Meta Ads Get Costlier as 2026 Paid Social Benchmarks Shift

Average spend per Meta campaign rose almost 50% between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, while TikTok’s rose about 4%, according to Metricool’s Social Ads Report 2026.

Metricool’s dataset covers 628,969 campaigns, 44,355 advertisers and $471 million in Meta and TikTok spend. Nine in 10 advertisers use Meta alone; the smaller group using both consists mostly of bigger spenders.

Meta’s extra budget mostly paid for higher prices: reaching 1,000 people cost about a third more, while TikTok’s costs stayed flat. A flat Meta budget now buys less visibility than last year.

What do the 2026 benchmarks show?

Metricool says: “Compare each row with your own campaigns that use the same objective on the same platform.” Its reported averages are market reference points, not universal targets:

Metric	Campaign objective	Meta	TikTok
CPM	Awareness / Reach	$0.48	$0.38
CPC	Traffic	$0.07	$0.03
Engagement rate	Engagement	2.15%	1.99%
CTR	Leads	2.04%	0.75%
Cost per lead	Leads	$6.00	$2.69
Average spend per campaign	All	$718	$1,309

CPM (cost per thousand impressions) prices Awareness and Reach visibility. CPC (cost per click) fits Traffic campaigns. Engagement rate is interactions divided by reach; CTR (click-through rate) is clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100. Fifty clicks from 2,000 impressions produce a 2.5% CTR.

Campaign counts and money tell different stories. About two-thirds of Meta campaigns use mid-funnel Traffic or Engagement objectives, yet over 70% of spending goes to bottom-funnel campaigns. Sales campaigns take over 40% of spend but represent about one in 10 campaigns. TikTok spending spreads more evenly, though most still goes to the bottom.

Many small campaigns build traffic and engagement; most money follows the sale.

How central is paid TikTok to ecommerce brands?

The Social Media & Ecommerce Report 2026 follows 72 leading US brands. In August, almost half their TikTok posts were ads, and one in eight brands appeared on TikTok only through paid content.

TikTok Shop use remained limited: about 6% of posts carried a product tag, most tagged posts were ads, and tagged posts drew roughly 20% fewer views than usual. Most brands sent viewers to a retail partner or their own site.

What do Traffic and Leads campaigns reveal?

Traffic CPC rose about 15% on Meta and nearly 30% on TikTok, yet TikTok’s $0.03 average remained less than half Meta’s $0.07.

For Leads, Meta’s 2.04% CTR was almost three times TikTok’s 0.75%. TikTok converted six of every 100 clicks into a lead, versus fewer than five on Meta; average lead costs were $2.69 and $6, respectively.

Metricool says: “A low CTR points to the ad itself, while a low completion rate points to the form or the offer.” Check both rates when CPL runs high.

CTR and CPC often move together because platforms deliver cheaper ads that people click. When CTR falls while CPC rises, repeated exposure or lost attention is the likely signal; refresh creative first. A strong CTR does not guarantee efficient leads or ROAS.

How do paid engagement and organic reach differ?

Paid Engagement campaigns average 2.15% on Meta and 1.99% on TikTok. Cost per engagement is roughly $0.09 on Meta and $0.12 on TikTok, reflecting about 11 versus eight interactions per dollar. The Short Video Report 2026 says organic TikTok engagement averages higher, but large accounts skew that result; accounts under 100,000 followers sit closer to paid.

Reach counts unique people, impressions count every display, and frequency equals impressions divided by reach. With 30,000 impressions to 10,000 people, reach is 10,000, impressions 30,000 and frequency three. Rising frequency, falling CTR and higher CPC or CPL signal fatigue. Rotate the hook, visual or offer every few weeks.

What does cheaper TikTok CPM actually mean?

TikTok’s awareness CPM runs 22% below Meta’s, although both increased: 8% on Meta and 5.5% on TikTok. A cheap CPM loses value if impressions repeatedly reach the same people, so check whether unique reach rises too.

What happened to Meta sales returns?

Meta Sales campaigns average 4.57 ROAS (return on ad spend), down from 5.48 a year earlier: each dollar of average spend generated $4.57 in sales. Spend grew faster than revenue across every account size. Nearly two-thirds reported purchase value, but results varied by account size and country. Your margin and market still determine whether 4.57 represents good performance.

What does this change for advertisers?

The practical answer is to match objectives, compare advertisers at similar monthly spend, and read cost, engagement and return together. Check frequency every few weeks and rotate creative before CTR declines. The full report adds account-size cuts, country-level ROAS and an ad-example swipe file.

Metricool’s unified dashboard combines Meta, TikTok and Google Ads results for CPM, CPC, CTR and Meta ROAS comparisons. Going forward, rising Meta prices make flat-budget comparisons misleading, while TikTok’s cheaper traffic clicks and lead costs coexist with nearly 30% CPC growth.