Are Facebook Ads Worth It? PROS, CONS, and FREE TOOLS
By Alexandra Kazakova 19 min READ | Jun 24 2024
Table of contents
With a ROAS of up to 10:1 and an average conversion rate of 9.21%, Facebook ads are still very much worth it.
We’ll discuss these numbers – and many others – below.
Besides, we’ll also analyze:
How to leverage Facebook ads after the iOS14 update
Facebook ads advantages and disadvantages
Facebook ads vs Google ads and TikTok ads
Mistakes to avoid and tips to improve your Facebook ads campaign
We’ll also show you examples and share our free in-house tools so you can use them today!
Let’s begin.
TL;DR:
Effectiveness of Facebook Ads: Facebook ads remain effective with a return on ad spend (ROAS) ranging from 4:1 to 10:1, and an average conversion rate of 9.21%.
Impact of iOS14 Update: The iOS14 update has affected data tracking and ad targeting, but strategies like using Facebook's Aggregated Event Measurement and focusing on first-party data can help optimize campaigns.
Cost Efficiency: The cost per click (CPC) averages around $0.97, and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is about $7.19, making Facebook Ads a cost-effective option for acquiring new customers.
Wide Reach: With over 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides unparalleled reach and engagement opportunities, including high engagement rates for video and Stories.
Comparison with Other Platforms: Facebook Ads offer diverse ad formats and advanced targeting capabilities, often resulting in lower costs compared to Google Ads and different advantages compared to TikTok Ads.
Challenges and Solutions: Common mistakes in Facebook Ads campaigns include poor audience segmentation and ad creative issues. Solutions involve using data-driven insights, optimizing for mobile, and leveraging influencer marketing.
Benefits and Drawbacks: Key benefits of Facebook Ads include diverse ad formats, robust analytics, and a massive audience. Drawbacks include ad fatigue, reduced organic reach, and complexity in ad management.
Optimization Tips: The article suggests continuous monitoring and adjustment of ad strategies, focusing on mobile optimization, and using influencer marketing to enhance campaign effectiveness.
Tools and Resources: Free tools like ROAS and CPM calculators, and an influencer discovery platform are recommended for improving Facebook ad campaigns.
Are Facebook Ads Worth the Investment?
Facebook Ads continue to be a powerful tool for most companies.
Our clients in mobile apps, ecommerce, beauty, finance, and other niches reap the advantages.
These include a massive audience and robust targeting options.
Here's an in-depth look at why investing in Facebook Ads is a smart move for your business.
What’s a Good ROAS for Facebook Ad Campaigns?
A good ROAS for Facebook ad campaigns typically ranges between 4:1 to 10:1.
So, for every dollar spent, you should expect to get four to ten dollars in return.
This high ROAS makes Facebook Ads an attractive option for businesses looking to maximize their marketing budgets.
Pro tip: We use this free ROAS calculator to compare different ad campaigns quickly. This helps us adjust strategies and optimize our marketing efforts.
How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?
The cost of Facebook Ads varies based on several factors, including the target audience, ad placement, and competition.
This extensive user base provides advertisers with unparalleled reach and engagement opportunities.
Insider tip: Facebook users watch over 100 million hours of video every day, which is why we advise our clients to incorporate video ads into their marketing strategies.
What Are Facebook Engagement Rates?
Facebook's engagement rates are among the highest in the industry.
As such, it’s an ideal platform for driving post engagement and building brand awareness.
Of course, not all ad formats on Facebook are equally engaging:
The average engagement rate for Facebook videos is 6.01%.
What’s the Average Conversion Rate for Facebook Ads?
The average conversion rate for Facebook Ads across all industries is around 9.21%.
This high conversion rate demonstrates Facebook’s effectiveness in driving meaningful actions from users.
That’s because:
Facebook Ads are effective at every stage of the marketing funnel, from awareness to conversion.
Targeting relevant audiences with precise ad placements leads to higher conversion rates.
What Is the Average Click-Through Rate on Facebook?
The average click-through rate for Facebook Ads is 0.90%, though some industries perform better than others.
For example, the highest CTR is in the legal field at 1.61%, followed by retail at 1.59%.
Facebook Ads Post the iOS14 Update
The iOS14 update brought significant changes to digital advertising.
It particularly affected how we used Facebook Ads.
Here's what the update meant for advertisers like us and actionable steps on how to continue leveraging Facebook Ads effectively.
What the iOS14 Update Meant for Facebook Advertising
The iOS14 update introduced new privacy features that require apps to ask users for permission to track their activity across other companies' apps and websites.
This change significantly impacted Facebook's ability to collect data for ad targeting and performance tracking.
User experience: The new privacy features give users more control over their data. Of course, this is great for users, but it decreases the amount of user data available to us and other advertisers.
