Our Meta ads benchmarks report will review common ad performance metrics for Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram inclusive) across brands using Triple Whale to monitor and maximize their performance. This analysis includes nearly 35,000 brands for the period of January 1-December 31, 2025.
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 in 2025 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 68.31% of their total ad budget on Meta in 2025 — and with that dominance comes increased competition and rising costs across the board.
The median CPA across all industries landed at $38.17, and CPM sat at $13.48, reflecting the premium brands pay to reach audiences inside a crowded auction environment. The median ROAS of 1.93 and CVR of 1.57% suggests that while Meta drives significant volume, efficiency varies considerably depending on which vertical you’re operating in. The median CTR of 2.19% 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 2026.
CPA measures how much it costs to acquire one customer. On Meta in 2025, the story was mixed — roughly half of the industries in the dataset saw CPA improve year-over-year while the other half got more expensive.
The standout improvers were Media & Publishing (-11.72%), Automotive (-6.04%), and Pets & Animals (-5.57%). All three of these industries managed to bring their cost per customer down even as the overall auction grew more competitive.
Lifestyle & Boutique retained the lowest median CPA at $29.99, followed by Baby ($30.04) and Books & Music ($30.25). On the other end, Electronics remains the most expensive category to acquire customers through Meta at $49.48, with Travel Accessories & Luggage close behind at $48.37. Health & Wellness saw the sharpest CPA increase of any industry at +12.64% to $38.55, a concerning trend considering the category also carries the highest CPM on the platform.
Cost per mille (CPM) by industry
CPM, the cost to reach 1,000 people, reflects how competitive each industry’s auction environment is on Meta. The platform-wide +20.03% CPM increase was not evenly distributed, and the industry-level data reveals where competition intensified most sharply in 2025.
Every single industry saw CPM increase year-over-year. There was no industry spared from the rising cost of reach on Meta in 2025. The increases ranged from +8.08% to +38.03%, a spread that shows just how differently the auction pressure landed across verticals.
Health & Wellness experienced the most severe CPM inflation at +38.03%, bringing its median to $20.70, the highest of any industry in the dataset. Books & Music (+27.40%) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (+22.50%) also posted outsized increases, reflecting growing advertiser interest in categories that were previously less contested.
On the other end of the spectrum, Food & Beverage (+8.35%) and Baby (+8.08%) saw the most contained CPM growth, helping those categories maintain relative cost efficiency even as the broader platform got more expensive. Automotive retained the lowest absolute CPM at $10.01 despite a +17.08% increase, proof that even the most affordable category on Meta is not immune to broader auction inflation. For brands across every vertical, the universal 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 in 2025, with most industries improving but a handful declining.
The broad improvement in CVR is one of the more encouraging signals in the dataset. Eleven of fifteen industries posted year-over-year gains, suggesting that despite a more expensive auction environment, brands are doing a better job of closing the gap between click and purchase. Media & Publishing led all industries with a +21.02% CVR improvement, followed by Books & Music (+17.45%), and Home & Garden (+18.47%).
Food & Beverage held its position as the top CVR performer at 2.02%, and Electronics remains at the bottom of the pack with a CVR of 1.20%.
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. In 2025, CTR was one of the most uniformly positive in the entire dataset, where every industry improved year-over-year with increases ranging from +5.48% to +25.45%.
Books & Music led the way with a +25.45% increase to 2.34% CTR, followed by Media & Publishing (+24.17% to 2.21%) and Health & Wellness (+22.80% to 2.70%). The Health & Wellness category also had the highest absolute CVR (2.70%), 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 Travel Accessories & Luggage had CTR increase by +17.09% while CVR fell -16.72%, 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 end, Food & Beverage had the lowest CTR at 1.85% and a high CVR at 2.02%, indicating that click volume and purchase intent aren’t necessarily the same thing.
ROAS is the most direct measure of advertising efficiency as it measures how much revenue is returned for every dollar spent on ads. In 2025, ROAS was one of Meta’s brighter stories at the industry level: twelve of fifteen verticals posted year-over-year improvements, a notably different picture from the universal CPM increases recorded across the same period.
Food & Beverage (+7.17% to 1.56) and Pets & Animals (+7.07% to 1.58) posted the largest gains, followed by Home & Garden (+7.04% to 2.18). Home & Garden paired one of the largest ROAS gains with one of the largest CVR improvements (+18.47%), pointing to systematic progress in how the vertical is approaching Meta.
Automotive had the top position at 2.54, with Sports & Outdoors (2.28) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (2.25) rounding out the leaders. Media & Publishing had the lowest ROAS at 1.17, the only industry below 1.5. With an AOV of $42.64, the margin between revenue and ad spend is razor-thin and leaves virtually no room for error.
