How much does a Facebook ad cost? What does it include?

“How much does a Facebook ad cost?” is a question that weighs on businesses when they choose to reach potential customers through the Facebook advertising channel. The problem of optimizing ad costs and figuring out how to run effective Facebook ad campaigns is a constant concern for advertisers. Understanding these concerns, the experts at Optimal Agency will share useful information on this topic in today’s article.

The big picture of Facebook advertising in 2025

In the overall landscape of the digital advertising industry, Facebook has always maintained a pioneering role thanks to its ability to attract free users, expand its user base, collect data, and continuously improve its algorithm. In the early stages, the platform “favored” advertisers with low costs and high efficiency to attract more businesses to experiment. But as Facebook matured and the number of advertisers grew significantly, the CPM cost gradually climbed, and the platform began to reach an optimal equilibrium: effective enough for businesses to continue spending money, but also expensive enough for Facebook to maximize its profits.

Facebook’s democratization for all businesses

By 2025, Facebook will have truly become a democratized advertising platform. Anyone—from a small individual with a few dollars a day to a corporation willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month—can participate. The key is no longer whether Facebook is “worth running on,” but rather the structure and financial health of your own business.

For small and medium-sized businesses

We’ve noticed that many businesses “burn through money” on ads without making a profit, and the reason lies in their business model:

• A low AOV (average order value) → for example, selling a $20 product with a $15 profit makes it very difficult to compete because the cost per purchase is often $50–80.
• No LTV (customer lifetime value) → customers only buy once and don’t return.
• A high churn rate → customers cancel quickly and don’t generate long-term revenue.
• A low conversion rate (<1%) → even with quality traffic, customers don’t buy.
  In these cases, no matter how well Facebook Ads targets, it’s difficult for the business to remain profitable.

For large businesses

Conversely, strong businesses are the ones that best utilize Facebook advertising. Their identifying characteristics include:

• A high AOV → which helps balance ad costs.
• A good LTV → customers make multiple purchases, increasing total profit.
• Low churn → customers are retained long-term.
• A good conversion rate and high profit margin.
• A reputable brand, a professional website, and an existing social community.

Real-world examples from ad data:

• A brand spent $90,000 in 30 days, with a reported ROAS of only 0.83, but was still extremely profitable due to a high customer lifetime value (LTV).
• Another brand spent $175 per day, generating 78 orders with an AOV of $93 and a ROAS of 3.08—profitable, but not yet able to scale aggressively.
• In contrast, a seasonal brand with an AOV of $114 but only achieving a ROAS of 1.2 → it was no longer worth continuing, so they had to stop.

If your business model is weak, advertising will only be costly. But if you have a strong structure, a reputable brand, and an optimized system, Facebook Ads in 2025 are still a potential channel for sustainable Facebook ad scaling. So, how much does a Facebook ad cost today? Let’s dive into the next section for a detailed analysis!

How much does a Facebook ad cost? What does it include?

The cost of advertising on Facebook is always one of the biggest questions for advertisers. However, there is no “standard” number that applies to everyone. The important thing isn’t how much you spend, but what you want to achieve from that spending.

Determine the cost based on your ad objective

We often advise you—the advertisers—to start with your objective. If your main goal is to increase revenue, ask yourself: “How many orders do I need from the ad?” and from there, calculate the acceptable cost per purchase (CPP). Conversely, if the goal is to find potential customers, you should determine the desired number of leads and the CPL (Cost Per Lead) you’re willing to pay. Each ad objective leads to a different budget allocation:

• Awareness: requires a budget for brand reach and recall campaigns.
• Engagement: includes likes, comments, shares, and messages via Messenger/Instagram.
• Leads/Conversions: often requires a higher cost because these objectives provide direct value.

Start with a Budget of $5/Day

Interestingly, you can start running Facebook ads with just $5 a day. However, a low budget means you’ll need more time to collect data. During this stage, you’ll gradually learn:

• Which ad creative attracts customers best.
• Which content is most effective.
• Which ad format is suitable (image, video, carousel).