Audience networks: The update affected the accuracy of audience networks, making it harder to track users' activities and preferences across different platforms.
Traffic campaign: Advertisers experienced challenges in optimizing their traffic campaigns due to reduced visibility into user behavior and interactions.
How to Leverage Facebook Ads Post iOS14 Update
Despite the challenges posed by the iOS14 update, Facebook Ads can still be highly effective.
Here are actionable steps we use to optimize our clients’ advertising strategies in this new environment:
Set up and prioritize up to eight conversion events per domain to continue tracking important actions.
Conversion Campaign: Prioritize conversion events that align with your business goals to ensure the most critical actions are still being tracked.
Customer List: Use your customer list for creating custom audiences and lookalike audiences, helping to maintain targeting accuracy.
Dynamic Product Ads: Implement dynamic product ads to show personalized content to users based on their interactions with your business.
2. Focus on First-Party Data
Third-party data has become less reliable, but you can leverage first-party data.
Collect data directly from your audience through website interactions, email sign-ups, and other direct engagements.
Insider tip: Encourage post engagement to gather more direct insights and data from your audience. Use customer testimonials and success stories to build trust and encourage more direct interactions.
3. Enhance Creative Strategies
The effectiveness of your ads' creative elements is more important as targeting becomes broader.
Focus on compelling visuals, clear messaging, and engaging formats.
You can:
Leverage Stories Ads to capture attention with immersive, full-screen experiences.
Create high-quality video ads to boost engagement and convey your message more effectively.
Continuously test and optimize your ad creatives to improve engagement rates and overall performance.
However, partnering with different influencers across these niches means you have access to a broader audience.
5. Monitor and Adapt Your Strategy
Continuously monitor your campaign performance and be ready to adapt your strategy based on the latest data and trends.
Keep an eye on key metrics and adjust your tactics as needed.
Here’s what to focus on:
Your marketing budgets: Reallocate your marketing budgets based on the performance of different campaigns and ad sets.
Bid strategy: Experiment with different bid strategies to find the most cost-effective approach for your goals.
Average cost: Regularly review and optimize your campaigns to ensure you are getting the best average cost per result.
5 Benefits of Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads offer unique advantages for digital marketers.
Here are five key benefits we’ve noticed for ourselves and why Facebook Ads should be part of your digital marketing strategy.
1. Diverse Ad Formats
One of the standout features of Facebook Ads is the variety of ad formats available.
Basically, you can choose the format that best suits your goals and engages your target audience.
Video ads: Use engaging video ads to capture attention and convey your message more effectively. Video ads are particularly useful for demonstrating products and telling brand stories.
Stories ads: Leverage Stories ads for immersive, full-screen experiences that disappear after 24 hours. That’s how you can create a sense of urgency and exclusivity.
Dynamic product ads: Use dynamic product ads to automatically show the right products to people who have expressed interest in your website. The result is you enhance personalization and relevance.
Here’s a neat example of a dynamic product ad from Blinkist:
2. Advanced Targeting Capabilities
Facebook Ads excel in targeting specific audiences with precision.
Yes, even the iOS 14 update.
That means you can reach your ideal customers effectively and maximize the impact of your campaigns.
We recommend our clients fully utilize Facebook's robust features to save Facebook ads that work best, including:
Lookalike audiences: Create lookalike audiences to find new potential customers who resemble your best existing customers. This helps expand your reach to a relevant audience.
Customer lists: Use your customer lists to create custom audiences so you can create personalized ad experiences and better targeting.
Demographics and interests: Target users based on specific demographics such as age range, location, and interests to ensure your ads are seen by the most relevant audience.
3. Robust Analytics and Performance Tracking
Facebook provides comprehensive analytics tools that allow advertisers to measure the performance of their campaigns in real time.
This data helps you optimize your ad strategies and achieve better results.
Of course, each campaign will follow different metrics, but these are the most commonly followed:
Post engagement: Track post engagement metrics to understand how your audience interacts with your content and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Traffic source: Analyze traffic sources to see where your visitors are coming from and which ads are driving the most traffic.
Return on investment: Monitor your return on investment to ensure your advertising efforts are delivering the desired financial outcomes.
4. Cost-Effective Advertising
Facebook Ads offer a range of bidding strategies and budget options, so they’re accessible to businesses of all sizes.
You can control your advertising costs and ensure you get the most out of your marketing budget.
Remember: Set your budget and bid strategy correctly to manage the average cost per action and stay within your financial limits.
5. Massive Audience and Youthful Demographics
One of the significant benefits of Facebook Ads is access to a massive audience.
Despite common misconceptions, Facebook's audience includes a substantial number of young users, making it an excellent platform for reaching diverse age groups.
Additionally, the platform has a slight female skew, with women more likely to use Facebook than men.