AOV reflects the average dollar value of each order driven through Meta ads and is a critical factor in determining whether a category’s unit economics can sustain Meta’s cost structure. Unlike CPM, which trended uniformly higher in 2025, AOV trends were a genuine mix with some industries growing and others with significant declines.
Thirteen of fifteen industries improved AOV year-over-year. Lifestyle & Boutique led with the largest gain of +16.71% to $60.00, a notable improvement for a category with one of the lowest absolute CPAs ($29.99). Electronics (+9.77% to $103.63), Health & Wellness (+8.75% to $59.36), and Food & Beverage (+8.40% to $61.71) all had strong AOV growth.
Media & Publishing had the sharpest drop in the dataset (-15.82% to $42.64), which was a double blow for a category that already had the lowest ROAS. Travel Accessories & Luggage dropped -6.01% to $116.46, which was still the highest AOV of all categories, but rising CPA and collapsing CVR in this category creates a deteriorating unit economic picture that even high ticket prices cannot sustain indefinitely. Pets & Animals posted a modest -1.89% AOV decline to $57.44, the mildest drop of the categories where AOV fell year-over-year, but the strong ROAS improvement (+7.07%) suggests the category found efficiency gains elsewhere.
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 is different from ROAS, because ROAS divides your total revenue generated from ads by ad spend.
MER tells a mixed story for 2025: eleven of fifteen 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 0.72 and was one of the few industries to see an increase (+3.62%). Health & Wellness (+1.30% to 0.60) and Beauty (+2.10% to 0.59) also saw a MER increase, and both categories are investing heavily in Meta despite elevated CPMs and below-median ROAS.
Lifestyle & Boutique had the sharpest MER drop at -7.54% to 0.48, and Food & Beverage (-5.49% to 0.57), Pets & Animals (-4.38% to 0.59), and Automotive (-4.01% to 0.34) 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.
Meta ads performance in 2025 reflects a platform that got more expensive to reach audiences on, with CPM rising +20.03% overall. For brands across every category, the data outlines where priorities should lie: investing in creative quality to sustain CTR gains, diversifying beyond Meta to reduce exposure to higher CPMs, and building owned channel infrastructure to improve blended MER independent of what the auction environment does next.
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.
Get more free ecommerce benchmarks just like this! Check out Trends by Triple Whale.
Our Meta ads benchmarks report will review common ad performance metrics for Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram inclusive) across brands using Triple Whale to monitor and maximize their performance. This analysis includes nearly 35,000 brands for the period of January 1-December 31, 2025.
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 in 2025 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 68.31% of their total ad budget on Meta in 2025 — and with that dominance comes increased competition and rising costs across the board.
The median CPA across all industries landed at $38.17, and CPM sat at $13.48, reflecting the premium brands pay to reach audiences inside a crowded auction environment. The median ROAS of 1.93 and CVR of 1.57% suggests that while Meta drives significant volume, efficiency varies considerably depending on which vertical you’re operating in. The median CTR of 2.19% 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 2026.
CPA measures how much it costs to acquire one customer. On Meta in 2025, the story was mixed — roughly half of the industries in the dataset saw CPA improve year-over-year while the other half got more expensive.
The standout improvers were Media & Publishing (-11.72%), Automotive (-6.04%), and Pets & Animals (-5.57%). All three of these industries managed to bring their cost per customer down even as the overall auction grew more competitive.
Lifestyle & Boutique retained the lowest median CPA at $29.99, followed by Baby ($30.04) and Books & Music ($30.25). On the other end, Electronics remains the most expensive category to acquire customers through Meta at $49.48, with Travel Accessories & Luggage close behind at $48.37. Health & Wellness saw the sharpest CPA increase of any industry at +12.64% to $38.55, a concerning trend considering the category also carries the highest CPM on the platform.
Cost per mille (CPM) by industry
CPM, the cost to reach 1,000 people, reflects how competitive each industry’s auction environment is on Meta. The platform-wide +20.03% CPM increase was not evenly distributed, and the industry-level data reveals where competition intensified most sharply in 2025.
Every single industry saw CPM increase year-over-year. There was no industry spared from the rising cost of reach on Meta in 2025. The increases ranged from +8.08% to +38.03%, a spread that shows just how differently the auction pressure landed across verticals.
Health & Wellness experienced the most severe CPM inflation at +38.03%, bringing its median to $20.70, the highest of any industry in the dataset. Books & Music (+27.40%) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (+22.50%) also posted outsized increases, reflecting growing advertiser interest in categories that were previously less contested.
