WordStream published its 2026 Facebook Ads Benchmarks today, reporting a median click-through rate of 1.93% for traffic campaigns across a sample of roughly 1,800 US campaigns, and setting out four core metrics split across 22 industries on the traffic side and 14 on the lead generation side.

In Short

A marketing software company looked at about 1,800 Facebook ad campaigns run by US businesses and published the average results, broken down by industry. It says clicks got cheaper over the past year and more people clicked, while the cost of getting a sales enquiry stayed almost exactly where it was. The numbers only help if you compare yourself to your own industry line rather than the overall average, because some categories moved three or four times as much as the headline figure.

Two objectives, four metrics, one dataset

The report separates Meta campaign performance by objective. Traffic campaigns, which bid toward site visits, are measured on click-through rate and cost per click. Lead campaigns, which bid toward form submissions, carry two additional metrics: conversion rate and cost per lead.

For traffic campaigns, the median click-through rate across all industries came in at 1.93%, a 12.87% increase on the prior year figure of 1.71%. Median cost per click settled at $0.60, down 14.29% from $0.70. Both directions favour advertisers, and both reverse nothing: the prior edition of the same report, covered by PPC Land in September 2025, had already recorded traffic campaigns improving while lead campaigns deteriorated.

Lead campaigns this year recorded a median click-through rate of 2.70%, up 4.25% from 2.59%, and a median cost per click of $1.80, down 6.25% from the implied prior figure of $1.92. Median cost per lead landed at $27.39 against $27.66 a year earlier, a decline of 0.98%.

A click bought under the lead objective costs three times a click bought under the traffic objective, because the auction is pricing a different predicted outcome rather than a different click.

Beauty leads on engagement, finance pays the most per click

Within traffic campaigns, the highest median click-through rates sat with Beauty and Personal Care at 2.73%, Arts and Entertainment at 2.71%, and Restaurants and Food at 2.68%. The report's narrative text cites Arts and Entertainment at 2.72%, one basis point above the table value, a small inconsistency that matters only for anyone transcribing the figures into a planning document.

At the other end, Finance and Insurance recorded 1.46%, Automotive - For Sale 1.47%, and Education and Instruction 1.50%.

Click prices inverted much of that order. Arts and Entertainment bought the cheapest clicks at $0.34, followed by Travel at $0.42 and Restaurants and Food at $0.45. Finance and Insurance paid most at $0.86, with Automotive - Repair, Service and Parts at $0.74 and Apparel, Fashion and Jewelry at $0.71.

Finance and Insurance therefore occupies the least favourable position on both traffic metrics simultaneously: the lowest engagement and the highest click price in the set.

Two categories worsened on both traffic metrics

Year-over-year movement inside the traffic sample was far wider than the 12.87% headline gain implies.

Physicians and Surgeons recorded the largest click-through rate increase at 128.92%, followed by Automotive - Repair, Service and Parts at 88.75% and Restaurants and Food at 60.48%. Declines were led by Shopping, Collectibles and Gifts, down 54.48%, Sports and Recreation, down 31.92%, and Travel, down 17.39%.

On cost per click, only two categories moved against advertisers. Shopping, Collectibles and Gifts rose 73.53% and Sports and Recreation rose 43.90%. Those are the same two categories that lost the most engagement, which means both absorbed a double penalty over the period: fewer clicks per impression and a higher price for each one. The report offers no attribution for either movement.

The largest cost improvements went to Real Estate, down 39.56%, Restaurants and Food, down 37.50%, and Industrial and Commercial, down 37.21%.

For the automotive repair gain, the report points outward rather than to platform mechanics, citing Cox Automotive on softer new vehicle sales in the United States attributed to inflation and market fragmentation, and suggesting consumers have shifted toward maintaining existing vehicles.

Dentists pay $61.56 a lead, career advertisers pay $12.30

The lead objective produces the wider dispersion of the two datasets, and the cost per lead column is where it is most visible.

Dentists and Dental Services recorded the highest median cost per lead at $61.56, followed by Beauty and Personal Care at $50.91 and Home and Home Improvement at $42.95. The cheapest were Career and Employment at $12.30, Real Estate at $13.74, and Arts and Entertainment at $14.59. Top to bottom, that is a fivefold range around a $27.39 median.

Dentists also paid the highest median cost per click in the lead set at $5.70, roughly three times the all-industry lead figure and nearly eight times the $0.73 recorded by Career and Employment. Beauty and Personal Care followed at $2.97, with Furniture and Home and Home Improvement tied at $2.18. Arts and Entertainment came in at $0.88 and Sports and Recreation at $1.08.

Conversion rates diverged on a different axis. Education and Instruction posted 15.87% and Arts and Entertainment 15.31%, both roughly double the 8.54% all-industry figure. Health and Fitness reached 7.98%. The weakest were Automotive - For Sale at 4.15%, Industrial and Commercial at 4.50%, and Home and Home Improvement at 5.32%.

