Facebook Ads Benchmarks: Optimize the Effectiveness of Your Campaigns

Facebook advertising is a must for any business because of the platform’s huge user base. Find out how to make the most of your Facebook Ads campaign.

Facebook Ads in 2023

If you thought advertising on Facebook was irrelevant in the face of other social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, think again. As of 2023, over 2.91 billion people are monthly active users on Facebook, with nearly 1.9 billion people using the platform every day, making it the biggest social media platform in the world. Facebook is the third most visited website in the world, coming behind only Google and YouTube.

Facebook’s ad network continues to grow at a rapid pace. In the past 18 months alone, the number of advertisers on Facebook has more than doubled. Facebook Ads appear in several places throughout the app, such as in users’ news feeds, Messenger, stories, and marketplace.

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Audience

You don’t need your ads to reach all 2.91 billion people on Facebook. Facebook Ads target users based on their demographics, interests, and more. Age, location, gender, education, financial level, and political leanings are just some of the ways you can tailor your ads to your audience.

Objective

When you set up your Facebook Ads campaign, you’ll also choose your objective. The options range from brand awareness and reach to traffic and engagement to conversions, catalog sales, and store traffic. By letting Facebook know what you want your ads to accomplish, you ensure that the platform offers you the ad options most likely to help you achieve your goals. ECommerce businesses typically run Facebook conversion campaigns that encourage customers to visit their websites and make a purchase.

Cost

Several factors are used to determine the cost of your Facebook Ads. How wide of an audience are you targeting? Having your ads shown to a narrower, more relevant audience often costs more than a broader one who is more likely to ignore them. How long is your ad being shown? The duration of your campaign will determine its cost. Ad costs also vary according to your bid strategy, location, timing, industry, and the ad’s placement within Facebook’s platform.

Facebook offers many different types of ads. These are the ad types that are ideal for eCommerce businesses:

Dynamic ads target shoppers based on their past behavior.

Video ads attract a lot of attention and yield high rates of interaction.

Domain ads send users straight to your website (or to a specific product on your site).

Facebook Lead ads help you grow your mailing list or have people sign up for a subscription.

Instant Experience ads create a detailed, full-screen story with your product or service.

Facebook Messenger ads reach out to shoppers directly while they’re browsing the platform.

Carousel ads let viewers swipe sideways to view a collection of your merchandise.

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Key Indicators to Measure Facebook Ads Campaign Performance

Once your Facebook ad campaign is up and running, you’ll want to track its performance to make sure you’re making the most of your ad spend. With such an array of companies advertising on Facebook and so many ways to segment your ads, it can be hard to know which metrics matter most. Facebook advertising benchmarks give you the data-based information you need to improve your ad campaign performance and refine your budget.

Facebook’s marketing undergoes frequent changes, such as allowing users to opt out of personalized advertising. Get a solid handle on the Facebook Ads benchmarks for your industry to help you define your campaign limits and goals.

The main Facebook Ads benchmarks are:

Cost per click rate (CPC)

Your cost per click rate tells you how much money you need to spend to get people to click on your ad. To calculate it, divide your total ad spend by the number of ad clicks you get. Facebook Ads average a cost per click of around $0.72 across all industries. CPC fluctuates based on different factors. Holiday shopping seasons, for example, show a sharp rise in CPC.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Facebook CTR benchmarks refer to the percentage of users who click on your ad. This number is calculated by dividing the number of ad clicks by the number of ad impressions and multiplying it by 100. Across all industries, Facebook click-through-rate benchmarks are 0.9%. A low CTR tells you that viewers who’ve seen your ad weren’t interested enough to click on it.

Industries like retail, beauty, technology, and apparel tend to have higher CTRs than the average. These ads often use enticing visuals and offer promotions and sales that encourage more people to click on ads.

Average Conversion Rate (CVR)

The primary goal of your Facebook Ads campaign is to convert. The average conversion rate for Facebook Ads takes into account only those campaigns that set an objective of conversion. Your CVR is calculated by dividing the number of ad conversions by the number of ad clicks, multiplied by 100. The average Facebook Ads conversion rate across all industries is 9.21%, which is significantly higher than the conversion rate for Google Ads.

