Social Media
TikTok Ads vs. Meta Reels | A Performance Comparison
Short vertical video now runs on both TikTok and Meta. How their costs, click rates and conversion rates compare, and when one is the better first test.
BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min readShare
TikTok made full-screen vertical video the default ad format for younger audiences, and Meta answered with Reels on Instagram and Facebook. If you are making short videos anyway, the question is where to put the budget first.
The numbers side by side
| Metric | TikTok Ads | Instagram Reels | Facebook Reels |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTR | 0.84% | 0.92% | 0.48% |
| CPM | $9.50 | $10.20 | $6.90 |
| Conversion rate | 1.50% | 1.40% | 1.10% |
TikTok's median ROAS is 1.90x against 2.87x for Meta overall. TikTok figures are platform-wide medians; the Reels figures are placement medians from our Meta data.
What the numbers say
The formats perform within a narrow band of each other on clicks and costs. The bigger difference is what happens after the click. Meta has years of purchase data from its pixel and Conversions API across millions of shops, and its delivery system uses it to find buyers. TikTok audiences are younger and more likely to be discovering a product for the first time, so conversion rates sit lower and payback takes longer.
When TikTok is the better first test
- Your product is visual, impulse-friendly and under about $50.
- Your customers are mostly under 35.
- You can produce several new videos a week; TikTok creative wears out quickly.
- You sell through TikTok Shop, which keeps the purchase inside the app.
When Reels is the better first test
- You already run Meta ads and have conversion history in the account.
- Your buyers are older or the purchase needs more consideration.
- You want one campaign to serve feed, Stories and Reels with the same assets.
How to run a fair comparison
- Use the same videos on both platforms, cut natively for each.
- Give each platform at least two weeks and enough budget for 50 conversions, or the result is noise.
- Compare on a blended basis, not platform-reported ROAS. Platform attribution windows differ, and both will claim sales the other influenced.
- Watch frequency. When the same people see an ad more than a few times a week, click rates fall on both.
See the full ranges on the TikTok Ads and Meta Reels benchmark pages, or the Meta vs TikTok comparison.
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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