Instagram ad costs vs. Facebook ad costs

Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social media networks available for advertising, which is why it makes sense to compare the two. Which offers the most cost-effective option for your business, as well as the best platform for reaching your audience?

Compare the two platforms (and their prices) in the table below:

In addition to considering the cost of Instagram and Facebook ads, it’s helpful to look at the demographics of each platform. While Facebook can reach almost any age group, Instagram excels when it comes to reaching audience members 25 to 29 years old.

For the best results with your ad campaign, focus your efforts on the social media network that offers the most value. While you may advertise for less on one platform, you may lose the opportunity to reach the shoppers and leads that really matter to your bottom line.

What determines Instagram advertising costs?

These four core factors determine your Instagram advertising costs:

1. Bid amount

Your bid amount influences how much you spend on an Instagram advertising campaign. You must determine how much you’re willing to pay to obtain leads. Your bid amount impacts how much you spend, too.

Since Instagram has higher bid amounts, you’ll want to be prepared to pay more for impressions and clicks.

If you only have a budget of $500 and your bid amount is $2 per click, you can only get 250 clicks on your ad. On the other hand, a budget of $1000 with a $2 CPC will allow you to get 500 clicks. In this same scenario, having a bid amount of $0.50 would allow for even more clicks with these two budget amounts.

Your bid amount will influence your budget and your budget will influence how much you can bid. These amounts will influence how much it costs you to advertise on Instagram.

2. Ad relevancy score

Your ad relevancy score will also have an impact on your Instagram ads cost. Your relevancy score is how relevant Instagram considers your ad to be in relation to those who will see your ad.

Instagram wants to show relevant content to their audience in their feed. They will base your score on how people react towards your ad.

If people respond positively to your ad, your relevancy score will increase. It includes actions like clicking, commenting, liking, and more.

On the other hand, actions like hiding the ad cause a negative response. This will give you a lower ad relevancy score, which will hurt your ad’s performance.

Ads with a high relevance score are placed over low relevance scores. Having a more relevant ad means you will pay closer to the minimum amount. You’ll get more clicks on your campaign and drive more leads.

3. Estimated action rates

The estimated action rates will influence your Instagram advertising prices, too. This rate is based on the likelihood of people acting on your ad, according to Instagram. Essentially, they want to garner how likely your audience is to engage with your ad.

These engagements include actions such as clicking and converting. Instagram wants to promote ads they believe will get people to engage and interact with your content.

Your estimated action rate will determine your Instagram ad cost.

If Instagram believes more people are likely to interact with your ad, they will put your ad first. This means you’ll obtain a lower bid amount, which allows you to earn more leads and conversions.

4. Competition

The competition will always influence your Instagram ad price. When you’re trying to reach a certain demographic of people, there will always be competitors that are trying to reach the same group. Your competition can cause a change in the cost of your Instagram ads campaign.

If there are other people bidding to reach the same audience, it can lead to a bidding war. Companies will have to outbid one another to get the top placement. This means your CPC may go up to try to bid against competitors.

Additional factors

There are other factors can shape how much it costs to advertise on Instagram

Here are a few of them:

1. Holidays and events: Competition is higher during holidays, especially Christmas. More companies are competing to reach valuable leads, which drives up the CPC. You’ll need to consider holidays and events that surround the time when you run your ad and budget for it.

2. Gender: It costs more to advertise to females than males. Females are more likely to interact with and engage on the platform, so it will cost you more to reach female audiences.

3. Day of the week: Users engage on Instagram more on the weekdays than the weekends. This means you should expect to pay more to run an ad on a Wednesday than a Sunday.

4. Your market: The market you’re aiming to reach influences your Instagram ad price. For B2B companies, it is more expensive to run ads because there are fewer businesses on Instagram than people. Some industries, like apparel, are more expensive due to high competition.

These are a few additional factors that can influence your Instagram ad prices.

How do Instagram ads work?

Instagram ads are paid content that appears in newsfeeds and stories. Instagram ads are targeted towards people most likely to be interested in your products or services.

People see Instagram ads based on their demographic data, as well as their interests. These ads are meant to blend in seamlessly to the point where users barely recognize them as ads.

