When first starting out your Facebook ads journey, you’ll more than likely dedicate your time to learning the basics: how to create a Facebook CBO, what are the different parts of a Facebook ad, etc. Getting your Facebook ads delivering and profitable is top of mind.
But, one thing you may not have considered is the billing element of your advertising campaign. This brings up two important questions we’re going to answer for you today:
- When does Facebook charge for ads?
- How does Facebook charge for ads?
This is important for you to know so that you can carefully plan out your Facebook ads budget. It’ll also help you understand what to expect so you’re not surprised with a huge bill all of a sudden. The short answer to these questions is that Facebook will bill your account when you meet their billing threshold - this can occur every day or every few days depending on how much you spend. And, they will typically just pull the funds from your card on file.
The billing process for Facebook advertising is relatively straightforward. Nevertheless, we’re going to take a deeper look so that you know all there is to billing. Let’s get started!
When Does Facebook Charge For Ads?
First things first - when does Facebook charge for ads? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not one size fits all. That’s because you’ll get charged once your ad spend reaches a certain threshold. And every ad account has its own unique billing threshold. Some people are charged at $50 in ad spend, some are charged at $100 in ad spend - some larger accounts are charged at $1,000 in ad spend. Further complicating matters, there is also a monthly billing cycle. Thus, there are two different instances in which you’ll receive a bill from Facebook. Let’s talk about choosing your billing threshold:
Choosing Your Facebook Ads Billing Threshold
Something many advertisers don’t realize is that they can choose their billing threshold depending on if they want to be billed more frequently or infrequently. To do this, you’ll navigate to the billing section of your ads manager. Then, you can click “payment settings” and choose the pencil icon in the “current balance” section. From there, you can enter the amount for your new payment threshold. Pretty simple, right? Well, not quite.
If you lower your payment threshold, the changes take place immediately. However, attempting to raise your payment threshold takes a bit of time. Facebook will review your request to increase the threshold. They’ll look at your payment history at your current threshold first and foremost. If you show a history of successful payments at your existing threshold, it’ll be easier to get that threshold raised. However, there is a chance your request is denied after an internal review. At that point, you can file an appeal or request a different threshold amount.
Facebook Charges You Monthly, Too
Along with your billing threshold, you’ll have a monthly bill to take care of. If you’re spending a lot on Facebook ads, you may not notice this monthly bill as you’ll always pay out at your threshold. But if there are leftover charges at the end of the monthly billing period that haven’t met your threshold, you’ll get a bill to clear up those. There may be instances in which you are not charged on your monthly billing date:
- If you don’t have any outstanding costs (you’ve already taken care of these in your billing threshold payment)
- Your charges don’t exceed $1.00 USD
How Does Facebook Charge For Ads?
We’ve answered the question of when does Facebook charge for ads - and now, we want to unpack a related question we see in our community frequently. How does Facebook charge for ads? They obviously just charge your card on file - but what are you actually being charged for? This will depend on the objective of your campaign. But generally, the ideal pricing model to choose for advertisers is based on impressions (CPM). Anytime your ad is delivered to a user, this is an impression. You will be charged when this happens. This is typically the most cost-effective choice - but there are others too.
You can choose to be charged per click. This is a feature any advertiser who has spent over $10 in their account and will only result in a charge if someone clicks your ad. Two other pricing models are CPE (cost per engagement) and CPV (cost per view). Let’s break down all four models and explain why CPM is the way to go.
- CPM - this is the default payment option, and works great for all types of campaign objectives. You are charged anytime a user is served your ads regardless of how they engage with it.
- CPC - If you only want to pay for clicks on your ad, this is the pricing model to choose. It is going to work best in campaigns optimized for traffic, app installs, and catalog sales.
- CPE - this pricing model charges your account based on engagement with ads. For example, Facebook constitutes “likes” as engagement. This isn’t going to work well for most campaign objectives, but it may be worth considering for engagement-specific campaigns.
- CPV - This one is pretty simple - you are only charged for video views. The extent to which someone views your video will dictate when exactly you are charged.
Why The Default Billing Method (CPM) Is The Way To Go
New advertisers wonder why they are paying for impressions when they could pay only for clicks. Well, the traffic you’ll drive with this model is as cheap as it gets. While you may get some lower quality traffic, the cost at which you’re acquiring clicks makes it worth it. We recommend choosing this model if you’re goal is brand awareness or if you want to acquire an audience at the top of the funnel (cold traffic). It works best if you know that the creatives being used are optimized for conversion. And if you’re running ads on a new account, billing based on impressions is actually your only choice.
Choosing Your Payment Method For Facebook Ad Charges
We’ve answered the two main questions you came here with today. Now, we want to finish up with one more related topic - choosing your payment method.
You can choose a variety of payment options for your Facebook ads charges. The most common are PayPal, credit cards or debit cards, bank accounts, or local manual payment methods. Not all of these options are available to all advertisers in all locations - so be sure you do research on your specific country/currency.
With that said, we recommend paying for your charges with a credit card if possible. Why? So you can take advantage of the points of course! Certain cards offer more friendly payment terms for your charges, and better benefits to the card holder. Here in the US, Facebook accepts credit cards from American Express, Visa, Discover, MasterCard, and JCB.
Final Thoughts On When & How Does Facebook Charge For Ads
Now that you know when & how Facebook charges for ads, you can plan out your Facebook ads budget carefully and know what to expect when you set those ads live. In summary, Facebook charges you on two occasions:
- When your monthly billing date passes
- When your billing threshold is reached
The billing threshold you are charged at is unique to your account, and you do have some say over the threshold. But, Facebook has the final say in what level you pay at. And when it comes to how Facebook charges for ads, you now know that you have a few options available: CPM, CPC, CPV, and CPE. Despite all these different options, results have shown that sticking with the default billing of impressions is the way to go. You get the same amount of traffic to your offer - but typically, at lower costs.
We hope this article has helped you gain clarity on how billing works when running Facebook ads. If you want to gain more in-depth insights into running profitable campaigns and scaling them, we’re excited to introduce you to the Utopia. Our digital marketing community is over 3,000 members strong and features a plethora of the most well-respected media buyers in the game. You’ll be able to watch in real-time as they share what’s currently working for them and what isn’t - so you can apply the same tactics in your own campaigns. Plus, we have email marketers, SEO experts, and all sorts of other professionals in there to help you become the best digital marketer you can be. Join today and see what the hype is all about - you’ll be glad you did!