How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost in 2025?

Have you tried Instagram advertising? 

Here’s why I’m asking: Instagram is one of the top four global social media platforms, with almost 2 billion active monthly users. 

With such a large user base and reach, it’s easy to see why emerging and established brands tap into its potential for social media advertising opportunities. 

And almost 55% of Instagram users are between 18 and 34, so it’s particularly effective for brands that want to engage a younger demographic. 

However, Instagram is also one of the more expensive advertising channels, so you should research beforehand. Don’t worry, though. I’m here to help you get started.

Ready to find out how much Instagram ads cost? Average expenses depend on a variety of factors, which we’ll explore in detail.

Key Takeaways

• The cost of Instagram ads depends on the format, amount of competition, and factors like seasonality, niche, and budget.
• Research from WordStream shows that cost per click (CPC) ranges from 40 to 70 cents, while ads with a destination URL range from 50 to 95 cents, cost per engagement (CPE) is between 1 to 5 cents, and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is between $2.50 and $3.50.
• Instagram has a user base of more than 2 billion and is most popular among 18- to 34-year-olds.
• Different types of ad models include CPM, CPC, cost per lead (CPL), and cost per acquisition (CPA).
• Feed ads generally yield click-through rates (CTRs) between 0.22 to 0.88 percent. 

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What’s the Average Instagram Ads Cost?
• Factors That Impact the Cost of Instagram Ads
  • Budget
  • Ad Type
  • Bidding Strategy
  • Targeting
  • Ad Quality and Relevance
  • Placement
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Seasonality
  • Size of Audience
  • Industry
• Is Instagram Advertising Worth the Cost?
• What Should You Spend On Instagram Ads?
  • How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost Compared to Other Social Platforms?
• How to Reduce Your Instagram Ads Cost
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What’s the Average Instagram Ads Cost?

Pinning exact figures to Instagram ads costs is nuanced. That’s because the cost of this element of social media marketing depends on Instagram’s advertising auction system. 

In other words, you’ll be bidding against competitors looking to advertise in the same space. The higher the demand from the target audience, the more you pay—and vice versa.

Despite the competitive process, the results of Instagram advertising can be phenomenal. 

To keep it simple, here are the average costs of different ad formats according to WordStream:

• Cost per click (CPC): 40 to 70 cents
• CPC for ads with a destination URL: 50 to 95 cents
• Cost per engagement (CPE): 1 to 5 cents
• Cost per thousand impressions, or cost per mille (CPM): $2.50-$3.50

But that’s only the start of the story. Next, we’ll discuss other factors that impact the cost of Instagram ads in more detail. 

Factors That Impact the Cost of Instagram Ads

Several factors affect Instagram ad costs for each business, including:

• Budget: Your available budget influences ad frequency and reach, affecting the cost per action. 
• Ad placement and type: Feed, Stories, Reels, etc., have different costs based on visibility and engagement rates.
• The bidding model: Automatic or manual bidding can impact cost, with higher bids potentially leading to more impressions.
• Niche: The niche you target can increase costs if there’s higher competition for a limited audience.
• Landing page quality: The caliber and relevance of your landing page can potentially lower ad costs. A well-designed landing page can also improve conversion rates and overall campaign performance. 
• Seasonality: Ad costs can fluctuate seasonally, climbing during holidays and major events when competition for advertising space is more fierce. 

Let’s review each of these factors in more detail below.

Budget

Your budget can affect pricing. With a smaller budget, it takes longer for Instagram’s system to learn and understand your campaign and measure how your audience engages (or doesn’t engage) with your ads. 

Naturally, the higher your budget, the more people you’ll reach, too. You’ll get a rough idea of how many people will see your ads when you first set up your budget.

Meta suggests setting a budget of at least $5 and choosing a duration over six days, as this helps it better target ads. You can cancel or pause ads at any time.