There are two indications of content being a paid advertisement. The first sign is the word “sponsored” written under the company’s name.

The second sign is the call-to-action (CTA) that appears at the bottom of the picture. These typically have phrases like “shop now” or “learn more” depending upon the campaign’s goal.

How do I lower my Instagram ads cost?

When it comes to advertising on social media, you want to do whatever you can to lower the cost for advertising on these platforms. Here are a few best practices that will help you lower the cost of your Instagram ads and maximize your return on them.

1. Use automatic bidding

If you’re new to Instagram advertising, it’s beneficial to use automatic bidding for your campaign. It’s an easy way for you to get a bid that is the best for your campaign.

Automatic bidding is beneficial to your business if you don’t have any previous data telling you about a good CPC to set for your campaign. It will help you set the bid amount that’s right for your campaign.

When you use automatic bidding, you prevent your business from overbidding to run an ad. The lack of previous data can make it difficult for you to know the best bid amount. You may think you need to bid more than you actually do.

Using automatic bidding helps you set the right bid amount until you obtain data that helps you guide your campaign. It’s a great way to reduce your Instagram advertising costs.

2. Use precise targeting

When you set up your Instagram ads, the goal is to reach people that will be interested in your products or services. To drive the best results for your campaign, use precise targeting to reach your ideal audience.

Instagram allows you to target people through:

Location: You can target people based on where they live. This can be as broad as a country or as specific as a postal code.

Demographics: Demographic information is the most common way to target leads. It includes information such as gender, age, and race.

Interests: When people interact on social media, you can see where their interests lie. Whether it's crafting or technology, you can target people based on what they like.

Behaviors: If someone takes certain steps to browse your site, you can target them based on those behaviors.

Custom audiences: Custom audiences are audiences unique to your business. With custom audiences, you can import information, like email addresses, into your targeting options. These are generally people you know are already interested in your products or services.

Lookalike audiences: When you know the type of people that are interested in your business, you can target people who share similar characteristics to them. This means that you can target people who haven’t found your products or services yet but will be the most interested in them.

3. Set goals

Whenever you run a marketing campaign, it’s crucial that you set goals for your campaign. Setting goals will help keep you focused on what you want to achieve with your ad.

There are three main goals you’ll want to focus on achieving with your Instagram ads:

Awareness: With an awareness campaign, you’ll focus on increasing awareness surrounding your business, brand, product, app, or service. You want to expose people to it and help them become familiar with it. With this campaign goal, you’ll focus on running a CPM campaign.

Consideration: If your goal is a consideration, you’ll focus on educating your audience more. You’ll want to provide your audience with more compelling information that gets them to convert. For this goal, you’ll focus on earning website clicks, views, and reaching leads.

Conversion: Many companies set the goal of getting their audience to buy their products, download their app, or use their services. When you focus on conversions for your campaign goal, you want to provide compelling copy that immediately gets your audience to purchase your products or use your services.

By setting goals, you’ll have a more cohesive campaign. You’ll know what you want to achieve, which will allow you to create more cohesive ad copy. Better ad copy leads to more engagement and more conversions.

4. Create more relevant landing pages

Creating more relevant landing pages is another great way to reduce your Instagram ad costs. Many companies make the mistake of directing leads to their home page after clicking on their Instagram ad. It doesn’t encourage engagement because people aren’t directed to a landing page that is relevant to the ad.

When you create an Instagram ad, the creative and ad link should be cohesive.

If you’re advertising your stylish boot collection, your ad link should direct people to a page filled with your boots. Directing them to your homepage isn’t relevant to the ad you created because it’s focused on your entire store instead of specifically focusing on boots!

This is where landing pages help. You can direct leads to a page that is created and tailored to your ad content.

Relevant landing pages result in more conversions. When people are directed straight to the product they see in the ad, they are more likely to convert. This helps you recoup the costs you pay to run your campaign.

If you want to create a truly effective campaign and lower how much it costs to advertise on Instagram, you must build dedicated landing pages that encourage conversion.

