Our Meta ads benchmarks report reviews common ad performance metrics for Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram inclusive) across brands using Triple Whale to monitor and maximize their performance. This analysis includes over 40,000 brands for the period of August 1, 2025 - July 31, 2026.
READ MORE | A Guide to Ecommerce Metrics
Additionally, we’ll break down the vertical-specific trends with data from the following industries:
The overall ad performance data for Meta Ads from August 2025 to July 2026 reflects a platform where audience reach remains broad, but efficiency varies significantly by vertical.
Meta continues to command the dominant share of ecommerce spend — Triple Whale brands invested 66.88% of their total ad budget on Meta in the current period — and with that dominance comes increased competition and rising costs across the board.
The median CPA across all industries landed at $38.99, and CPM sat at $15.06, reflecting the premium brands pay to reach audiences inside a crowded auction environment.
The median ROAS of 1.88 and CVR of 1.53% suggest that while Meta drives significant volume, efficiency varies considerably depending on which vertical you’re operating in.
The median CTR of 2.39% signals that Meta’s visual ad formats continue to generate strong top-of-funnel engagement — the challenge lies in converting that interest into purchases.
Understanding where your industry sits within this benchmark is essential for setting realistic goals and building an ad strategy that can survive Meta’s cost environment in 2027.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) measures how much it costs to acquire one customer. On Meta from August 2025 to July 2026, three of the 17 industries in the dataset saw CPA improve year over year, while 14 got more expensive.
The standout improvers were E-learning & Online Courses (-5.67%), Toys, Art, & Collectibles (-1.50%), and Medical Devices & Equipment (-1.48%). All three industries brought their cost per customer down even as the overall auction grew more competitive.
E-learning & Online Courses retained the lowest median CPA at $26.80, followed by Baby ($29.61), and Books & Music ($30.69).
On the other end, Electronics remains the most expensive category to acquire customers through Meta at $51.86, tied with Medical Devices & Equipment ($51.86), with Travel Accessories & Luggage close behind at $50.95.
Electronics saw the sharpest CPA increase of any industry at +11.74% to $51.86.
Cost per mille (CPM), the cost to reach 1,000 people, reflects how competitive each industry’s auction environment is on Meta. The platform-wide +13.24% CPM increase was not evenly distributed, and the industry-level data reveals where competition intensified most sharply from August 2025 to July 2026.
Sixteen of seventeen industries saw CPM increase year over year, with E-learning & Online Courses as the only category in decline. Changes ranged from -6.61% to +33.33%, showing how differently auction pressure landed across verticals.
Books & Music experienced the most severe CPM inflation at +33.33%, bringing its median to $14.01. Health & Wellness retained the highest median CPM in the dataset at $21.80 after a +18.96% increase.
Electronics (+17.25%) and Medical Devices & Equipment (+16.39%) also posted outsized increases, reflecting growing advertiser interest in categories that were previously less contested.
On the other end of the spectrum, E-learning & Online Courses declined 6.61%, while Baby (+1.52%) and Business Supplies & Equipment (+1.65%) saw the most contained CPM growth, helping those categories maintain relative cost efficiency as the broader platform got more expensive.
Baby had the lowest absolute CPM at $11.50 despite a +1.52% increase, proof that even the most affordable category on Meta is not immune to broader auction inflation.
For brands across nearly every vertical, the broad direction of CPM tells a clear story: the cost of awareness on Meta is rising, and strategies that depend on cheap reach alone are under increasing pressure.
Conversion rate (CVR) tells you what percentage of users who click on an ad actually convert into customers. Unlike the CPM picture where every industry moved in the same direction, CVR was a mixed bag from August 2025 to July 2026, with gains in some industries and declines in others.
Six of seventeen industries posted year-over-year CVR gains, while eleven declined. Medical Devices & Equipment led all industries with a 10.66% CVR improvement, followed by Toys, Art, & Collectibles (+5.95%) and Sports & Outdoors (+5.22%).
Food & Beverage held its position as the top CVR performer at 1.89%, and Medical Devices & Equipment remains at the bottom of the pack with a CVR of 1.09%.
Click-through rate (CTR) measures how often users who see an ad choose to click it. On Meta, where creative quality has an outsized impact on whether someone stops scrolling, CTR is a strong signal of how well ad content resonates with its target audience.