Ad Type

There’s no off-the-shelf pricing for ads. You can’t just look up the cost of an Instagram story ad or carousel ad. Rather, the type of ad and its quality will affect your costs. 

With this in mind, you should consider testing different ad types to see how well they perform for you.

Ad formats on Instagram include:

• Images: These can be displayed in square, landscape, or vertical formats.

• Flexible ads: These ads display as images, videos, or carousel ads, depending on what Meta’s ad delivery system decides people are most likely to engage with.

• Instagram Stories: Meta recommends full-screen vertical assets for Instagram Stories, but you can use the same media formats you have for other advertising. You can include a single photo or a video up to 60 minutes long, with an aspect ratio of 9:16 and 16:9 to 4:5.

• Instagram Reels: These formats need a full-screen vertical asset. 

Bidding Strategy

You can use different bidding strategies when setting up your Instagram ads, and, of course, the strategy you choose for your ad campaign depends on your goals. 

There are four types of bidding strategies: 

• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
• Cost per action (CPA) 
• Cost per lead (CPL)

They all have different costs.

Research from WordStream finds that the CPM for better-performing ads and their ad sets was $2.50 to $3.50, while Birch calculates the average cost per lead at around $9.

The type of ad and bidding strategy you choose will depend on what you want to achieve.

For example, are you looking to increase brand or product awareness? It might make sense to target CPM, showing off your brand and its story with Reels or Stories. For conversions, you might target CPA and try explainer videos. 

Carousels with multiple videos enable you to drive traffic, conversions, and lead generation, aligning with CPC, CPA, and CPL strategies. 

Ultimately, you’ll need to try different formats, track your data to see which ads are getting you closer to your goals, and analyze your competitors’ actions to get the best results.

Targeting

You’ll need to look beyond the cost of Instagram ads when planning your campaigns. How you measure success in your Instagram advertising also depends on your goals for your ad campaigns. 

Goals for advertising can vary widely depending on whom you’re targeting and why, so be sure you set clear objectives before getting started. These can help you make better decisions and help you see what’s working for your business. 

Meta’s current list of objectives comes in six categories:

• Sales (conversions, catalog sales, messages)
• Leads (instant forms, messages, calls, sign-ups)
• Engagement (messages, video views, post engagement)
• Traffic (link clicks, landing page views)
• Awareness (Brand awareness, video views)
• App promotion (installs, app events, etc.)

The metrics you use to gauge your success could include more leads, engagement, brand awareness, higher CTRs, or improved conversion rates.

Ad Quality and Relevance

Instagram wants to show your ads to the right people, and the good news for advertisers? The more relevant your ads are, the less it generally costs to get leads and conversions.

Instagram has a relevancy score that influences your ad auction position, meaning you can pay less to reach your target audience. How?

• Ensure your ads are well-produced and targeted to your ideal audience, which can give your campaign added relevance.
• When setting up your ads, you can define your target audience and segment your ads to specific audiences and interests.
• Personalize your ads so they address your audience’s specific problems and concerns.
• Include captions, calls to action (CTAs), and high-quality visuals to engage your audience.

Likewise, ad quality also impacts the cost. Instagram uses machine learning to determine an ad quality score. 

The quality score considers factors like the number of users hiding the ads, whether there’s too much text in images, sensationalist language, engagement bait, and clickbait. 

Placement

Where would you like your ad to appear? During setup, you’ll be able to choose whether you want your ad to appear just on Instagram or on Facebook as well. You can also choose which devices or operating systems you’d like to target. 

Ad placements include:

• Instagram Feed
• Instagram Feed Profile
• Instagram Explore
• Instagram Explore Home
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram Profile Reels
• Instagram Reels
• Instagram Search Results

Generally speaking, in-feed ads have higher click-through rates, but they’re also the most expensive. Feed ads have an average CPC of $1.86 and CPM of $7.27.

Meta suggests you use Advantage+ placements to maximize your budget, but you are free to pick your own placements.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Your click-through rate can affect pricing; The more clicks your ad gets, the lower your CTR. 