5. Test your ad

If you want to lower your Instagram ad price, you must test your ad. Whenever you create ad copy, it’s never going to be the best or most effective version of your ad. It’s crucial that you test to your ad to ensure that you’re putting out the best possible version.

it's important to test your instagram ads

Testing your ad helps you create more relevant ad copy. Relevant ad copy means you’ll get a higher ad position, which leads to a lower CPC. It’s an easy and efficient way to lower your Instagram advertising costs.

How do I launch Instagram ads?

If you’re ready to start running Instagram ads, there are three different ways to start running ads:

1. Within the Instagram app

When you access ads in the Instagram app, you can share posts you’ve already created on Instagram. You’ll go into the app and select the post you want to promote. Once you select the post, you can launch it as an ad.

Once you launch your promoted post, you can start tracking how many people see your post and interact with it.

2. In Ads Manager

Instagram ads use the same Ad Manager tool as Facebook. If you want to run ads through this program, it’s easy and efficient.

When you use Ads Manager, you can set up your campaign, make alterations to your campaign, and monitor the results. It’s a great way to run your Instagram advertising campaign.

3. Instagram partners

If you’re short on time or need extra help with your campaign, you have the option to use Instagram partners. Instagram partners can help you run your campaign if you don’t have time or don’t know how to run a campaign.

With Instagram partners, you’re working with proven experts that are vetted by Instagram. They will help you buy ads and deliver valuable creative. It’s a great alternative for businesses that don’t have experience.

What kinds of ads can I use on Instagram?

When you run an Instagram ad campaign, you’ll have your choice of advertising formats. There are four main types of ads:

1. Story ads

Story ads are the newest option for advertisers to reach interested users. Considering that over 500 million Instagram accounts use stories every day, it’s a great opportunity to connect with people.

People take a look at business’s Instagram stories, too. In fact, 33 percent of the most viewed Instagram stories are from businesses. People want to hear from businesses through the stories function, so having a paid ad wouldn’t seem out of place.

These Instagram stories make full use of the screen. If someone sees your Instagram story ad, they will only see that on their screen. It helps you get your audience to focus fully on your ad.

Story ads are very effective for your audience. They engage with them and check out your products. Although it’s a newer feature, it has the power to drive valuable results for your business.

2. Video ads

Video ads are another option for your Instagram ad campaign. These operate similar to photos, except the content contains a video. These videos can be up to 60 seconds long.

Videos are great for capturing your audience’s attention. When they scroll through their feed and get to your ad, the ad will immediately start playing. It’s a great way to catch your audience’s attention and get them interested in your ad.

It’s important to note, however, that the videos automatically play without sound. This is important to think about when you create your video ad because you don’t want your audience to miss important information. If you put your most important information in the first few seconds, your audience is likely to miss it.

Instagram video ads are an effective way to engage your audience and get them to check out your business.

3. Carousel ads

Carousel ads are a great option to get your audience to interact with your ad. These ads allow you to post multiple photos or videos in one post. It’s a great way to provide your audience with many options for your products.

Let’s say you’re promoting a new fashion line. Showcasing one piece wouldn’t do justice to the line. While it does represent the new line, it doesn’t show people the variety in your clothing line.

By using a carousel ad, you could use multiple photos and videos to showcase your product line. It enables you to show your audience variety, which engages more people. One outfit may spark interest in your audience over another outfit.

Using carousel ads is a great way to garner engagement and interest in your ads. You’ll give your audience multiple visuals to look at and get them interested in your products or services.

Lower your Instagram advertising costs with Tech Sailor

Instagram advertising is a great way for your business to reach valuable leads that are looking for products or services you offer. When you know the cost to advertise on Instagram, you can create a better advertising campaign that drives results. If you’re looking to get started with your Instagram ad campaign, Tech Sailor can help.

We’re a full-service digital marketing company that specializes in custom Instagram marketing services. We have a team of over 200 experts that will bring their knowledge and expertise to your campaign. When you partner with us, we’ll help you create a campaign that works for your business.

If you’re looking for a company that drives results, look no further than Tech Sailor. In the past five years, we’ve driven over $1.5 billion in sales and over 4.6 million leads for our clients. When you partner with us, you’ll get a team that’s dedicated to helping your business grow.

Don’t believe us? Just ask our clients! Check out our 550+ client testimonials that attest to the awesome work we do for them!