On the other end of the spectrum, Food & Beverage (+8.35%) and Baby (+8.08%) saw the most contained CPM growth, helping those categories maintain relative cost efficiency even as the broader platform got more expensive. Automotive retained the lowest absolute CPM at $10.01 despite a +17.08% increase, proof that even the most affordable category on Meta is not immune to broader auction inflation. For brands across every vertical, the universal 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 in 2025, with most industries improving but a handful declining.
The broad improvement in CVR is one of the more encouraging signals in the dataset. Eleven of fifteen industries posted year-over-year gains, suggesting that despite a more expensive auction environment, brands are doing a better job of closing the gap between click and purchase. Media & Publishing led all industries with a +21.02% CVR improvement, followed by Books & Music (+17.45%), and Home & Garden (+18.47%).
Food & Beverage held its position as the top CVR performer at 2.02%, and Electronics remains at the bottom of the pack with a CVR of 1.20%.
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. In 2025, CTR was one of the most uniformly positive in the entire dataset, where every industry improved year-over-year with increases ranging from +5.48% to +25.45%.
Books & Music led the way with a +25.45% increase to 2.34% CTR, followed by Media & Publishing (+24.17% to 2.21%) and Health & Wellness (+22.80% to 2.70%). The Health & Wellness category also had the highest absolute CVR (2.70%), 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 Travel Accessories & Luggage had CTR increase by +17.09% while CVR fell -16.72%, 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 end, Food & Beverage had the lowest CTR at 1.85% and a high CVR at 2.02%, indicating that click volume and purchase intent aren’t necessarily the same thing.
ROAS is the most direct measure of advertising efficiency as it measures how much revenue is returned for every dollar spent on ads. In 2025, ROAS was one of Meta’s brighter stories at the industry level: twelve of fifteen verticals posted year-over-year improvements, a notably different picture from the universal CPM increases recorded across the same period.
Food & Beverage (+7.17% to 1.56) and Pets & Animals (+7.07% to 1.58) posted the largest gains, followed by Home & Garden (+7.04% to 2.18). Home & Garden paired one of the largest ROAS gains with one of the largest CVR improvements (+18.47%), pointing to systematic progress in how the vertical is approaching Meta.
Automotive had the top position at 2.54, with Sports & Outdoors (2.28) and Travel Accessories & Luggage (2.25) rounding out the leaders. Media & Publishing had the lowest ROAS at 1.17, the only industry below 1.5. With an AOV of $42.64, the margin between revenue and ad spend is razor-thin and leaves virtually no room for error.
AOV reflects the average dollar value of each order driven through Meta ads and is a critical factor in determining whether a category’s unit economics can sustain Meta’s cost structure. Unlike CPM, which trended uniformly higher in 2025, AOV trends were a genuine mix with some industries growing and others with significant declines.
Thirteen of fifteen industries improved AOV year-over-year. Lifestyle & Boutique led with the largest gain of +16.71% to $60.00, a notable improvement for a category with one of the lowest absolute CPAs ($29.99). Electronics (+9.77% to $103.63), Health & Wellness (+8.75% to $59.36), and Food & Beverage (+8.40% to $61.71) all had strong AOV growth.
Media & Publishing had the sharpest drop in the dataset (-15.82% to $42.64), which was a double blow for a category that already had the lowest ROAS. Travel Accessories & Luggage dropped -6.01% to $116.46, which was still the highest AOV of all categories, but rising CPA and collapsing CVR in this category creates a deteriorating unit economic picture that even high ticket prices cannot sustain indefinitely. Pets & Animals posted a modest -1.89% AOV decline to $57.44, the mildest drop of the categories where AOV fell year-over-year, but the strong ROAS improvement (+7.07%) suggests the category found efficiency gains elsewhere.
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 is different from ROAS, because ROAS divides your total revenue generated from ads by ad spend.
MER tells a mixed story for 2025: eleven of fifteen 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 0.72 and was one of the few industries to see an increase (+3.62%). Health & Wellness (+1.30% to 0.60) and Beauty (+2.10% to 0.59) also saw a MER increase, and both categories are investing heavily in Meta despite elevated CPMs and below-median ROAS.
Lifestyle & Boutique had the sharpest MER drop at -7.54% to 0.48, and Food & Beverage (-5.49% to 0.57), Pets & Animals (-4.38% to 0.59), and Automotive (-4.01% to 0.34) 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.
Meta ads performance in 2025 reflects a platform that got more expensive to reach audiences on, with CPM rising +20.03% overall. For brands across every category, the data outlines where priorities should lie: investing in creative quality to sustain CTR gains, diversifying beyond Meta to reduce exposure to higher CPMs, and building owned channel infrastructure to improve blended MER independent of what the auction environment does next.
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.
Get more free ecommerce benchmarks just like this! Check out Trends by Triple Whale.
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)
.png)