Click-through rate for the lead objective topped out with Physicians and Surgeons at 4.18%, Real Estate at 4.17% and Furniture at 3.78%. Beauty and Personal Care recorded the lowest at 1.35%, ahead of Dentists and Dental Services at 1.62% and Education and Instruction at 1.74%.

Annual movements inside these categories reach magnitudes that no cross-industry average can carry. Furniture click-through rose 155.42%. Health and Fitness rose 79.65% and Dentists and Dental Services 54.29%, while Beauty and Personal Care fell 47.06%. Conversion rate fell 51.77% for Industrial and Commercial and 51.33% for Automotive - For Sale, and rose 63.90% for Arts and Entertainment, 57.37% for Education and Instruction and 50.24% for Furniture. Cost per lead fell 48.83% for Health and Fitness and 32.29% for Physicians and Surgeons, while Personal Services rose 24.60% and Home and Home Improvement 4.10%.

The report attributes part of the health-adjacent movement to category demand, pointing to an increase in GLP-1 and weight-loss advertising. That category has been reshaping adjacent advertising markets for two years, with employer coverage of GLP-1 medications for weight management falling from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026 and advertising for unapproved peptides up 208%.

For Personal Services, the only other category to record a cost increase, the report names competition and sales cycle length, listing wedding planners, cleaners and funeral homes among the businesses in the group.

The conversion rate figure the report states two ways

The document carries an internal contradiction on its conversion rate movement, and it is not trivial.

The summary section states that lead campaign performance improved with an almost 11% increase in conversion rate, a 6.25% decrease in cost per click, and a decrease of roughly 1% in cost per lead. The dedicated conversion rate section states that the 8.54% figure represents a 0.98% decrease compared to last year.

Those two claims cannot both hold. The 0.98% figure is also the exact movement reported for cost per lead in the following section, which suggests a transcription error rather than a genuine second finding. Kendall Cagle, Product Manager for Social and Display Media at LocaliQ, is quoted in the report describing lead campaigns improving on click-through rate, cost per click and conversion rate at once, which supports the increase rather than the decrease.

An 11% increase would place the prior year figure near 7.70%. A 0.98% decrease would place it near 8.62%. Anyone using the 2026 report to measure a two-year trend inherits that fork.

Medians that do not reconcile with each other

A second arithmetic feature deserves attention because it is structural rather than an error.

Dividing the reported lead cost per click of $1.80 by the reported conversion rate of 8.54% produces a cost per lead near $21.08. The report states $27.39. The same exercise on the prior year figures produces a comparable gap.

The explanation sits in the methodology note: the figures are medians rather than means, calculated separately for each metric to limit the effect of outliers. A median cost per click and a median conversion rate come from different campaign rankings, so they do not multiply back into the median cost per lead. The consequence is that the four headline numbers describe the same population but cannot be used to model one another.

Sai Paturi, Data Science Manager at LocaliQ, addresses the underlying relationship directly in the report: "These metrics are not independent." The same passage notes that cost per lead only improves when a fall in click price outweighs a fall in conversion rate.

Where the sample thins out

The methodology section sets out two separate samples. Traffic data rests on 1,377 US-based campaigns, with each subcategory containing at least 11 unique active campaigns. Lead data rests on 452 campaigns, with each subcategory containing at least four.

Four campaigns is a thin floor for a published industry benchmark, and it sits underneath the same table that reports a 155.42% swing in furniture click-through rate and a 51.77% collapse in industrial conversion rate. A single account changing budget, creative or offer can move a category line built on that base.

The contrast with the same publisher's search benchmarks is instructive. WordStream's 2026 Google Ads and Microsoft Ads benchmarks, published May 19, 2026, drew on 13,474 campaigns and required a minimum of 52 unique active campaigns per subcategory. The Facebook edition runs on roughly one eighth of the campaign volume and one thirteenth of the per-category floor.

Three further points in the methodology note are worth recording. The stated measurement window for traffic campaigns runs from April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. The window stated for lead campaigns runs from April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2028, a date that has not occurred and is presumably a typographical error for 2026. Both samples are described as consisting of "search advertising campaigns", language that does not match a Facebook dataset and appears carried over from the search edition. And the opening text describes the combined sample as almost 1,800 campaigns, where the two stated figures sum to 1,829.

The lead objective breakdown also covers fewer categories than a year ago, at 14 against 15 in the 2025 edition. Business Services, Attorneys and Legal Services, Animals and Pets, Apparel, Restaurants and Food, Shopping and Travel appear in the traffic table but not the lead table, so no lead benchmark exists for several of the categories most commonly associated with Meta prospecting.

The cross-platform comparison and what it leaves out

The report states that Google Ads cost per click runs at more than double the average Meta figure, framing Meta as a budget complement rather than a substitute.

Measured against the same publisher's own search data, the gap is considerably wider than double. Google Ads median cost per click reached $5.42 in the 2026 search benchmarks, against $0.60 for Meta traffic campaigns and $1.80 for Meta lead campaigns. That is a ratio of roughly nine to one and three to one respectively.