CTR is a key performance indicator (KPI) that shows the percentage of users who click on your ad after they’ve viewed it. To arrive at your CTR, divide the number of ad clicks your ad gets by the number of views (impressions) and multiply by 100. Make things easier for yourself by using this calculator.

Average click-through rates vary depending on the ad format. Typically, feed ads CTRs range from 0.22 percent to 0.88 percent. For Stories, this ranges from 0.33 percent to 0.54 percent.

A healthy CTR shows that your ads resonate with your audience, and Instagram considers them relevant. On the flip side, you may see higher costs if your ads aren’t gaining clicks from your audience.

Seasonality

If you’re advertising during a busy time of year for sales, you’re likely to have a lot of competition for customers as other businesses try to win their clicks. Holidays, special events, and other peak selling times for your industry can create higher costs due to increased competition.

Whether it’s worth paying extra during these times depends on the type of products you sell, your company goals, and your available budget. To avoid overpaying, look at your historical data and your past CPCs, CPAs, and CPMs. 

If you have the budget to cover these increased costs and it makes sense within your marketing strategy, then it could be worth paying the extra money.

It’s also a good idea to look at your return on advertising spend (ROAS). If you sell high-profit margin products or services, you may still get a significant return on investment even though you are spending more on ads.

It depends on your target audience, too. 

Use Instagram Insights and any other data to view user behavior and analyze spending patterns during peak periods. If your customers usually make purchases during these times, then you can probably justify the higher costs.

Size of Audience

Another factor that affects ad cost? Audience size. 

When I talk about your audience size, I mean the group of users you’re targeting with your ads. 

For example, are you targeting them by demographics, location, psychographics, or behavior? You can also target by income or interests. 

The larger the audience you target, the less expensive your ad, but smaller audiences have more competition, which can drive your costs up.

To reach a broader audience:

• Target a wider geographical location. For example, target a city rather than a county.
• Widen your demographics. If you have a suitable product or service for different genders, age groups, interests, or incomes, you might broaden your reach.
• Target a larger niche. Instead of Power Yoga, for example, you might target wellness or stress relief.

To shrink your audience:

• Advertise to a smaller niche. An example would be advertising luxury food hampers instead of food hampers.
• Narrow down your demographics. You could target a smaller age group, find more niche interests, or target lower or higher incomes.
• Use your customer data and focus on recent buyers for more targeted offers. 

Industry

Your Instagram ad costs also vary depending on your industry. 

There’s not a ton of mystery to it. Some niches are more competitive, which pushes up the costs. For instance, Instagram is the natural home for high-end fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands, so clicks and impressions are more expensive because competitors bid against one another.

Business-to-business (B2B) companies pay more because fewer companies use Instagram than people do.

Niche-specific audiences can cost more to target, too. If an advertiser uses Instagram’s advanced targeting tools to target specific demographics, it narrows the audience pool and increases competition. 

Then there’s seasonal demand, which we touched on earlier.

For example, weight loss, fitness, and wellness niches often spike in January because users often look to change their lifestyles after the holidays.

Is Instagram Advertising Worth the Cost?

If your target audience is active on Instagram, then the platform is probably worth working into your social media advertising strategy. And there are so many innovative ways to reach your audience on Instagram. 

For example, online retailer behemoth Wayfair embraced live streams on Instagram and TikTok as part of a hybrid campaign that blended paid and organic elements. Wayfair chose 12 influencers to host the streams, engage with viewers, show products in real time, and guide audiences toward purchases.

The results? Wayfair netted 11.4 million video views, 29.2 million impressions, 1.2 million post engagements, 24.6 million video plays, over 185,000 livestream views, and more than 76,000 livestream engagements. 

Not too bad. 

