Facebook Advertising – how to set it up, how does it work, and what is its cost?
Facebook advertising delivers great results if it is set up correctly. Among other performance marketing strategies, it is one of the most sought after. Why? In 2024, it is predicted to reach up to 1.98 billion users. A variety of different options, scaling, setting goals, and direct targeting of an audience defined based on interests you want to reach. These are the advantages of paid advertising on Facebook that you can benefit from as well. Read everything you need to know to decide if it's interesting for you.
What is Facebook advertising?
Facebook advertising is an online marketing tool that allows us to achieve the desired goal through paid advertising. Event exposure, interaction with a call to action, click-through to a website, or direct order. These are just examples of what we can achieve thanks to Facebook advertising, while the choice of goals is indeed rich. In addition to achieving tracked conversions with Facebook advertising, it is a great way to build brand or product awareness.
Advantages of Facebook advertising
Algorithm and social network advantages for advertising
What is the biggest advantage of this type of advertising is the use of sophisticated algorithms and really rich demographic data necessary for detailed scaling. Thanks to advertising within the blue network, Facebook provides a unique opportunity to target your campaigns with precision, which is hard to achieve with other types of ads, such as PPC campaigns on Google search. The social network indeed benefits from the information users enter about themselves, or that crystallizes based on their behavior. Facebook advertising can thus be tailored based on age, gender, interests, behavior, and other criteria, making it more effective in reaching your target audience.
Finding your audience on this social network will not be difficult. However, it is always necessary to consider its ideal parameters, since the times when Facebook was dominated by teenagers are long gone. After the outflow to competing social networks, such as TikTok, Pinterest, or Snapchat only 33% of the adolescent population actively uses Facebook. However, if your target audience is mainly the age range of 25 – 34 years old, you will definitely be advertising in the right place.
Managing Facebook advertising and implementing AI
Another huge advantage is managing and setting up advertising in the user-friendly environment of the Ads Manager tool, from where you can manage ads not only for the blue network but also for the increasingly popular Instagram. Lately, the advantages of automated ads and settings that Facebook evaluates as most suitable according to the tracked goals using artificial intelligence have also come to the forefront.
You have control over your advertising budget
With a properly set campaign, you have everything in your hands, and thanks to the daily or total limit you plan to spend on the campaign, there is no risk that your expenses will unexpectedly increase. This allows you to optimize Facebook advertising, increase the budget if necessary, or stop it at any time if it seems ineffective.
Evaluation and analysis of Facebook advertising campaigns
The last big advantage is that after the campaign ends you can precisely measure how effective it was and how successful it was. Or where there was a problem if it did not meet expectations. Since the platform provides advanced analytical tools, you can monitor the performance of your campaigns in real-time and optimize them for maximum results, as mentioned above.
How does Facebook advertising work?
Facebook advertising can be evaluated from the perspective of the number of clicks on the ad (PPC – cost per click) or based on impressions CPM – cost per mile (payment for the number of impressions). A similar model is also used in the case of Google advertising or other advertising networks. The advantage of this type of ads is higher return on investment (ROI) and immediate results translated into conversions. The aforementioned detailed targeting, flexible budget, and the ability to measure and evaluate advertising make it an indispensable part of the marketing mix of a successful online business.
In the case of Facebook it is essentially a form of competition or, in other words, an auction, where, in addition to you, many other advertisers compete for the limited advertising space. How effective the advertising will be depends on the number of impressions, the quality of the visual and textual content of the advertising message, and also the user's interaction with the ad when it is displayed.
How to make paid advertising on Facebook effective?
First and foremost, it is about the campaign being relevant and thus engaging and addressing the target audience. This will be helped by the aforementioned tuned creative – interesting graphics or video and a catchy text, ideally with a clear call to action. However, no one is Nostradamus to predict which of two or more formats will work better in a particular case.
Therefore, for a successful Facebook ad, A/B testing and campaign optimization in terms of budget or placement are counted. Last but not least, there is a clear goal, namely interaction with the audience. A measurable result that can clearly answer the question of how successful the advertisement is. Examples include likes, shares, comments, filling out a form directly on Facebook, or click-through.
On average, Facebook ads across various industries achieve a click-through rate of 2.5%. In the case of tourism, it is even about a CTR (click-through rate) averaging around 6%, and those are really interesting numbers. Although other social networks are coming up with new advertising options, data from recent years suggest that the days of Facebook advertising have not yet said their last word. The third-quarter 2023 results report within Meta even speaks of a 31% increase in ad views and an average decrease in ad price by 6%.
What types of advertising formats does Facebook offer?
When launching advertising on Facebook, you have several types of formats at your disposal. In addition to the original ad in the feed or on the right side of the screen, other options have been added to address a potential customer or fan. Before we discuss what is important to consider when choosing a specific format, here is a brief overview of what Facebook Ads offers.
