Here’s the truth: left to its own devices, Facebook can empty your wallet pretty quickly. So, if you’ve been wondering how to reduce your cost per thousand impressions (CPM), you’ve been thinking in the right direction.
But, how do you lower the amount you invest? Glad you asked. Because we reached out to more than 25 ad experts to learn how they reduce their CPM. In this guide, we’ll share those tips with you.
Note that this estimate varies according to the industry, so you can’t rely on just any number you come across unless it’s from your industry.
That said, it’s important to note that the平均每千印象成本为$ 11.20。This way you now know the average spent on CPM, which should keep you from spending in excess. Again, this number varies according to the ad quality and competition among other factors.
3. Pick the time duration you want to view your impressions from.
4. Choose the “列” dropdown and select “Performance and Clicks。”
5. Scroll to see the column for “CPM（每1000个印象的成本）。”
How to track and visualize CPM in Databox
无论您为业务选择哪种类型的广告，您都需要并希望在最后查看结果和成本。
Still, making sense of all the different Facebook Ads metrics and their relation to one another can quickly become overwhelming. With Databox you can track and visualize your Facebook Ads CPM more easily. For free.
What is CPM? CPM is and average cost for 1,000 Impressions during the specified Date Range.
Tracking your Facebook Ads CPM in a number format helps you to quickly measure your costs and evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns. Compare what you’re seeing to previous time periods and track whether your CPM is improving with time. If not, there’s always an opportunity for some adjustments or new strategies.
If you want to start tracking all of these metrics in Databox, you can do it for free. Justcreate your free account here并开始连接和可视化数据。
11 Ways to Reduce Your Facebook Ad CPM
A number of factors can help you reduce your Facebook ad cost per thousand impressions while ensuring yourad reach is optimumand点击率很棒as well. The experts we surveyed shared the following as their top ways to optimize your CPM:
PRO TIP: What’s the overall engagement of your ad campaigns?
Want to make sure your Facebook ads are performing and trending in the right direction? There are several types of metrics you should track, from costs to campaign engagement to ad-level engagement, and so on.
Here are a few we’d recommend focusing on.
Cost per click (CPC):How much are you paying for each click from your ad campaign? CPC is one of the most commonly tracked metrics, and for good reason, as if this is high, it’s more likely your overall return on investment will be lower.
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM):If your ad impressions are low, it’s a good bet everything else (CPC, overall costs, etc.) will be higher. Also, if your impressions are low, your targeting could be too narrow. Either way, it’s important to track and make adjustments when needed.
Ad frequency:How often are people seeing your ads in their news feed? Again, this could signal larger issues with targeting, competition, ad quality, and more. So keep a close eye on it.
Impressions:大量的印象表明您的广告对平台和受众群体非常优化。
Amount spent:Tracking theestimated amount of money you’ve spent on your campaigns, ad set or individual ad will show you if you staying within your budget and which campaigns are the most cost-effective.
Tracking these metrics in Facebook Ads Manager can be overwhelming since the tool is not easy to navigate and the visualizations are quite limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
We’ve made this easier by building aplug-and-play Facebook Ads dashboardthat takes your data and automatically visualizes the right metrics to give you an in-depth analysis of your ad performance.
With thisFacebook Ads dashboard, you can quickly discover your most popular ads and see which campaigns have the highest ROI, including details such as:
What are your highest performance Facebook Ad campaigns? (impressions by campaign)
How many clicks do your ads receive? (click-through rate)
Are your ad campaigns under or over budget? (cost per thousand impressions)
您最具成本效益的广告系列是什么？（竞选花费的金额）
How often are people seeing your ads in their news feed? (ad frequency)
And more…
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1:Get the template
Step 2:Connect your Facebook Ads account with Databox.
“The first step to lower CPMs for Facebook is to have the right niche audience targeted,” Aalap Shah of108坚持。
“You can have an awesome ad, but if it’s not showing up to an equally-as-awesome audience, why do it?” Therefore, “the audience is always the first place to optimize.”
VR Digital’sLarissa Banting agrees, “the more in-tune and tighter the connection with the audience, the lower the CPMs become.” So, how do you go about fine-tuning your audience?
Banting建议：“最好的方法是find an audience that is going to engage with your ads, rather than just look at them.Higher audience engagement will automatically increase the relevance score and decrease the CPM.”
Ishani DePillo of YourMarketing Peopleadds, “test new target audiences that fit your brand. Think about their life style and define audiences on Facebook based on their behavior and interests.”
You can also “narrow down the audience who is going to see [your] ads on Facebook,” as
Richa Pathak ofSEM Updateshighlights. “Facebook ad targeting generate a large set of audience, all may not be relevant to you. Adding some exclusions and conditions with ‘AND’ function in targeting works well to reduce the unwanted impression on your ad copy.”
Pathak speaks from experience, “For example, I am a blogger and write articles on digital marketing, I have done a lot of campaigns on Facebook to drive more impression on my ad copy, I have targeted all the people in marketing and end up seeing high bounce rate. So I narrowed down my audience to the article related only. And this saved a lot of penny for me.”