However, if you spend too little, Facebook may show a Learning Limited status in Ads Manager. This means the budget isn’t enough to generate the minimum of 50 conversions needed, which prevents the ad from exiting the learning phase.

For example, if your goal is Purchase, you need at least 50 orders per adset/campaign. With a very low budget, this is difficult to achieve.

To overcome being “stuck” in the Learning Limited phase, we can apply smarter budget allocation strategies:

• Use CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) or an adset-level budget for Facebook to allocate automatically.
• Group multiple ad creatives into one ad set instead of splitting the budget among many adsets. This helps generate enough data, making it easy to compare and eliminate ineffective ads.
• Focus on winning ads: keep content that performs well and duplicate more variations to scale.

The cost of Facebook ads doesn’t just depend on how much you spend, but also on how you manage, allocate your budget, and optimize your objectives. The most important thing is to understand your business goals to turn every dollar you spend into a profitable investment. For a stable, cost-effective ad strategy, you can contact Optimal Agency.

When you partner with Optimal Agency, you will be provided with powerful Facebook Agency accounts that can handle blacklisted campaigns, spend smoothly, get ads approved quickly, and optimize bidding costs. We have a high-quality, diverse account system that meets the advertising needs of all clients in many fields.

In particular, our team of experienced Facebook Ads experts will support you 24/7—from account setup, VPCS link cloaking, to ad optimization for maximum effectiveness. Not only that, we also help solve difficult problems such as ads not being approved and accounts being locked for policy violations. Additionally, Optimal Agency also provides a service to acquire new Fanpages at a very competitive price, helping you launch your campaigns quickly and safely.

Methods to determine Facebook Ads Cost

Below are the methods we’ve used to determine Facebook Ads costs for many campaigns. You can follow these specific steps:

Step 1: Clearly Analyze Your Business Stage

The first and most important thing is to determine which stage your business is in. Ask yourself: Is my business in a lean stage to optimize profit, or in a growth stage to determine costs? Business is like a journey with many milestones, and the ad budget will depend heavily on the specific situation. For example:

• For some businesses that already have strong resources, spending $5,000/month on Facebook Ads is reasonable.
• But for startups with limited capital, spending just $1,000/month is enough, and the rest should be prioritized for low-cost channels like distributing flyers, organizing community events, or reaching customers directly.

On the other hand, if you already have an operational team, solid capital, and a product with potential, a significant increase in the Facebook Ads budget is necessary when you move into the scale-up phase. Especially when your goal is big, such as wanting to achieve an additional $1 million in revenue/year, a larger budget will help your ads go further and faster.

Step 2: Evaluate your current Marketing spend

Next, we need to look at where we are currently spending our marketing budget. Many clients come to us wanting to run Facebook Ads, but upon analysis, they have already spent a lot on other channels like SEO, event sponsorships, or offline marketing without seeing a clear return on investment.

If after 6-12 months of investing in a channel, it doesn’t bring a clear ROI (return on investment), it may be time for you to stop and reallocate your resources. Facebook Ads, with the right strategy, can create a breakthrough change for a business in a short period of time. This is why we always encourage you and other advertisers to regularly check and review where your budget is placed and which channels you’re using.

Step 3: Apply the 50/30 Rule to Set Your Budget

A practical and easy-to-apply method we often use to determine the ad budget is the 50/30 rule. This principle helps you calculate the necessary spending fairly accurately:

• 50% of potential customers need to be scheduled for a direct estimate.
• 30% of those will become actual customers.

For example:

• The average value of one order = $10,000.
• Your goal = an additional $50,000/month in revenue.
• You need 5 more orders per month.
• According to the 50/30 rule, you need 15 estimated schedules/month.
• To get 15 estimated schedules → you need about 30 leads.
• The average cost per lead on Facebook = $30–50.
• So, your ad cost needs to be around $1,500/month.

This number is perfectly reasonable if your goal is to add $50,000 in revenue each month.