From August 2025 to July 2026, every industry improved year over year, with increases ranging from +3.89% to +29.38%.
E-learning & Online Courses led the way with a +29.38% increase to 2.74% CTR, followed by Books & Music (+28.98% to +2.62%) and Health & Wellness (+23.28% to 3.02%).
The Health & Wellness category also had the highest absolute CTR (3.02%), which may point to how aggressively the category has leaned into Meta’s video and Reels formats to capture attention.
A universal CTR improvement should be considered alongside CVR data. For example, a category like Electronics had CTR increase +21.52% while CVR fell -15.69%, meaning ads are generating more clicks, but those clicks are converting less. This is a warning sign that post-click friction or offer quality may be a growing issue.
On the other hand, Business Supplies & Equipment had the lowest CTR at 1.88% and a high CVR at 1.70%, indicating that click volume and purchase intent aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the most direct measure of advertising efficiency as it measures how much revenue is returned for every dollar spent on ads.
From August 2025 to July 2026, ROAS was one of Meta’s brighter stories at the industry level: twelve of seventeen verticals posted year-over-year improvements, a notably different picture from the broad CPM increases recorded across the same period.
Business Supplies & Equipment (+16.56% to 2.34) and Lifestyle & Boutique (+9.72% to 2.04) posted the largest gains, followed by Medical Devices & Equipment (+7.41% to 1.63).
Sports & Outdoors had the top position at 2.35, with Business Supplies & Equipment (2.34) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (2.28) rounding out the leaders.
Media & Publishing had the lowest ROAS at 1.13, one of three industries below 1.5. With an AOV of $44.67, the margin between revenue and ad spend is razor-thin and leaves virtually no room for error.
Average order value (AOV) reflects the average dollar value of each order driven through Meta ads and is critical to determining whether a category’s unit economics can sustain Meta’s cost structure. Unlike CPM, which trended broadly higher from August 2025 to July 2026, AOV across most industries
Fifteen of seventeen industries improved AOV year-over-year. Business Supplies & Equipment led with the largest gain of +19.15% to $89.31.
Electronics (+15.50% to $110.00), Lifestyle & Boutique (+13.93% to $64.87), and Home & Garden (+12.47% to $110.41) also had strong AOV growth.
E-learning & Online Courses had the sharpest drop in the dataset (-7.85% to $34.33), followed by Medical Devices & Equipment (-1.28% to $88.88).
Travel Accessories & Luggage remained the highest-AOV category at $121.18, although its +0.05% year-over-year increase was effectively flat.
Marketing efficiency ratio (MER) indicates how many dollars in revenue your brand generates for each dollar of paid media, calculated by dividing total revenue by total ad spend. This differs from ROAS, which divides total revenue generated from ads by ad spend.
MER tells a mixed story for August 2025 to July 2026: twelve of seventeen industries saw their ratio decline year-over-year, meaning those verticals generated less revenue relative to their Meta ad spend than the prior year.
Media & Publishing posted the highest MER at 0.75 and was one of the few industries to see an increase (+1.91%). Health & Wellness (+6.30% to 0.62) and Medical Devices & Equipment (+5.46% to 0.55) also saw a MER increase.
Business Supplies & Equipment had the sharpest MER drop at -15.02% to 0.38, and Lifestyle & Boutique (-9.83% to 0.45), Sports & Outdoors (-6.09% to 0.37), and Food & Beverage (-5.64% to 0.56) all posted notable declines as well.
For brands interpreting these numbers, a declining MER is a prompt to examine whether rising CPMs are quietly compressing returns even in categories that appear healthy on other metrics.
These Meta benchmarks provide a crucial reference for brands evaluating their ad strategies in the year ahead. Use them to contextualize your own performance, identify where there is room to improve, and set targets that are grounded in what the platform is actually delivering across your industry.
Ready to jump right in? Triple Whale gives you full-funnel visibility into your marketing performance so you can shift spend, allocate budget, and get benchmarks at your fingertips. Get started for free today.
Our Meta ads benchmarks report reviews common ad performance metrics for Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram inclusive) across brands using Triple Whale to monitor and maximize their performance. This analysis includes over 40,000 brands for the period of August 1, 2025 - July 31, 2026.
