The Beginner's Guide to Instagram Advertising
Chapter 4
Instagram Ads Cost
“How much is my Instagram ad going to cost?”
There are so many factors – audience targeting, bidding type, ad quality – that affect how much marketers will pay for their Instagram ad, so costs are going to vary.
We’ve analyzed more than 100 million dollars of ad spend in 2017! This provides us with Instagram Ad cost averages for 2017 so far to compare across the quarters.
How To Estimate Your Ad Spend On Instagram
When Instagram Ads first rolled out, one thing that many advertisers noticed very quickly was that it was more expensive than Facebook Ads. Its CPCs and CPAs were consistently (and in some cases significantly) higher than Facebook Ads, even when the two placements were run under the same campaign.There’s no doubt that Instagram Ads cost can fluctuate at any given time, even from campaign to campaign. A ton of different factors come into play to determine cost, including current competition in the bidding system, relevance score of your campaigns, the audience you’re targeting (it costs more to target women than men, for example), your actual bid, the estimated action rate, and more.
Instagram Ads cost can change day by day, even on your current campaigns. That’s why it’s so essential to monitor your ad spend closely and watch your CPCs and CPAs.
Because of this, it’s almost impossible to say that “your Instagram Ad will definitely cost you $.50 CPC.” In fact, the average bid ranged from $0.25 on the extremely low side for some groups, to around $1.25 for others.
There are a few things that we do know, though.
- CPC increased consistently as the year went on, even on a month-by-month basis
- CPC by age targeting doesn’t vary much, even though it’s much higher for women than men in recent quarters
- iPhones have the highest CPC, followed by iPads; Apple costs more than other devices
Keep an eye on your relevance score and frequency metrics when your ads are running. If your frequency score gets too high, actions will dip down and it can negatively affect your relevance score as a result over time. A good relevance score is key to keeping CPC costs low, so put more money into campaigns with strong relevance scores to get the most out of your ad spend.