Note on Scaling the Budget

One of the problems many advertisers face when increasing spending is ad fatigue. Users see the ad too many times and get bored, which causes the cost per lead to increase. To fix this, you can apply the following principle:

• When your budget is small (around $5,000/month), refresh your ad creative every two weeks.
• When your budget is large ($20,000/month or more), update your ads every week to keep the content fresh.

Advertisers should remember: Facebook Ads is never a “set and forget” type of channel. The more you spend, the more you have to continuously test, monitor, and optimize to ensure long-term effectiveness.

Tips to cut costs without decreasing Facebook Ad Campaign effectiveness

When it comes to optimizing Facebook ads, many advertisers immediately think of reducing their budget or turning off ineffective adsets. However, this approach isn’t sustainable enough. We believe you can still reduce costs while maintaining effectiveness, but first, you need to build a solid business foundation, and then move on to running ads.

Build a solid business foundation before running ads

Before spending money on ads, you must ensure your website and email marketing are optimized. This is the “framework” that helps you maximize the value from each customer.

Leverage your website to optimize the conversion rate

We often use the product page directly as a landing page instead of creating a separate one, which reduces intermediate steps and increases the conversion rate. For example, in the cosmetics industry, your website needs to:

• Emphasize the benefits, usage, product ingredients, and points of difference.
• Provide verifiable data, like customer satisfaction rates, to build trust.
• Invest in clear, beautiful product images and a color chart that is easy to select from.
• Add a feature to suggest related products (e.g., if you sell foundation, suggest a suitable makeup brush). This helps increase AOV—the average order value.

Run Email marketing to maximize customer lifetime value

With email marketing, we always optimize three important flows:

• Use a Welcome Flow to make a great first impression and build a relationship.
• Use an Abandoned Checkout Flow to remind customers to return and complete their order.
• Use a Thank You Flow to show appreciation and nurture customers to make repeat purchases.

This way, we not only increase the conversion rate but also maximize the customer’s LTV. Because every customer costs money to acquire through advertising, retaining them is a vital factor.

Tips for launching a Facebook ad campaign with a low budget

After the foundation is complete, we begin running ads. A typical strategy we apply is:

• A single campaign called Advantage Plus, with an initial budget of $50/day. For brands that already have data, this campaign is highly effective.
• Within the campaign, you should test three video ads, all of which are UGC videos (a real person holding the product, reviewing it, and demonstrating the before-and-after effects). In industries like cosmetics, video ads perform significantly better than images or carousels.

Real results and how to optimize

In the first week, the CPM was quite high, and the campaign was not profitable. But instead of quickly turning off the ads, we carefully analyzed the data to find the cause. The main metrics we tracked were:

• Cost per Purchase.
• Hook Rate (the retention rate for the first 3 seconds of the video).
• Engagement Rate.
• CTR (click-through rate).

After multiple rounds of testing and optimization, we discovered which videos were effective and lowered the cost per purchase to just $23–24, which was much lower than the initial cost.

Run Testing and Evergreen campaigns simultaneously

A key point in our strategy is:

• Testing Campaign: Used to continuously test new creatives.
• Evergreen Campaign: Used to retain ads that have proven to be effective.

This approach helps us maintain stable sales while continuously finding new formulas to scale.

Shaping a sustainable ad optimization mindset

Success isn’t just about technique; it’s also about mindset:

• Believe in the product: The product must be good, and the reviews must be truly high-quality.
• Always innovate content: Have new creatives every week and learn from the data.
• Be patient: Facebook and the data need time to “learn.”

If you rush to turn off an ad just because you don’t see results in the first few days, it’s very difficult to succeed. Facebook ads always require time, patience, and a strategy of learning from data.

When you understand what factors make up how much a Facebook ad costs and how they are calculated, you will be more proactive in allocating your budget, optimizing your campaigns, and predicting your profits. Depending on your business goals and size, costs can be adjusted flexibly, but it’s important to know how to manage them smartly so that every dollar you spend brings the highest value.

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