Facebook Ad Costs Australia

One of the topics least talked about is how cost effective Facebook advertising still is today in Australia. There’s never been a shortage of rhetoric around the rising costs of this platform, privacy issues and now the reduced visibility of return inside your ad account. Like all platform agnostic ad agencies we still need to look at the facts and the places where we can generate the best ROI.

Facebook is still the second largest ad ecosystem in the world offering placements across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network. It is also the second most advanced ad platform behind Google’s while it continues to keep evolving. Like all big tech nothing ever stands still.

No doubt Facebook has experienced some headwinds and has more on the horizon yet its ability to respond appropriately and adapt over the years has been impressive. The most recent of these was Apple’s AppTracking Transparency framework (ATT) which gives iPhone users the option to opt out of being tracked, and now dealing with a 2 billion strong user base which may have peaked and starting to show signs of decline with the rise of TikTok.

Before we get to the costs of this platform the fundamentals of setting up your campaign need to be in place to make attribution modelling effective.

• Firstly, conversion tracking for the pixel needs to be set up correctly where data on the events that matter to you business are being recorded. You’d be surprised how ad accounts don’t have this right.
• Secondly, Facebook was very fast to respond to Apple’s ATT by creating a tool to automate the transmission of server-side data back into an ad account. By knowing what actions visitors are taking on your website, this data can be matched with website visitors from Facebook Ads who are on iPhone’s and have opted out of being tracked. All of a sudden some of the data holes have been filled and your return attributed inside your ad account has improved.

Facebook Ads charges by the impression like many ad platforms and we are currently seeing CPM’s (the cost per 1000 impressions) consistently well under $20 in Australia and sometimes well under $10. This number does vary across ad accounts based on the campaign objective chosen and also the industry it is operating in, but the point is that Facebook is still one of the lowest cost platforms around.

Furthermore, these low CPM’s are not just targeting a broad audience (although we can do this also as your ad account scales over time which will likely lower your CPM’s further), they are being delivered to highly relevant cold audiences based on specific user interests that you know resonate with your business, or lookalike audiences built off your ACTUAL CUSTOMER LISTS. Why is this CPM metric so important when evaluating ad costs when our ultimate objective is to generate conversions in the form of leads and sales?

Facebook Ads is a Demand Generation platform. It is best leveraged to reach new cold audiences and create interest for what you’re selling. We can also remarket to warmer audiences who have engaged with your ads and these campaigns will naturally produce a much higher return. However we need to be constantly looking to reach new cold audiences to fuel these remarketing lists. Otherwise they get saturated very quickly which renders them less effective as time goes on.

New Facebook Ad media costs can start very low, spending $30-50 per day and then scale up gradually or rapidly in some cases as you start to see a return on investment. Ad accounts that have been spending much higher but not seeing a return can be audited as they contain all the data to form the basis for a new and improved campaign strategy.

Professional Ad Management Fees start $1500 per month and then generally move in line with your media spend scaling as your ad account scales. However it is a sliding scale where the percentage [of media spend] management fee declines as thresholds are reached.

In summary, to reach new cold audiences which is the basis for generating consistent ROI in the short to medium-term, Facebook is still one of the best and most cost effective options out there for many businesses in Australia.

For more information on Facebook Advertising costs and to get a free ad account audit contact one of our consultants on the button below.