Social Media
Instagram Ads vs. Facebook Ads | Where Should Your Budget Go?
Both run through Meta Ads Manager, but the placements behave differently. Placement-level benchmarks for feed, Stories, Reels and shopping, and when to let Meta decide.
BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min readShare
Instagram and Facebook share one ad system, one pixel and one auction. The difference is placement: where in each app your ad appears, and what people are doing when they see it.
Placement benchmarks
| Placement | CTR | CPM | Conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook Feed | 0.90% | $12.80 | 1.95% |
| Facebook Marketplace | 1.40% | $7.20 | 2.80% |
| Facebook Reels | 0.48% | $6.90 | 1.10% |
| Instagram Feed | 1.28% | $15.60 | 2.20% |
| Instagram Stories | 0.82% | $11.40 | 1.68% |
| Instagram Reels | 0.92% | $10.20 | 1.40% |
| Instagram Shopping | 2.10% | $14.90 | 3.80% |
What the table shows
Instagram generally costs more per thousand impressions than Facebook, and earns higher click and conversion rates in return. Placements where people are already shopping, Instagram Shopping and Facebook Marketplace, convert best. Reels and Stories are the cheapest reach and the weakest converters.
None of this means you should move all the budget to the best-converting placement. Those placements have limited inventory, and costs rise quickly as you push more spend into them.
When to use Advantage+ placements
Meta's automatic placements spread spend across every placement and shift it toward whatever converts at the lowest cost. For most advertisers with conversion tracking in place, this beats choosing placements by hand. Choose manually when:
- Your creative only works in one format, for example a vertical video with no square cut.
- Brand safety rules exclude some placements, such as Audience Network.
- You have a specific reason to test one placement in isolation.
Who you reach on each
Instagram skews younger and more visual; Facebook reaches a broader age range and is stronger for local businesses, community groups and Marketplace sellers. If your buyers are over 45, Facebook placements often carry more of the results than the overall averages suggest.
A sensible starting point
- Start with automatic placements and one conversion-optimised campaign.
- After two to three weeks, look at results by placement in Ads Manager.
- Make placement-specific creative for the placements doing the most volume, rather than excluding the weak ones.
Full ranges are on the Instagram Ads and Facebook Ads benchmark pages.
About the figures
Benchmark figures in this article come from the BenchMarketing dataset and update when the benchmark pages do. Each benchmark page lists its sources and period; see our methodology.
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