What is cost per click?
Cost per click (CPC) in Facebook ads is a metric that measures the average cost for each link click. It shows how much, on average, each link click costs you.
By default, Facebook CPC refers to clicks on ads – clicking to react to a post, clicking to view the image, and of course a link click, but this inflates the number of clicks.
However, Facebook does provide another CPC metric called ‘CPC (link click)’ that only counts link clicks.
How to calculate cost per click?
To calculate the cost per click of FB ads, divide the total ‘amount spent’ on Facebook ads by the ‘number of clicks’ your ad received.
It is a currency metric which means, you’ll get the result in your preferred currency and not a percentage.
Formula for calculating cost per click
Real-life example of cost per click
Let’s understand CPC with an example:
You spent $500 on an ad on Facebook and you got 250 link clicks on your ad. Then, your cost per click will be: 500/250 = $2
What’s an average cost per click? (benchmark)
In November 2022, the average Facebook CPC was $0.98. A good CPC will always vary from one advertiser to another because the performance is relative to the industry, the product, the audience, seasonality, etc.
Keep in mind, you’ll have a higher CPC for bottom-of-funnel campaigns compared to top-of-funnel campaigns. The more advertisers that compete in an auction, the higher your Facebook ad costs will be.
Financial advertisers have the highest CPCs on Facebook at $3.77 per click and the cheapest clicks on Facebook are reserved for apparel ($0.45 per click), travel and hospitality ($0.63), and other retailers ($0.70) industries, with clicks well below a dollar.
But remember, CPCs can vary largely at any given point in time.
Ways to decrease your cost per click
Having a good CTR will naturally drop your CPC – the more the number of clicks, the less the CPC.
Here are some ways to increase CTR and decrease CPC in the long run:
- Focus on relevance score: Your relevance score directly affects Facebook ad CPC. A score of 1 means your ads are not relevant to your target audience and FB will only continue showing them if you pay more which will increase your CPC.
- Utilize retargeting: 96.7 % of people will leave your site or app without buying anything. Facebook remarketing provides you with a way to re-engage with past visitors on your website and carry them through the sales funnel.
- Avoid overlapping audience: Marketers create multiple ads where they target a similar audience. This will lead to a larger overlap – your campaign will perform poorly – and ultimately a higher CPC competing with yourself. You can use Facebook Audience Overlap tool to check if audiences are overlapping significantly.