Average CPC for Facebook Ads

Facebook CPC means cost per click. Typically, when advertisers talk about CPCs, we are specifically referring to link clicks. By default Facebook CPC refers to clicks on ads that include clicking to react to a post, click to view the image, and of course a link click. Obviously this inflates the number of clicks and for most advertisers is a relatively meaningless metric on its own.

However, Facebook does provide another CPC metric called ‘CPC (link click)’ that only counts link clicks. In our measurement of Facebook CPCs in the charts above, we use cost per link click.

Cost per link click is calculated on Facebook by dividing your spend by the number of link clicks. For example, if your spend was $100 and you got 50 links clicks, your cost per link click was $2 ($100/50=$2.00).

A good CPC on Facebook is always going to be different from one advertiser to another because good performance is relative to the industry, the product, the audience, etc.

To figure out whether you’re getting a good CPC on Facebook or now with a new ad, ad set, or campaign, you should compare the CPC to some of your existing ones. Remember, you naturally will have higher CPCs for bottom-of-funnel campaigns compared to top-of-funnel campaigns.

If you don’t have any existing campaigns to compare your CPC to or you want to see if you’re existing campaigns are getting a good CPC, you can use the chart above to see what the average Facebook CPC is and compare it to yours, or you can join our Facebook community where you can ask folks in your same industry what their CPC is to compare yours to.

Facebook CPCs are determined by your CPM and your click-through-rate (CTR). Before looking to find out why your CPCs are high, first check if your Facebook CPMs are high, because a high CPM will naturally lead to a high CPC.

Then check what your CTR is. A higher CTR will dramatically reduce your CPC and a lower CTR will dramatically increase your CPC, even if your CPMs are low. So what could be the cause of a high Facebook CPC?

• irrelevant ads or messaging
• uncatchy creatives
• boring headlines and copy
• unconvincing offers

If you have a good CPM and solve the CTR challenges above, you will earn a good CPC.

If you need a lower CPC on your ads, ad sets, or campaigns, look at how you can increase your CTRs.

Here are four ways to lower your CPC by first improving your CTR.

1. Improve the relevance of your ads to the audience you’re targeting. You can do this by either adjusting your overall ad’s message, or; more easily, adjust your targeting to better match your ads.
2. Get more creative with your ad images and videos. Take a look at our curated 14 Facebook ad examples for inspiration.
3. Your ads need to stand out to get clicked on and one of the best ways to do that is to be different to capture attention. Change your copy to be irresistible. This could also be a part of your offer (see below).
4. Depending on the part of the funnel your targeting, your offers will be different. If you’re using content to warm up top-of-funnel (cold) audiences, perhaps the content needs to be more exciting, drive higher curiosity, or seem better to solve the problem your audience is suffering from. For bottom-of-funnel offers, this will come down to your price, your sales offer, and how you position it in the ad creative.

Once you have a good CTR, your Facebook CPC will naturally drop.