Popular image advertising
Simple, practical, and effective. The basis is captivating graphics to present a product or service that will not disappear in the feed among others. Although Facebook advertising is marked as a sponsored post, sometimes it is really difficult to tell at first glance that it is an advertisement. Static images are mainly used to increase brand awareness and increase profile traffic, fan page, or website. However, to prevent the ad from becoming stale over time, it is a better option to change the creative after a while and attract attention in another way.
Video advertising
Video rules the world of social networks. Video advertising on Facebook can vary in length, from short videos to longer formats. However, these are not very recommended, as the viewer is rarely patient enough to watch the entire advertising message. These advertising formats are most often displayed in the feed, in stories, or in live broadcasts. What is very interesting and definitely worth mentioning is that the costs of video advertising on Facebook represent only about 10% of the costs compared to traditional image advertising or carousel.
Carousel
Carousel ads allow displaying multiple images in one ad. That is why they are ideal for ads where you want to draw attention to several products, product details, or an unconventional storytelling step by step. Carousel is used to increase brand/product awareness or achieve click-throughs within the ad.
Slideshow
Slideshow ads create moving images from several static images. It is a cost-effective and very interesting alternative to classic video ads. However, in the case of slideshow and video ads, the price can go quite high if your goal is to increase interest (automatic video playback is also counted, which increases the price of advertising). A better choice is rather to focus on click-through, for example.
Stories
Increasingly popular stories – stories are also a format where you can place Facebook advertising. Their advantage is that they are displayed directly between users' stories and in the case of the mobile version, the message is essentially impossible to ignore. The advertisement can be an image or a video, a poll, a quiz, or one question.
Advertising in Messenger
This format finds the user in Facebook's sister application called Messenger (or by clicking through messages on Facebook). Essentially, it is another way to introduce the brand or product to a potential customer in a different environment. Advertising in Messenger is indeed marked, but it looks quite native, calmly even with an image attachment that can increase interest.
Form/Lead form
If your goal is to acquire new contacts, try advertising within the Facebook lead form. It's simple and a big advantage is the pre-filling of potential customer data directly from Facebook. The rate of departure without filling out the form is also reduced by the fact that the user does not go to any external environment and you basically do not need any web solution for collecting leads.
How to choose the right format for paid Facebook advertising?
When choosing the right advertising format, it is alpha and omega to know your goals. For example, video ads can be effective for building a brand, while carousel or collection can perfectly cover the need to draw attention to several products/services. Also, the target group and its preferences for different forms of advertising on Facebook play a role. Younger generations prefer videos, and older ones will calmly read even longer text within a static image ad.
UIČKOVSKÝ TIP: Also pay attention to the advertising budget. Although in the case of some formats it is true that the price of advertising is lower, the production of the advertising format, such as video, can cause a budget cut. Completely detailed answers to the question of which format and specific advertising message will be most suitable for your case will be offered by A/B testing of several types of advertising.
What is the price of advertising on Facebook?
The pricing of Facebook advertising is set based on an auction system. In practice, this means that you compete with other advertisers within the system with the maximum price you are willing to pay for a click or impression. Whenever an ad is displayed, Facebook starts an auction and the highest offered price wins the display to the selected audience.
In addition to the auction system, how much Facebook advertising costs depends on many other factors. These are:
- Relevance score - the higher the likelihood that people will interact with the ad. The higher the score, the more expensive the price of advertising.
- Target group - the price of advertising can go up if your target group is very specific and you find a circle that is also attractive to other advertisers.
- Timing - it also matters when you launch the ad. During shopping holidays, such as Black Friday or the pre-Christmas period, expect higher costs compared to other times of the year.
- Choice of advertising format - as we have already mentioned, the format of the ad and the place of display also affects its final price. If we compare, for example, a sponsored static image in the feed and on the right side of the screen, in the first case the price of advertising will be higher, as it is a place that attracts more attention.
But to get to real numbers for a better idea, sources state the average price for CPC Facebook advertising at the current time (April 2024) is $0.704. Which represents €0.94 per click. In the case of CPM, we are talking at the same time about $10.12 and thus €9.47 per thousand impressions. However, these are all just indicative and average figures. The final amount of a specific advertising message can move in other price intervals, but in the case of higher ones, it can also record a higher ROI – return on investment.
UIČKOVSKÝ TIP: If you want to calculate the amount for advertising on Facebook in case you entrust it to professionals, it is necessary to add the price for setting up, launching, optimizing, and evaluating advertising campaigns to the campaign budget. It always depends on individual requirements, which you will find out after the initial consultation. We will be happy to calculate yours, just contact us.
Guide on how to do advertising on Facebook
If you have decided that instead of entrusting Facebook Ads to someone else, you will try to launch them on
