Digital Advertising Update: Facebook Ad Q4 Benchmarks

Facebook ad benchmarks for Q4 2017 covering CPM, CPC & CTR. Facebook releases marketplace ad placement and adds more transparency to ad metrics.

Here’s what’s new from 02/26/18- 03/02/18.

Facebook Ads CPM, CPC & CTR Benchmarks for Q4 2017

For Q4 2017, we’ve analyzed over 1.7 billion Facebook ad impressions across 1700+ unique accounts in US currency to uncover the average CPM, CPC, and CTR. Compared to Q3’17, we found the average CPM for Facebook ads increased by 37%, the average CPC for Facebook ads increased by 14%, and the average CTR for Facebook ads increased by 25%.

Facebook Ads Benchmarks – Q4 2017

The average Facebook ads CPM was $12.45
The average Facebook ads CPC was $0.54
The average Facebook ads CTR was 2.34%

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New Facebook Ads Placement: Marketplace

Up until now, Marketplace has remained ad-free. The Marketplace placement allows advertisers to place their ads into Marketplace when users are viewing it from the mobile app (no desktop yet).
To utilize the Marketplace placement, advertisers must first select from Traffic, Conversions, or Catalog Sales objectives.
Facebook says that for Traffic or Conversions, must first have a “Shop Now” button on your page.
NOTE: This placement is not currently available to everyone. There is no word on when is will be rolled out globally.

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Facebook Ad Metrics Updates: Clarification and Removal

In an attempt that Facebook says improves transparency, certain metrics will be labeled as “estimated” or “in development.” You’ll find these labels within tooltips that provide more information. ESTIMATED Facebook says that estimated metrics are “calculated based on sampling or modeling,” and are therefore “hard to precisely quantify.” Facebook uses Reach, the most famous (or infamous?) Facebook metric among marketers, as an example for explaining estimated calculations IN DEVELOPMENT There are also several newer metrics that Facebook says they are testing and are therefore labeled as “in development.” Since these metrics are new and in the process of being tested, they may still change. Facebook uses Estimated Ad Recall Lift as an example REMOVING METRICS In July, Facebook will be removing several metrics (19 by my count) that they feel are redundant, outdated, or rarely used. Interestingly, six of these metrics are those that were also labeled as “estimated.”