Most artists think an ad is an ad. You spend $10, you get views. Simple, right? Not even close. On Meta — that’s Facebook and Instagram — your ad budget is part of a global auction system. Every campaign, every click, every placement is priced differently. The only way to make it work for you is to understand what drives that price up or down.
There are three main factors that determine how much you’ll spend:
- Your campaign objective — what you’re asking Meta to do.
- Your audience location — where your target fans are.
- Your ad quality — how well your creative performs.
There’s also a fourth, unofficial factor — how much it costs you to make the ads themselves. Let’s break it down.
Table of Contents
1. Campaign Objective — The #1 Cost Factor
Meta doesn’t charge the same for every type of campaign. What you ask the platform to do affects how much you’ll pay. Here’s the basic breakdown:
- Engagement Campaigns — likes, comments, saves, video views. These are the cheapest because Meta loves keeping people on its platforms. You’re feeding their ecosystem. That’s why in the early stages of your career you want to adopt a strategy of meeting your people where they are. More on that here.
- Traffic Campaigns — when you send people off-platform to Spotify, YouTube, or your site. These are more expensive because Meta is losing a viewer every time they click away.
- Lead Campaigns — these are the most expensive. You’re asking Meta to deliver people who are ready to buy or sign up, and they know exactly what that’s worth. That’s why Instagram to Spotify campaigns are so expensive (more on those here).
Some leads can cost $50 each depending on what you’re selling. So yes — your “budget” depends on your objective. The cheaper your goal (engagement), the more exposure you’ll get for less money.
Pro tip: Start with engagement campaigns until you’ve warmed up an audience. Then move to traffic or lead campaigns once you have something worth converting on.
2. Audience Location — Where You Run the Ad Matters
Meta ads run on an auction system. That means every impression is a bid against other advertisers trying to reach the same people.
If you’re advertising in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K., you’re not just competing with other musicians — you’re competing with Nike, Apple, Pepsi, and Netflix. That makes every click more expensive.
On the other hand, emerging markets like the Philippines, India, Nigeria, or Brazil are far cheaper. Fewer advertisers, more reach for your dollar.
But here’s the catch: cheap countries come with risk. A lot of those same regions are crawling with fake accounts and bot farms that will happily watch or “engage” with your ad for fractions of a penny — and none of it is real. They’ll wreck your analytics, inflate your engagement numbers, and poison your custom audiences.
Rule of thumb:
- Test smaller cities first. Avoid running ads across an entire country unless you have data proving the audience is clean.
- Don’t chase “cheap views.” They’ll look great on paper but won’t convert into fans, followers, or sales.
- Always monitor your comment sections and engagement quality. Real fans talk like humans. Bots don’t.
Example:
- $1/day in Los Angeles might barely get your ad served.
- $1/day in Manila might get thousands of views.
- $1/day across “Worldwide” will get you trash views from spam zones that destroy your data.
Match your target region to where your real audience lives — not where you wish they did, and not where the bots are pretending to. Otherwise, you’re paying premium prices (or fake bargains) for garbage metrics.
3. Ad Quality — The Silent Cost Factor
Even with the same objective and location, better ads are cheaper. Meta rewards high-performing content with lower costs. It’s simple: if people watch, click, or engage more than expected, Meta sees your ad as valuable and lowers your cost per impression. Learn more about average view duration and why it’s important here.
But if your average view duration is weak — people scroll or skip within seconds — you’ll pay more to reach the same amount of people. So your creative directly affects your cost.
Don’t make one ad and wonder why it’s not working. Make five. Test them all. Find the one with the highest retention and engagement, then scale that. It’s always in your best interest to make good ads. Read up on how to make good ads here.
4. The Fourth Factor — The Cost to Make the Ads
Here’s what no one talks about: ad production cost. If you’re paying thousands to shoot every clip, your testing budget disappears fast.
That’s why independent artists should shoot their own content and have editors like us cut it. You’ll be able to test, learn, and scale without blowing your entire marketing budget before you even start.
Quality matters, but consistency matters more. Shoot often. Test fast. Let data decide what works. Read more on this here.
5. The Fifth Factor — Polluted Data from Fake Engagement
There’s one more budget killer no one talks about: dirty data.
If you’ve been buying followers, joining engagement pods, or paying for fake comments and likes, congratulations — you’ve been training the algorithm to find the wrong people. Your ads are now being shown to bots, ghost accounts, and random users who couldn’t care less about your music.
Meta doesn’t know who your real audience is anymore, because you told it your audience was full of fake people. Every dollar you spend from here on out is being wasted on bad data. Learn more about this here.
How to fix it:
- Stop all fake engagement immediately.
- Wait at least 30–60 days before creating a new custom audience.
- When you rebuild, only include people who’ve engaged with your content recently and organically.
- Use high-retention ads to retrain Meta about who your real fans are.
Until your data is clean, every ad you run will be like shouting into the wrong crowd — loud, expensive, and totally useless.
The Bottom Line
Ads aren’t magic. They’re math. And the math works like this:
- Objective determines what Meta charges you to do.
- Audience determines how much competition (and bot traffic) you face.
- Quality determines how efficiently your budget performs.
- Production Cost determines how much testing you can afford to do.
- Data Cleanliness determines whether your ads are actually reaching real people or a graveyard of bots and fake followers.
Every artist who spends money on ads is an advertiser. The ones who win are the ones who understand what they’re paying for — and why.
If you’re ready to actually understand your ad data and build smarter campaigns, start with our Social Media Ads service. We’ll help you set up your account, define your objectives, and make sure your ad dollars work harder for you.
360 Promo is a full-service music marketing, promotion, distribution and admin company. Learn more about us and what we do at 360 Promo, follow us on Instagram and contact us to tailor a plan that works for you.