Paid social · 7 min read
What social media ads actually cost — and where the money leaks
Platform benchmarks, a sane testing budget, and the three creative mistakes that make every platform look expensive.
Cost is the single most searched question about social media advertising, and the honest answer is that the platform sets the floor while your creative sets the multiplier. Two brands on identical budgets routinely see a four-fold difference in cost per result.
Rough benchmarks
- ◆Meta (Instagram + Facebook) — roughly $0.50–$2.00 per click, $7–$12 per thousand impressions.
- ◆TikTok — cheaper impressions, but creative fatigues fast, so budget for volume.
- ◆LinkedIn — $5–$12 per click; expensive, justified only by high deal values.
- ◆Minimum useful test — around $10–$20 a day per ad set for two weeks.
Where the money leaks
First, testing one creative instead of five: you learn nothing and pay full price for the lesson. Second, changing budgets daily, which resets the learning phase. Third — the big one — treating the hook as decoration. You pay for impressions either way; the hook decides whether those impressions become attention.
A budget that behaves
Split your test budget across three to five distinct emotional angles, run them untouched for a week, then move spend into the winner and rebuild the losers with new hooks rather than new targeting. Broad targeting with sharp creative now beats narrow interest stacking on most platforms.
The variant batch is the expensive part to produce by hand. Aura AI writes the angles — same offer, different emotional entry point — so you always have fresh creative to rotate in before fatigue sets in.
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