 per day on Facebook ads generated an average of-
Facebook ads are proven to be a powerful channel to generate interest and awareness about your brand.
According to data published from Wordstream, the legal industry has the highest average click-through rate out of any industry at 1.61%.
The same study found that employment and job training had the lowest click-through rates at 0.47%.
Why does all this matter?
It shows that different industries get better performance from Facebook ads than others.
Of all total marketers using Facebook as a marketing channel, 20% consider advertising to be the most important feature for reaching goals.
This is compared to other marketing strategies on Facebook, such as running a group or organic posting.
All good marketers know that adding a call-to-action (CTA) to your ad is essential. This is especially true for Facebook advertisements.
AdEspresso found in one of their tests that changing the CTA from “Sign Up” to “Learn More” improved the click-through rate on the ad by a massive 22.5%.
But the same study also shows that using the “Sign Up” call-to-action button resulted in a 14.5% higher conversion rate.
That means the call to action you choose for ads can affect the performance outcome in many different ways.
What kinds of results can you expect from your ads?
The average ad with a direct call to action for someone to purchase something had a conversion rate of 0.1% to 0.2%.
The same study from OkDork found that using ads to collect email addresses converted around 20%.
That’s a pretty big difference.
Videos have also become an important part of successful Facebook Ads.
A survey conducted with Australian Facebook users found that 48% of people made a purchase after watching a company’s video.
Testing ad creatives and types are proven to improve performance significantly.
There is no doubt that Facebook advertising costs have increased.
As more and more advertisers have joined and found success, the extra competition has increased costs significantly.
These are the latest Facebook advertising statistics on costs.
The average cost-per-click (CPC) on Facebook is now $1.86. In 2018 the average CPC was just $0.63. That’s about a 3x higher cost in about 5 years.
The average cost-per-thousand views (CPM) on Facebook is now about $11.20.
This metric represents how much it costs to have your ad shown on the platform 1000 times.
Another Wordstream study also found that the average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads is 0.90% across all industries.
If you get your CTR higher than that, you have an above-average ad.
The study found that the average cost-per-action (CPA) is $18.68.
This means the average business pays about $18.68 to get a person to take a valuable action (e.g. lead or sale).
When is the best time to advertise?
Facebook gives you the ability to set your own timetable for when your ads run or just have them running all the time.
Data shows that:
Remember that Facebook ads are run by real businesses. That means trends on Facebook ads will often mimic trends in the business world.
Looking for the cheapest time to advertise?
Cost-per-like campaigns are the cheapest to run during Q1.
The truth is that businesses tend to spend less on marketing in the first quarter of each year because consumers are less likely to buy at that time.
But there is also a big difference in the costs you pay for Facebook ads based on your industry.
A recent study showed that the industry with the highest CPC was Finance and Insurance. It costs companies an average of $3.36 per click.
This is in contrast to the apparel industry which has the lowest cost per click at an average of $0.40.
The costs you end up paying on Facebook will usually come down to:
If you are targeting more niche and competitive audiences you ultimately pay more.
Now you have the latest Facebook advertising statistics about performance, cost and usage.
But ultimately what matters most?
The ability to improve your own results.
Below we have listed the current trends and stats that show the best practices you should take advantage of when running Facebook ads.
Meta has slowly been rolling out instant experiences on Facebook and Instagram.
Instant experience ads on Facebook load 15x faster than the average mobile website (which is a good thing).
We all know that increasing website speed improves:
Instant experience ads could be an excellent ad type for your business to use.
Creatives are a core part of every Facebook ad.
Other than the design, the size of your image can also affect the performance of your ad. Facebook recommends that:
But creatives are just one part of Facebook ads. Your copywriting also plays an essential role in ad performance.
AdEspresso found that after analysing 752,626 Facebook ads, the median length of a headline was just 5 words.
The same case study found that the average ad text contains 14 words.
Shorter, punchier copy with a single concise message will produce the best results.
But the words you use also impact the performance of your ads. The 5 best power words proven to get a higher response are-
Ensure you take advantage of those words when they are relevant to your offer/ad.
As marketers, there are lots of different goals that you might have for your ads. Facebook has 11 different objectives for advertisers to choose from including-
The most popular objectives are traffic, getting leads and generating sales.
But if you’re a smart advertiser, you’ll take advantage of all the different objections to accomplish different goals.
For example:
You might run a campaign to get people to watch your video. You could then set up another retargeting campaign to convert those people into sales.
The truth is-
There are endless strategies you can use for your ads campaigns to get maximum value and results.
The top 3 most commonly used call-to-action (CTA) buttons on Facebook ads are:
There is no doubt that the way you put your Facebook ads together will ultimately impact the performance.
It’s worth testing each trend above to create solid campaigns and improve results.
Are Facebook ads still effective today?
Bottom line: Yes.
The Facebook advertising statistics show that millions of businesses still make excellent ROIs from the Facebook ads platform.
70% of businesses also say that Facebook and Instagram are the most profitable paid ads channels available today.
Digital marketing statistics show that Facebook is still the biggest social media platform with billions of monthly active users.
But the platform isn’t magic.
You must create great ads that engage users to generate a solid ROI.
Want more statistics posts? Take a look at these blogs:
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