Only question now is: how about you leave this step to Facebook? Sure, you can do that, but it’ll only cost you more. Maddie Hewitt fromMcMahon Marketingexplains, “Facebook will go out and try to find the right audience for your ad, but it’s going to cost you.”
“If you do the work up front and give Facebook a blueprint of your target audience that they can build off of, you’ll see a noticeable difference in your CPM.”
So the goal is simple:“improving your audience targeting will lead to better CTR and higher conversions which means you will be paying less CPM,” in DePillo’s words
Since your goal is the opposite, doing the opposite will help: “broaden[ing] your audience.”
Mark Woodburyof HikeSEO further clarifies, “while increasing the size of your audience may mean showing your ads to a slightly less targeted group of people, Facebook having more options on who to show your ad to will decrease the CPM.”
“However, still [use] targeted data from the Pixel analytics to hone in on your audience,” Taylor Lindores-Reeves ofDigital Speedreminds.
“Test your target interests one by one to keep the audience broad and learn which interests and audiences will result in the highest ROI.” (Jacob Rosenberg,Tajima Direct)
3. Create a lookalike audience
这是减少Facebook广告CPM的另一种方法。
Odeh Ahwal ofEcomDimesopines, “my number onesimple, yet effective approach for optimizing my CPM for my Facebook ads is the implementation of custom and lookalike audiences!”
阿瓦尔（Ahwal）这样做“通过将观众分为3个不同的群体（寒冷，温暖和热的观众）。”
Crissibeth Cooper of KNB Communications shares another way to create a lookalike audience for your ad. Cooper advises, “one great way of optimizing your cost while also balancing it with quality is by uploading a list of customer emails and allowing the platform to create a lookalike audience with it.
The idea is that your current customers like your company, so by finding people like your customers, you increase the chances that they will like your company, too.”
And, the tactic works wonders as well. Cooper confirms, “It’s a tactic that works very well for us, increasing click rates and driving down CPM cost while also keeping quality high.”
4. Improve your ad’s relevance score
Several of our expert respondents share this as their top recommendation for lowering ad CPM.
虽然有道理。
“When you focus on making ads that are relevant and engaging to your target audience, Facebook takes note of that and rewards advertisers by showing the ad to more people for less money—hence, lower CPMs,” as Andrew Schutt ofSchutt Medialays out.
Liang further explains, “Facebook issues you a number between 1 and 10 based on how much they think your ad will appeal to the people that you’re targeting.The better your ad fits with your audience the higher your relevance score。The higher your relevance score is the lower your Facebook CPM。”
Because, “Facebook wants to show the best ads to their users so they will give you a discount if you give their users something that they like,” Hoeft goes on.
In fact, Schutt calls this a “win-win-win” situation. “If you get the relevance score right with your audience… you get more impressions for less money, the users are happier, and Facebook is happier.”
So, how do you go about knowing your relevance score needs work?
Take a page fromStacks Market’sMostafa Yasser’s FB ad book. Yasser takes the following steps: “if I want to decrease the CPM, the first thing I would do is to check the ad scores that Facebook provides if the relevancy and engagement score is low then there is something wrong with my ad creative or the people I am targeting, and I will start split testing different ad ideas and try to find more audiences to target or tweak my current one.”
In addition to split testing various ad ideas, Andrei Vasilescu of不付钱recommends you “narrow the target to increase the relevance score.”
Adnan Munye ofAMMFitnessalso shares the need to specify your audience better for improving relevance score. Munye points out, “the less specific your audience, the lower the score. If you go for an entire city without the specifics, you’re throwing money down the drain.”
When you’ve a well targeted audience for your ad, your ad is also much more relevant to them better, so they engage better with it. Vasilescu elaborates, “if your target audience greatly engage with your ads, the relevance score of your Facebook ads increases. And, when relevance score increases, Facebook rewards the advertiser by delivering the ads to more relevant audiences at reduced costs.”
Thus, “you need to narrow your target audience by researching more on audience data.”
你看到这个提示来了,不是吗?毕竟,split testing is what helps us understand what exactly is working, what’s appealing to our audience and so on.
James Pollard of顾问教练goes on to tell, “I’m always trying to create shareable content, so our message to be seen by more people at a reduced cost. It often takes several tries to get a huge winner but it more than pays for the rest.”
Online Optimism泰勒·金凯德（Taylor Kincaid）也建议这样做：“test your audience to make sure you’re speaking to the right people.You can even A/B test through the split test feature right in Facebook Ads.”
Not only do you need to test your audience, you can also test other factors. Crissibeth Cooper of KNB Communications recommends you A/B test “different copy and visuals on the same audience.”
This isreallyimportant. Why? Because “If you don’t set an ROI, Facebook will spend wildly, driving your CPA through the roof, ” Seth Kravitz of菲林explains
“The algorithm is designed to generate maximum revenue… no matter the cost.” So you need to “regulate your control,” Adnan Munye of AMMFitness advises.
