Advertising costs is a crucial KPI to track for all your ad campaigns. Here's all the information you need about this KPI: what it is, why it's important, how to calculate it, and way more!
TRACK YOUR ADVERTISING COSTS!
-
5 +
TEMPLATES USING THIS KPI
-
3 +
INTEGRATIONS USING THIS KPI
What are advertising costs?
The advertising cost is the total amount of your online advertising costs and offline advertising costs. This metric is very important in order to manage your marketing budget or ad budget. This covers expenses such as cover ads in print media and online venues, broadcast time, radio time, and direct mail advertising.
Track your advertising cost today
How to calculate advertising costs?
The ads cost calculation is very easy, simply take all the ad spend of all your advertising platforms and campaigns (from Facebook advertising to Google Ads, or billboards.) and add them up.
The advertising costs calculation:
Online advertising costs + offline advertising costs = Total advertising costs.
What is a good advertising cost?
A good ads cost depends on multiple factors such as your target audience, advertising budget, ad format and marketing strategy. Ideally the lower the cost for the most conversions, the better. Make sure to track your return on investment, by reducing the cost of advertising you’ll improve your ROI as well. To give you a rule of thumb, companies tend to spend between 2-5% of their sales revenue on marketing, and the average cost to reach 1,000 people with online advertising Ranges from $3-$10.
Track yours with an automated report
What is a bad advertising cost?
If you’ve busted your online ads budget, or spent way more on digital advertising campaigns that had a very high average CPM, you might consider this a bad ad cost. Make sure to track your ad auctions and average CPC very closely, particularly if you are a small business or have a smaller daily budget, to ensure you don’t pay too much for your ads. Make sure you also target the right demographic and target audience so that you don't spend money for nothing.
Track yours with an automated report
Advertising costs KPI examples & templates
Add your advertising cost to these reports for a good view of all your online marketing strategy metrics and overall online performance.
See this KPI in action here!
Ecommerce report template
Ecommerce report templateA report with all the most important metrics for your ecommerce site, like shopping cart abandonment, click-through rate, ad costs, and revenue.
See this template live
Executive report template
Executive report templateThis template is filled with business metrics perfect for small business owners and bigger companies executives. Showcase your revenue, new customers, churn rate, and more.
See this template live
PPC report template
PPC report templateCheck your metrics from all your marketing channels and social media platforms from instagram ads, Facebook advertising, google search ads, bing ads, or Linkedin ads. You can also track this data alongside your business metrics and industry benchmark.
See this template live
Get 10 free dashboards for 15 days
TRY DASHTHIS TODAY
Advertising cost best practices
Here are some of the best practices you should keep in mind to improve your advertising cost.
Use the Right Targeting options
Use the Right Targeting optionsWhether you use display ads, search engine ads, or social network ads, there are targeting options you can use to make sure you reach the right audience. For example, if you’re in the real estate business and try to find middle aged couples looking for homes, you probably shouldn’t target teenagers or elderly people. By reaching people that are most likely to convert, you should pay less for your ads, and have a better ROI.
Optimize your landing pages
Optimize your landing pagesYour Landing pages are just as important as your search or display network ads. Once people click on your ads, that’s when the convincing really starts. Make sure you add CTAs at the top fo the page, that your titles are enticing (maybe offer a promo code, or focus on your most important benefits). Other tips include: having a short page, have images and not too much text, as well as having a personalized landing page for each type of ad or persona you are trying to reach.
Combine ads with other digital marketing strategies
Combine ads with other digital marketing strategiesNot all digital marketing has to be costly, if you invest some of your time on search engine optimization, brand awareness, direct mail marketing, email marketing, social media campaigns, retargeting campaigns, and more, all these efforts combined should help your conversions in the long run. People will recognize your brand, they will have interacted with it, and trust it way more than if they’ve never heard of you and see a display ad for your product or service.
Want to track all your KPIs in one easy-to-use dashboard?
Try dashthis free
Ressources about advertising costs
Learn to use This KPI in our Help Center
- How to add goal conversions data in Google Analytics (Universal) dashboards?
- How to create a dashboard with Google Ads?
Read about this KPI on our blog
- Understanding E-Commerce Data: The Essential KPIs
- 15+ Essential Ecommerce Metrics for Your Reporting Dashboard
- Digital Marketing KPIs and Metrics: The Ultimate Guide
KPIs you may also like
- Conversion Rate
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Backlinks
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Domain authority
- Domain rating
- Unique visitor
- Return on marketing investment
- Bounce rate
- Pageviews
- Average time on page
- Traffic sources
- Keyword Difficulty