This gender balance and broad age range mean that you can reach ideal customers across various demographics.
5 Drawbacks of Facebook Ads
While Facebook Ads offer numerous advantages, there are several drawbacks that we advise our clients to consider.
1. Ad Fatigue
Ad fatigue occurs when users see the same ads too frequently, leading to decreased engagement and increased annoyance. Ad fatigue can affect your:
Engagement rates: Ad fatigue can significantly reduce engagement rates as users become disinterested in repetitive ads.
Advertising costs: To combat ad fatigue, advertisers may need to frequently update their creative, which can increase advertising costs.
Marketing budgets: Managing ad fatigue effectively requires careful allocation of marketing budgets to ensure fresh and engaging content.
2. Limited Organic Reach
Facebook has gradually reduced the organic reach of business posts, pushing brands to rely more on paid advertising to reach their audience.
This can be a challenge for businesses with limited budgets.
This limitation makes it harder for businesses to build a strong presence on the social platform without significant investment.
3. Complexity of Ad Management
Managing Facebook Ads can be complex and time-consuming.
Businesses that lack experience or resources have the most difficulties because:
Setting up and optimizing conversion campaigns requires a deep understanding of Facebook's tools and best practices.
Developing an effective bid strategy also involves constant adjustments and monitoring.
4. Privacy and Data Concerns
With increasing concerns over data privacy and regulations like GDPR, you must overcome the challenges of compliance while still achieving effective targeting.
Here’s what you’re faced with:
User base: Changes in data privacy laws can impact your ability to collect user data for targeted advertising.
Customer list: Using customer lists for ad targeting requires careful handling of personal data to comply with privacy regulations.
Target audience: Stricter data privacy measures can limit the effectiveness of targeting, making it harder to reach your desired target audience.
5. Competition and Ad Auction
The competitive nature of Facebook's ad auction can drive up your costs, especially if you’re in a popular industry.
So, your business can find it harder to maintain a high ROI.
You have a higher competition for ad placements.
You’re competing against other advertising channels for user attention.
As more businesses bid for the same audience, the average cost per click and impression can rise.
That way, you can attract more audience segments, gain a competitive edge, and avoid ad fatigue.
In one of our campaigns for Nielsen IQ’s Unroll.me, we slashed CPAs by 75% by simply working with different influencers:
Facebook Ads vs Google Ads
Let’s review some critical variables that can influence your decision on which platform to use for your advertising strategy:
Audience targeting capabilities: Facebook excels in audience targeting due to its extensive data on user behavior and preferences. Google Ads targets users based on their search queries, which indicates a high level of intent. This makes Google Ads particularly effective for capturing potential customers who are actively searching for products or services.
Ad formats and creativity: Facebook offers a variety of ad formats, including image, video, carousel, and Stories ads. You have a slew of options to create visually engaging and interactive content to capture user attention. Google Ads focuses primarily on text-based search ads but also offers display ads and video ads through YouTube. The emphasis on text ads can be limiting in terms of creativity but is powerful for intent-based targeting.
Cost and budget management: Facebook Ads typically offer lower cost-per-click and cost-per-impression compared to Google Ads, so they’re a cost-effective option for reaching a broad audience. Google Ads can be more expensive due to the competitive nature of the ad auction, particularly for high-demand keywords. However, the high intent of search users can justify the higher costs.
Performance measurement and analytics: Facebook has solid analytics tools that allow you to measure engagement, reach, and conversion metrics in detail. Google Ads also offers comprehensive performance measurement tools, including conversion tracking and Google Analytics integration. These tools provide deep insights into user behavior and campaign performance.
User intent and engagement: Facebook Ads are effective for generating interest and engagement among users who may not be actively searching for your products but are interested in related topics. This approach is excellent for brand building and top-of-funnel marketing. Google Ads target users with high intent, meaning they are actively looking for products or services. This makes Google Ads particularly effective for driving immediate conversions.
User base: Facebook has a broad audience, including a diverse age range, while TikTok’s user base skews younger, making it ideal for brands targeting Gen Z and younger millennials.
Ad formats: Facebook offers a variety of ad types, including dynamic product ads and Stories Ads, which are effective for detailed product showcases. TikTok’s unique ad formats, like in-feed ads and branded hashtag challenges, capitalize on the platform’s viral nature and high engagement rates.
Targeting capabilities: Facebook’s advanced targeting allows you to create precise target audiences based on detailed demographics and behaviors. TikTok’s targeting, while improving, is currently less sophisticated but still effective for reaching a younger, highly engaged audience.
Advertising strategy: Facebook’s ads can be integrated into a broader digital marketing strategy. Of course, you have to leverage the platform’s extensive analytics and ROI tracking. Conversely, TikTok’s ads are best suited for viral marketing and brand awareness, so they’re not easy to repurpose.