Munye补充说：“自动预算将为您的资金付出巨大的收益，因此您需要了解该算法。为此，您必须减少CPM的运行。Use a value-based approach of targeting to reach a larger and more specific audience。”
Socialfix’sTerry Tateossian maps out the entire plan for you:
Step 1: “Within the Facebook Ad Manager console, you can try to select optimize for clicks, pay for clicks.”
Step 2：“然后，在接下来的几天中，请仔细监视您的性能。”
Step 3: “If you have a high CTR (like 1% or above), switch to optimize for clicks, pay for impressions.”
这样做”可以减少你共产党10 - 15%” In fact, Tateossian digs further, “when running large scale campaigns this cost reduction can translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.”
“Facebook的广告花费ca算法设计mpaign’s budget in its entirety by the scheduled end date. The longer your campaign is scheduled to run, the longer the algorithm has to efficiently test and deliver your ads to the right audience, and thus draw out the pace in which it spends your media dollars.”
Put simply, “when in doubt, extend the scheduled run time of your campaign. Longevity=Efficiency.”
7. Change your bid type
Another recommendation to slash cost per thousand impressions comes from Burt Valentine ofHowToWatchand it is centered around setting “your bidding type to optimized CPM or oCPM.”
Plus, there’s a lot of noise out there. Ruditser shares, “although Facebook is one of the best platforms to use to promote your ads, it is difficult to catch user’s attention in the mist of many other brands trying to do the same thing.”
But there has to be a solution to this, isn’t it? Lucky for us, there is: “adding the popular choice of memes, gifs, videos, etc.” These “will grab that user’s attention and will give your post a higher chance of users engaging and wanting to read more. If more users engage with your post and share, your post will gain more impressions.”
用简单的话说,“重要的是要让你的帖子to stand out and make it more engaging compared to others.” Therefore, engaging features such as memes and videos are good starting points.
This brings us to an essential point – using videos in your ads. Let’s talk about it next.
Not only do videos get more eyeballs to your ads, but they reduce your CPM. Hard to swallow? Hear it from the experts. HikeSEO’s Mark Woodbury confirms, “use video ads.”
Sarah Hall ofLonely Personabacks this point, “video remains king — getting far more impressions than a static ad traditionally does.”
There are a couple of strong reasons why video is ‘king’ as Hall calls it.
For one, Woodbury outlines, “Facebook将其广告空间更多地分配给视频，而不是其他任何类型的媒体。使用视频广告的广告客户也很少。需求减少和增加供应的组合使CPM有意义减少。”
Secondly, Odeh Ahwal of EcomDimes notes: “video views objective is relatively cheap comparing to other campaign objectives.”
更重要的是,通过收集“视频视图、股票、likes, and comments” you can also build social proof as Ahwal remarks. With a video campaign, you can also “build custom audiences for people who have watched a specific % of the video. (People who have watched 90% of the video are more interested and engaged than those who’ve watched 10%)”
In case you forget, including a call-to-action or a direction for what viewers need to do after seeing your ad is crucial.
Microcredit Summit’sKimberly Porter shares this from experience, “we use Facebook adsoften and have recently been working on reducing our CPM while improving our ROI.
One of the ways we’ve optimized our CPM for Facebook ads is to include a call to action.”
Porter admits, “this seems like such a simple pivot for an ad, but it has really made a big difference on the number of people who engage with our ad. Selecting ‘Learn More’ or ‘Sign Up’ works best when promoting our content.”
The reason this works is simple: people sometimes need reminding. Porter adds, “I think sometimes people will just skim the post, so encouraging them to click a button helps them remember we are actually offering them useful information.”
11. Work on your ad time and frequency
One last tip to bear in mind: “frequency and time,” according toResumeLab’sBart Turczynski。
The goal is to “make sure that the same audiences aren’t seeing the ads multiple times a day.” Not only is that “a waste of money” but it also ruins “brand perception” in front of your audience.
Wondering why? Because repeat ads can “start looking spammy and annoying,” Turczynski observes.
Sanket Abhay Desai ofITS ONLINE MARKETINGgoes into the same details: “I optimize my campaigns for CPM by using Frequency Capping. I make sure that I do not overwhelm my audience with ads. I do that by implementing frequency capping, which ensures that I do not show my ads more than 3 times to a specific user. I also use optimized images and creative ad-sizes, so that I get maximum reach and coverage.”
You can follow suit. Besides, as Turczynski advocates:“ensure that you set the hours for when your target audience is most active and present on the platform to maximize your ROI and lower the effective CPM。
So who’s ready to reduce Facebook ad CPM? With these proven tips by your side, you can cut your costs in no time.
关于作者
Masooma MemonMasooma is a freelance writer for SaaS and a lover to-do lists. When she's not writing, she usually has her head buried in a business book or fantasy novel.
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