READ MORE | A Guide to Ecommerce Metrics
Additionally, we’ll break down the vertical-specific trends with data from the following industries:
The overall ad performance data for Meta Ads from August 2025 to July 2026 reflects a platform where audience reach remains broad, but efficiency varies significantly by vertical.
Meta continues to command the dominant share of ecommerce spend — Triple Whale brands invested 66.88% of their total ad budget on Meta in the current period — and with that dominance comes increased competition and rising costs across the board.
The median CPA across all industries landed at $38.99, and CPM sat at $15.06, reflecting the premium brands pay to reach audiences inside a crowded auction environment.
The median ROAS of 1.88 and CVR of 1.53% suggest that while Meta drives significant volume, efficiency varies considerably depending on which vertical you’re operating in.
The median CTR of 2.39% signals that Meta’s visual ad formats continue to generate strong top-of-funnel engagement — the challenge lies in converting that interest into purchases.
Understanding where your industry sits within this benchmark is essential for setting realistic goals and building an ad strategy that can survive Meta’s cost environment in 2027.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) measures how much it costs to acquire one customer. On Meta from August 2025 to July 2026, three of the 17 industries in the dataset saw CPA improve year over year, while 14 got more expensive.
The standout improvers were E-learning & Online Courses (-5.67%), Toys, Art, & Collectibles (-1.50%), and Medical Devices & Equipment (-1.48%). All three industries brought their cost per customer down even as the overall auction grew more competitive.
E-learning & Online Courses retained the lowest median CPA at $26.80, followed by Baby ($29.61), and Books & Music ($30.69).
On the other end, Electronics remains the most expensive category to acquire customers through Meta at $51.86, tied with Medical Devices & Equipment ($51.86), with Travel Accessories & Luggage close behind at $50.95.
Electronics saw the sharpest CPA increase of any industry at +11.74% to $51.86.
Cost per mille (CPM), the cost to reach 1,000 people, reflects how competitive each industry’s auction environment is on Meta. The platform-wide +13.24% CPM increase was not evenly distributed, and the industry-level data reveals where competition intensified most sharply from August 2025 to July 2026.
Sixteen of seventeen industries saw CPM increase year over year, with E-learning & Online Courses as the only category in decline. Changes ranged from -6.61% to +33.33%, showing how differently auction pressure landed across verticals.
Books & Music experienced the most severe CPM inflation at +33.33%, bringing its median to $14.01. Health & Wellness retained the highest median CPM in the dataset at $21.80 after a +18.96% increase.
Electronics (+17.25%) and Medical Devices & Equipment (+16.39%) also posted outsized increases, reflecting growing advertiser interest in categories that were previously less contested.
On the other end of the spectrum, E-learning & Online Courses declined 6.61%, while Baby (+1.52%) and Business Supplies & Equipment (+1.65%) saw the most contained CPM growth, helping those categories maintain relative cost efficiency as the broader platform got more expensive.
Baby had the lowest absolute CPM at $11.50 despite a +1.52% increase, proof that even the most affordable category on Meta is not immune to broader auction inflation.
For brands across nearly every vertical, the broad direction of CPM tells a clear story: the cost of awareness on Meta is rising, and strategies that depend on cheap reach alone are under increasing pressure.
Conversion rate (CVR) tells you what percentage of users who click on an ad actually convert into customers. Unlike the CPM picture where every industry moved in the same direction, CVR was a mixed bag from August 2025 to July 2026, with gains in some industries and declines in others.
Six of seventeen industries posted year-over-year CVR gains, while eleven declined. Medical Devices & Equipment led all industries with a 10.66% CVR improvement, followed by Toys, Art, & Collectibles (+5.95%) and Sports & Outdoors (+5.22%).
Food & Beverage held its position as the top CVR performer at 1.89%, and Medical Devices & Equipment remains at the bottom of the pack with a CVR of 1.09%.
Click-through rate (CTR) measures how often users who see an ad choose to click it. On Meta, where creative quality has an outsized impact on whether someone stops scrolling, CTR is a strong signal of how well ad content resonates with its target audience.
From August 2025 to July 2026, every industry improved year over year, with increases ranging from +3.89% to +29.38%.