Return on investment: Facebook’s detailed analytics allow for precise measurement of conversion rates and return on investment. TikTok’s high engagement rates can drive significant brand exposure, though measuring direct conversions can be more challenging.
Mistakes That Can Affect Your Facebook Ads Campaign [And Our Solutions]
So, Facebook Ads are still very much worth it.
But only if you run your campaign correctly. Here are a few mistakes we noticed some of our clients making before coming to us:
1. Ignoring Audience Segmentation
Failing to segment your audience can lead to ineffective ads that don't resonate with your potential customers.
Solution:
Identify different segments within your target audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Create separate ads tailored to each segment, using Facebook’s audience insights to refine your targeting.
Use the lookalike audience feature to find new potential customers similar to your best existing ones. That way, you enhance your campaign relevancy and engagement and reduce ad fatigue.
2. Overlooking Ad Creative
Using dull or irrelevant ad creatives can result in low engagement rates and wasted ad spend.
Solution:
Invest in high-quality visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your audience.
Test different ad formats, such as video ads and Stories Ads, to see which performs best.
Refresh your ad creatives regularly to avoid ad fatigue and keep your audience engaged.
3. Not Setting Clear Objectives
Without clear objectives, it’s difficult to measure the success of your ads campaign and optimize performance.
Solution:
Define specific, measurable goals for your ads, such as increasing website traffic or boosting conversions.
Align your ad objectives with your broader business goals to ensure consistency.
Use Facebook’s campaign objectives feature to choose the right goal for each ad set, whether it's awareness, consideration, or conversion.
4. Poor Budget Management
Mismanaging your ad budget can lead to overspending without achieving the desired results.
Solution:
Start with a small budget and gradually increase it based on performance data.
Use Facebook’s budget optimization tools to allocate funds efficiently across high-performing ads.
Monitor your CPAs and adjust your bid strategy to ensure you’re getting the best return on investment.
5. Neglecting Performance Analysis
Not analyzing ad performance can prevent you from identifying issues and making necessary improvements.
Solution:
Regularly review your ads’ performance metrics, such as conversion rates and post engagement.
Use Facebook’s analytics tools to gain insights into what’s working and what’s not.
Make data-driven adjustments to your ads and targeting strategies to continuously improve results.
Facebook Advertising Tips to Optimize Your Campaign
Our team found that these are the best ways to optimize a Facebook advertising campaign:
1. Implement Influencer Marketing
Collaborating with influencers can amplify your reach and lend credibility to your brand.
Besides, it reduces CPAs significantly because it reduces ad fatigue.
And that’s because influencers know how to connect with their target audiences without being boring.
How to do it:
Identify influencers who align with your brand values and have a relevant audience.
Partner with these influencers to create authentic content that promotes your product or service.
Use Facebook Ads to boost influencer posts, extending their reach to a broader audience and driving higher engagement rates.
Here’s how easy it was to find over 1,200 CBD influencers in under a second by simply adding relevant keywords and filters:
2. Optimize for Mobile
A significant portion of Facebook users access the platform via mobile devices, so mobile optimization is something you can’t ignore.
How to do it:
Design your ad creatives with a mobile-first approach to make sure they are visually appealing and load quickly on mobile devices.
Use vertical or square ad formats that take up more screen space on mobile. That way, you can increase visibility.
Test your ads on different devices to ensure a seamless user experience across all platforms.
3. Monitor and Adjust Your Ads
Continuous monitoring and optimization are key to maintaining the effectiveness of your Facebook ads.
How to do it:
Regularly review performance metrics such as conversion rates, engagement rates, and return on investment.
Use Facebook’s analytics tools to identify trends and areas for improvement.
Adjust your ad creatives, targeting, and budget based on performance data to optimize results continuously.
Why Facebook Ads Still Work
Facebook Ads remain a cornerstone of digital marketing strategies thanks to their ability to deliver measurable results and adapt to various business goals.
Complete advertising strategy: A well-planned Facebook advertising strategy can significantly enhance your overall marketing efforts.
Solid traffic source: Facebook Ads can be a primary traffic source for your website, driving significant amounts of visitors and potential customers.
Business goals: Aligning your Facebook Ads with your business goals ensures that every campaign contributes to your success.
And if you read this article, you now also know what mistakes to avoid in your Facebook ads and how to maximize your campaign.
Remember to use the free tools we showed you to track and optimize your Facebook campaign.
We have plenty of other marketing tools there, too.
And if you ever decide to power up your Facebook ads with influencers, our inBeat discovery platform is fast, flexible, and has a free version.
Still not sure how to get started?
Reach out to our Meta advertising agency and schedule a free strategy call. We’ll discuss your needs and goals, and help you get started!
