Although in recent months the newcomer TikTok (“new” so to speak, given that it has existed as Musical.ly since 2015) has given a hard time to the giants of the social field, the great fight for primacy is always between Facebook and Instagram. A struggle that doesn’t really exist since both platforms are owned by Facebook itself and the integrations are now many, including that of paid advertising. Today we are talking about the differences and similarities between advertising on Facebook and that on Instagram.

The management of advertising on Facebook and Instagram

A little above we stated that “the integrations are now many”, and in fact this is the case when it comes to advertising: paid ads on Facebook and Instagram can be managed by a single digital place, the Facebook Ads Manager. This unique tool offers a wide variety of formats and ways to highlight your content on both platforms, even simultaneously, by customizing each ad and choosing the appropriate format from time to time. Having only one place for both platforms is really convenient, especially as the results are downloadable and therefore easy to compare.

The paid ad formats on Facebook and Instagram

Differences and similarities between the two platforms when it comes to paid advertising can also be found in the formats; both social giants use four main advertising formats:

  • Single media, i.e. an image, a video or a gallery of images;
  • Existing post, i.e. the promotion of content published on your profile / page;
  • Carousel, a format that allows you to promote more searchable content;
  • Story Ads, i.e. Facebook or Instagram Stories in evidence.

However, the ability to enter text on Instagram is limited. Furthermore, with the same format, what will have to change is undoubtedly the type of content: if you decide to promote yourself on Instagram, you will absolutely have to give priority to aesthetically appealing and flawless content.

Audience and ad targeting

Two substantial differences between Facebook and Instagram when it comes to advertising are the type of audience and the precision with which we can reach them. With its 2.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the web landscape, and consequently offers a demographic size much higher than that of Instagram: on Facebook there are representatives of all categories and social groups. ; Instagram, on the other hand, has a much younger audience, made up mostly of women. For this reason, when choosing the platform on which to invest in advertising, it is good to evaluate the type of product or service that you want to promote and understand which is the most suitable demographic target.

Speaking of targets, another difference is precisely that of ad targeting: thanks to the varied and information-rich nature of its audience, Facebook allows a personalization of the targetfor your own really accurate ads. Instagram still offers good targeting, but not at the levels of the blue colossus. So if the goal of our advertising campaign is to reach a very specific and narrow niche, Facebook will be the right choice.

Cost and convenience of advertising campaigns

But now let’s get to the heart to answer the question that matters most when it comes to paid advertising: which is the most convenient platform between Facebook and Instagramon which to activate paid advertising? On the one hand we have the cost data of the ads, on the other hand the target and content objectives. If we look at the mere CPC (cost per click), Facebook beats Instagram thanks to its $ 0.27 against $ 1.41, while the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) reverses the question with $ 7.19 for Facebook and 7.91 $ for Instagram. So it depends on the type of ad you choose. But not only that: we must always remember that the success of a campaign is calculated not on the basis of the cost, but on the achievement of the objective or objectives for which it was decided to set it. To give an example: spending less on Facebook at the cost of the campaign, but not being able to reach your target because it is represented above all on Instagram is not a good strategy.

Services to grow Instagram and Facebook

Now that we have seen some differences and similarities between paid advertising on Instagram and Facebook, we would like to advise you on the easiest, fastest and most convenient way to reach more users on the platforms: whether it is to increase real followers on Instagram or to grow fans of your page on Facebook, don’t forget to take a look at the offer signed by Unica Web Studio!