Overall, Instagram’s huge active user base, reach, and robust audience-targeting options all drove a positive return on investment (ROI). For your campaigns, you’ll need to keep a close eye on the pricing of your Instagram ads by measuring metrics like:

• Conversion rate
• CPC
• ROAS
• CTR
• Engagement rate

Ongoing monitoring of these metrics helps you evaluate the success and effectiveness of your current campaigns and provides insights for future strategies. 

What Should You Spend On Instagram Ads?

Now that we’ve reviewed the different types of ads and many of the factors that can affect how much Instagram ads cost, you might feel more prepared to set a budget for your Instagram advertising. 

Your budget needs to balance how many people you’d like to reach and the goals of your campaign, in addition to working within whatever the average costs are for your industry. 

According to a recent Databox survey, more than 30% of companies spend less than $500 per month on Instagram ads. And just 11 percent have a budget of over $10,000 monthly. 

You’ll need to analyze your marketing budget and see where your investment in Instagram ads fits. 

As long as you can manage the monthly cost and are strategic with your targeting, you could see a healthy return on your investment in Instagram ads. 

Remember that some industries, like fashion, beauty, and travel, pay more for Instagram ads. This is due to higher competition. However, the potential for success is also higher. 

How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost Compared to Other Social Platforms?

It pays to compare the differences between the various social platforms. How much do Facebook and Instagram ads cost? How do they compare to X? 

The median CPC on each social media platform varies widely. According to the Business of Apps, the average CPC looks like this:

• Facebook: 63 cents
• X Ads: 38 cents
• LinkedIn Ads: $5.58
• Pinterest Ads: Up to $1.50
• TikTok Ads: $0.25-$4

The CPC for different social media platforms also varies according to:

• Ad formats and campaign goals (X)
• Engagement rates (Instagram)
• Ad quality and relevance (Facebook) 
• Niche audiences (like LinkedIn)

How to Reduce Your Instagram Ads Cost

Advertising is necessary for growing your business, so you’re better off learning how to manage your Instagram ads properly. This will help you enjoy the rewards of effective social media advertising.

It may sometimes feel like Instagram ads cost too much, but you can lower your Instagram marketing spend. Here’s how:

• Use careful targeting and have clear goals to keep you on track and prevent overspending.
• Try using automatic bidding to help avoid costly mistakes as you learn to use the platform. Once you set a daily budget, your costs won’t go past this limit. You can also use automatic bidding to make sure you stay within fixed costs for Instagram ads per month. 
• Creating specific landing pages with highly relevant content to your ad can help keep your quality score high. For example, you don’t want a home page with a lot of information that’s not relevant to your ad. 
• Use A/B testing to your advantage. Compare different variants of ads, such as calls to action, design, offer, and content, to see what delivers the best bang for your advertising dollars. Testing can also benefit you because nailing relevancy in your ad copy can help reduce costs. 
• Schedule your ads for peak times on Instagram. There’s plenty of research out there, and they all suggest different peak times. The best way to identify the right times is to look at your advertising stats, like engagement levels and conversions.
• Work with an expert team. Getting the best results from Instagram Ads can take time, so consider working with an agency to develop an effective strategy.

FAQs

How to run ads on Instagram?

Instagram lets you run ads from an Instagram Professional Account using Meta tools. You can run ads by using Instagram, from your Facebook page, or through Meta Ads Manager.

How much do Instagram Ads cost?

There’s no one specific cost for Instagram ads as they depend on several elements, including the type of ad, advertising model, and your niche. The average CPC is 40 to 70 cents, according to research from WordStream.

Conclusion

Advertising on Instagram is an effective way to reach valuable leads who spend time on the platform daily. Many users shop while they scroll. If you target carefully, you might find people in search of what you’re selling. 

Get ad targeting right, decide on a budget that works for you, and create engaging campaigns that deliver results. Measure your metrics along the way to see what’s working and adjust your strategy if necessary.

And don’t think you have to figure it out by yourself. Expert advice can also help you lower your costs and get the most out of your Instagram ads. If you need consulting support or help with social media marketing or digital strategy, don’t hesitate to seek it out.