E-learning & Online Courses led the way with a +29.38% increase to 2.74% CTR, followed by Books & Music (+28.98% to +2.62%) and Health & Wellness (+23.28% to 3.02%).
The Health & Wellness category also had the highest absolute CTR (3.02%), which may point to how aggressively the category has leaned into Meta’s video and Reels formats to capture attention.
A universal CTR improvement should be considered alongside CVR data. For example, a category like Electronics had CTR increase +21.52% while CVR fell -15.69%, meaning ads are generating more clicks, but those clicks are converting less. This is a warning sign that post-click friction or offer quality may be a growing issue.
On the other hand, Business Supplies & Equipment had the lowest CTR at 1.88% and a high CVR at 1.70%, indicating that click volume and purchase intent aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the most direct measure of advertising efficiency as it measures how much revenue is returned for every dollar spent on ads.
From August 2025 to July 2026, ROAS was one of Meta’s brighter stories at the industry level: twelve of seventeen verticals posted year-over-year improvements, a notably different picture from the broad CPM increases recorded across the same period.
Business Supplies & Equipment (+16.56% to 2.34) and Lifestyle & Boutique (+9.72% to 2.04) posted the largest gains, followed by Medical Devices & Equipment (+7.41% to 1.63).
Sports & Outdoors had the top position at 2.35, with Business Supplies & Equipment (2.34) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (2.28) rounding out the leaders.
Media & Publishing had the lowest ROAS at 1.13, one of three industries below 1.5. With an AOV of $44.67, the margin between revenue and ad spend is razor-thin and leaves virtually no room for error.
Average order value (AOV) reflects the average dollar value of each order driven through Meta ads and is critical to determining whether a category’s unit economics can sustain Meta’s cost structure. Unlike CPM, which trended broadly higher from August 2025 to July 2026, AOV across most industries
Fifteen of seventeen industries improved AOV year-over-year. Business Supplies & Equipment led with the largest gain of +19.15% to $89.31.
Electronics (+15.50% to $110.00), Lifestyle & Boutique (+13.93% to $64.87), and Home & Garden (+12.47% to $110.41) also had strong AOV growth.
E-learning & Online Courses had the sharpest drop in the dataset (-7.85% to $34.33), followed by Medical Devices & Equipment (-1.28% to $88.88).
Travel Accessories & Luggage remained the highest-AOV category at $121.18, although its +0.05% year-over-year increase was effectively flat.
Marketing efficiency ratio (MER) indicates how many dollars in revenue your brand generates for each dollar of paid media, calculated by dividing total revenue by total ad spend. This differs from ROAS, which divides total revenue generated from ads by ad spend.
MER tells a mixed story for August 2025 to July 2026: twelve of seventeen industries saw their ratio decline year-over-year, meaning those verticals generated less revenue relative to their Meta ad spend than the prior year.
Media & Publishing posted the highest MER at 0.75 and was one of the few industries to see an increase (+1.91%). Health & Wellness (+6.30% to 0.62) and Medical Devices & Equipment (+5.46% to 0.55) also saw a MER increase.
Business Supplies & Equipment had the sharpest MER drop at -15.02% to 0.38, and Lifestyle & Boutique (-9.83% to 0.45), Sports & Outdoors (-6.09% to 0.37), and Food & Beverage (-5.64% to 0.56) all posted notable declines as well.
For brands interpreting these numbers, a declining MER is a prompt to examine whether rising CPMs are quietly compressing returns even in categories that appear healthy on other metrics.
These Meta benchmarks provide a crucial reference for brands evaluating their ad strategies in the year ahead. Use them to contextualize your own performance, identify where there is room to improve, and set targets that are grounded in what the platform is actually delivering across your industry.
Ready to jump right in? Triple Whale gives you full-funnel visibility into your marketing performance so you can shift spend, allocate budget, and get benchmarks at your fingertips. Get started for free today.
Body Copy: The following benchmarks compare advertising metrics from April 1-17 to the previous period. Considering President Trump first unveiled his tariffs on April 2, the timing corresponds with potential changes in advertising behavior among ecommerce brands (though it isn’t necessarily correlated).
.webp)
.webp)
.png)