Cost per action rate (CPA)

CPA lets you know the cost of acquiring a new customer and tells you how much you pay for users to take specific action based on your ad, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. In this results-based approach, if your ad campaign doesn’t lead users to take action, you don’t pay for it. The average CPA of Facebook Ads is $18.68 and is higher for industries like beauty, home improvement, and technology.

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Ways to Increase the Performance of Your Campaigns on Facebook Ads

If your Facebook conversion campaign isn’t performing as you had hoped, there are several steps you can take to boost your metrics and make the most of your ad budget.

Target your audience

When you narrow down your audience, your ads can have more targeted messaging that can compel more people to click through. The more specific your ads can be, the more likely the right people will take an interest. Learn more about your audience and ensure your messaging resonates with those most likely to be paying customers.

Catch their eye

Ensure that your ad attracts attention and stands out from the competition by using strong, eye-catching visuals. Videos, infographics, GIFs, and other dynamic content make people more likely to click through instead of scrolling by.

Retarget customers

Focus your advertising on people who’ve already shown an interest in your business. Retargeting lets you reconnect with people who have already made a purchase, or even those who’ve abandoned their shopping cart or simply visited your site. Retargeting also lets you personalize your offer based on potential customers’ interests, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Use the right CTA

What do you want people to do once they’ve viewed your ad? Make sure you use a call to action that tells people what comes next. If you want them to join a membership or rewards club for your business, try “Join now” or “Sign up”. If you’re taking them to your eCommerce business website, try “Shop now” or “Browse collections”. CTAs are the bold arrow that sends people in the right direction.    

Perfect your copy

Keep your ad copy compelling and brief. Short ads work better than those that are excessively wordy because people are tired of being overwhelmed by lots of text. Personalize your messaging and ask a question in your ad. Ensure that your headline is catchy and specific. People’s eyes gravitate towards headlines and prefer uncluttered graphic text, so make sure to get your language as tight as possible.

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Keep your messaging in sync

Nothing irks people more than a landing page that feels disconnected from the ad that got them there. You lose trust when people click on your ad and see something that doesn’t match the offer you promised. Try to keep your ads on-brand so the colors, images, and fonts they see are consistent throughout their experience.

Carry out split tests

A/B testing is a must when you want to know what’s working for your Facebook conversion campaign. Create two or more versions of every aspect of your ad, including your targeting, objective, ad copy, ad type, and more. Run your ads and see what the click-through rate benchmarks are for each. Eventually, you’ll achieve the best version of your ad. Facebook makes this easy because they allow up to five variations of your ad.

How Should You Compare Facebook Ads Benchmarks for Your Industry?

Facebook Ads Manager is the platform’s built-in analytics dashboard that lets you track ad performance, but its functionality is somewhat limited. Varos is the benchmarking platform that gives you real-time data comparing your Facebook Ads’ performance to your peers. Optimize the effectiveness of your Facebook Ads campaigns by getting deep insights into Facebook ad benchmarks for your industry.

Nearly 3000 companies contribute their anonymous eCommerce benchmarking data to Varos - data you can’t get anywhere else. Keep track of your Facebook advertising benchmarks and attain actionable insights so you can improve your campaigns and maximize ROAS. With Varos, you’ll be able to easily track your Facebook Ads’ CTR, CPC, CVR, and CPA, along with other Facebook benchmarks and additional platforms like Google Ads, TikTok, LinkedIn, Shopify, and Klaviyo.

Discover how your Facebook Ads are performing compared to the overall market and your peers over a period of time, like the holiday shopping season or back-to-school sales. Varos is the dynamic platform that lets you extract as much useful information from your A/B testing and find out which ads are worth spending your budget on. Leverage the up-to-date first-party insights Varos provides to make savvy, confident decisions.

When it comes to social media networks, Facebook is still king, and Facebook Ads are proven to work. The more you know about your Facebook Ads benchmarks, the better you can leverage the immense power of this mega-platform for your business.

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About the Author

Yarden Shaked

Co-founder & CEO at Varos

LinkedIn