Facebook & Instagram Ads benchmarks by industry

Meta benchmarks split by objective before they split by industry, which is why three tables appear here. Traffic campaigns and lead campaigns come from a US agency sample and behave nothing alike; conversion campaigns come from 40,000 direct-to-consumer brands and are the only table with CPM and ROAS in it.

The DTC table is the one to use if you sell products: it puts the all-industry median at a 2.39% click-through rate, a $15.06 CPM, a 1.53% conversion rate and 1.88× ROAS. Health & Wellness buys the most expensive impressions at $21.80 CPM; Baby the cheapest at $11.50.

The agency tables are older — April 2024 to June 2025 — and rest on small per-industry samples, in places only two or three campaigns. They are included because nothing more recent publishes lead-objective cost per lead by industry, and excluded from any comparison where that sample size would matter.

How to use these numbers

A benchmark is a description of someone else's sample, not a target. The number worth hitting is your own break-even: the cost per acquisition your margin allows, or the return on ad spend that leaves a profit after the product is paid for. Use the calculators to work that out first, then use the benchmark to ask whether the market is even priced for it.

When your number sits far from the table, check the sample before checking your account. A store compared with a lead-generation sample, or a brand-heavy account compared with broad prospecting, will look broken while being perfectly healthy. The universe line above each table is there for exactly that check.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good ROAS on Meta?

The DTC sample's median is 1.88×, and the spread by category runs from about 1.1× to 2.4×. That is a description of the middle of the market, not a target — whether 1.88× is profitable depends entirely on your gross margin, which is what the break-even ROAS in the calculator tells you.

Why is the CPM here different from the one on the TikTok page?

Different samples. The impression-weighted, brand-heavy sample puts Meta at $8.19 while the DTC conversion-campaign sample puts it at $15.06. Conversion optimisation towards buyers costs more per thousand impressions than reach buying does.

Do these numbers account for iOS attribution changes?

They inherit whatever the platform reported, which since 2021 includes modelled conversions. That is another reason to compare a campaign with its own history and your blended revenue rather than with a benchmark alone.

How this data is handled

1. Every figure is transcribed from a public report and carries its publisher, sample, data period and a link. Nothing is estimated or rounded to “about”.
2. Publishers are never blended. A click-through rate from one report and a CPM from another never appear in the same row.
3. Each table states who is in its sample, because advertiser mix — not disagreement — explains most of the spread between reports.
4. Publisher errors and dated datasets are footnoted rather than quietly corrected or refreshed from another source.