According to Statista, advertising spending is predicted to rise from last year’s $521 to $876.1 billion in 2026. The rise will account for so many changes and innovations to come in the industry.
For one, competition will be all the more fierce in the coming years. With everyone growing their advertising spend, the one way to surely stand out is to enact the best strategies so that you’d get as much as you can for every dollar you expend.
Take a closer look at the table in Statista’s website.
Lowering Costs Through Targeting
These figures can seem daunting but if you pick apart how many channels and platforms there are, you might be pulling your hair out in its complexity. Just think about Paid Search, YouTube ads, CRO, Social Ads, Display Ads, not to mention non-ad marketing options like SEO, Blogs, Social Media, Affiliate, Reviews, etc.
It’s no secret that as much as the digital world is confusing, this is also a world where intimacy thrives—where you need a niche in order to succeed. As such, you need thorough knowledge of the platforms you’ll be utilizing if you don’t want to be swallowed up by the competition.
Besides that, make sure to maximize targeting options:
- From geo-targeting (ie. location-based) to
- Day you’ll be scheduling ads – which are useful for seasonal demand like back-to-school events
- Or maybe by device type – you’ll find that people are more comfortable conducting online courses on desktops or laptops but as tablet/mobile technology develops more and more, the number of mobile-first individuals might shift.
Google Adwords
Google is all about bids and budget. Ultimately, the reason you’re bidding ads is to get your ads’ desired position which can be calculated as follows:
Max Bid X Quality Score = Ad Rank
You can set your budget daily to a certain amount. Just because you have a high bid doesn’t guarantee a high ranking. Don’t forget to make your campaigns and ads in the best quality possible, fit for the people who will most likely convert to you.
We’ll be going more in-depth on how to make sure you’re minimizing the cost for each of the platforms in a future article.
Facebook Ads
Now, in essence, Google and Facebook advertising share the same DNA of targeting the right audience and allocating resources to ads. The main difference is that Facebook Ads show them to people who aren’t actively researching your company (ie. they didn’t type up a keyword in a Search Engine).
As such, they will have different ways of calculating costs. Facebook does this in two ways: first, the overall amount spends then the cost of each result you get.
Average Figures
Online ad costs vary a lot but it’s useful to have a baseline in order to assess whether you’re overpaying for a certain keyword or not maximizing a certain keyword enough.
The most accurate way to do this is through competitor and industry benchmarking so compare, compare, compare! For broader figures, here are some insights to get you started:
- The average cost for a click on Google’s Search Network is approximately $2.32. Note that this figure can vary from industry to industry.
- The average cost for a click on a Facebook ad, on the other hand, is about $1.72. The lower figure makes sense because of Google’s vast search engine which people regularly use.
- Google’s Average CPA hovers around $59.18 while it’s $18.68 for Facebook.
If you need a refresher on these metrics, read our guide here.
With the limited budget a marketing team has, it can look like a competition between low cost versus performance. It doesn’t have to be that way if you know your way around the digital marketing world.