Cost per lead narrows the distance without closing it. Google Ads recorded $66.69, having fallen year over year for the first time since before 2020. The Meta lead figure of $27.39 sits at roughly 41% of that.

Conversion rate is where the two datasets nearly touch. Google Ads averaged 8.18% in the 2026 search benchmarks against 8.54% for Meta lead campaigns. The comparison carries a definitional caveat the report does not draw out: a Meta lead conversion is typically an in-app form submission inside Meta's own surfaces, while a Google Ads conversion is usually an action on an advertiser-owned page after a click has left the platform. The friction profiles differ, so the near-parity in the number does not imply parity in what was measured.

The report separately cites LocaliQ's small business survey, which found more than 90% of surveyed small businesses using Facebook for marketing and advertising.

What changed on the platform during the window

The measurement period closes on June 30, 2026, which places several Meta product changes inside it.

Meta made server-side conversion tracking available as a one-click setup in April 2026, having previously required either developer resources or a partner integration. According to Meta's own announcement material at the time, advertisers running a Conversions API setup for web events recorded an average 17.8% lower cost per result than those without one. PPC Land documented the setup path going live in Events Manager on April 27, 2026. Brett McHale, Founder of Empiric Marketing, is quoted in the benchmarks report crediting platform-side technical work for lead efficiency, saying Meta lead ads have never been more efficient in his accounts.

Automation expanded over the same period. Meta's Advantage+ suite passed an annual revenue run rate above $75 billion in the second quarter of 2026, and the number of small businesses using at least one AI creative tool reached more than 9 million, up from 8 million a quarter earlier. The benchmarks report describes Advantage+ settings as optional and notes that most advertisers have incorporated some level of the automation.

One tension between the benchmark sample and Meta's own disclosures is worth stating plainly. Meta reported a 12% increase in the average price per ad across its Family of Apps in the first quarter of 2026, alongside a 19% rise in impressions. The benchmark sample records median click prices falling. The two are not contradictory: Meta's figure is a global, all-objective price per impression across every advertiser, while the benchmark is a US-only median cost per click on two specific objectives. They measure different things, and neither substitutes for the other.

A change falling outside the window may shape the next edition. Advertisers began reporting on August 25, 2026 that manual placement selection had disappeared from Ads Manager, with value rules capped at a 90% bid decrease, meaning a placement can be made expensive to win but not excluded. Where clicks land, and at what price, becomes less of an advertiser decision under that configuration.

Why the dispersion matters more than the average

For a media buyer, the operational content of this report is not the 1.93% or the $27.39. It is the distance between the top and bottom of each column.

A dental practice benchmarking against the all-industry cost per lead would read $27.39 and conclude its own performance is poor by a factor of more than two, when the category line is $61.56. A career advertiser doing the same would conclude the opposite. Both readings are wrong in the same way, and the report's own structure is the correction: the industry row supersedes the summary line.

The second constraint is sample depth. Where a category rests on four campaigns, the line describes those four campaigns and not the industry. The report does not disclose per-category counts beyond the stated minimums, so the point at which a benchmark becomes an anecdote is not visible to the reader.

The third is objective mismatch. Meta's lead campaigns are increasingly delivered through lead ads, an in-platform form format whose submissions do not pass through the advertiser's own site. That format has a documented quality problem, and a cost per lead figure says nothing about what share of those submissions reached a sales conversation. A benchmark set that measures the top of the funnel cannot settle a dispute about the bottom of it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: WordStream, a marketing software business operating under USA TODAY Co. alongside LocaliQ, published the report. Susie Marino is credited as author and Stephanie Heitman as editor. Named commentary comes from Kendall Cagle and Sai Paturi of LocaliQ, Brett McHale of Empiric Marketing and Michelle Morgan of Paid Media Pros. The findings concern US advertisers buying Meta inventory across 22 traffic categories and 14 lead categories.

What: The 2026 edition of the Facebook Ads Benchmarks report, covering median click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead for two Meta campaign objectives. Traffic campaigns recorded 1.93% click-through and $0.60 cost per click. Lead campaigns recorded 2.70% click-through, $1.80 cost per click, 8.54% conversion rate and $27.39 cost per lead. The document states its conversion rate movement two different ways in two different sections.

When: Published September 14, 2026. The traffic sample covers campaigns running from April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026; the lead sample states a closing date of June 30, 2028, which does not correspond to any elapsed period.

Where: US-based campaigns only, with all currency values in US dollars. The report does not specify how the sample was drawn beyond that geographic limit.

Why: Meta click prices fell and engagement rose across most categories over the measured year, widening the cost gap against search inventory priced at $5.42 per click in the same publisher's parallel study. The value of the dataset lies in its category detail rather than its averages, since cost per lead runs from $12.30 to $61.56 across the tracked verticals, and several category lines rest on a minimum of four campaigns.