Facebook Ads vs Instagram Ads: Which is Better for Local Brands?

In the world of online advertising, both Facebook and Instagram are among the most widely used platforms.

With billions of active users, these social media behemoths present immense potential for companies to engage with their target markets and meet their marketing objectives.

Both platforms offer powerful ad options via Facebook Ads Manager, and advertisers can run their campaigns across either or both platforms simultaneously.

However, there is no straight answer when choosing which platform offers the optimal return on investment (ROI).

Whether Facebook ads work better or Instagram ads work better depends on many factors, including your target audience, objectives, ad format, and budget.

In this article, we will compare Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads to enable you to see which platform is the best for maximizing your ROI.

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads is the social networking site of Facebook's advertising platform and is intended to promote goods and services through texts, images, video publications, or advertisements.

Facebook Ads is an advertising channel considerably used by corporations because it offers a large user base (approximately over 3 billion active users on the platform) as well as a high potential for segmentation.

Facebook supports many ad types, such as carousel ads, slideshow ads, video ads, and lead generation ads.

Facebook has a vast audience base from teenagers to old people and is suitable for targeting users based on interests, demographics, behaviors, and more.

Businesses can use Facebook Ads to utilize deep targeting and detailed measurement to optimize campaigns for maximum impact.

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How Do Facebook Ads Work?

Its functionality is easier than in search engine advertising, and thus it has become a means used by small companies in seeking limited promotions geographically and over time.

But like any other digital marketing strategy, it is better for an expert to plan and track campaigns within Facebook Ads.

What are Instagram Ads?

Instagram ads are advertisements companies can pay to display to targeted groups of people on Instagram.

These advertisements surface in users' feeds, Stories, and discover pages in an identical layout to organic posts of other Instagram users.

Instagram adverts may have pictures, videos, carousels (a combination of several photos), or collections (interactive product galleries).

Instagram ads appear like regular Instagram posts but always have a Sponsored tag to let users know that they are an advertisement. They usually include more features than regular posts, including links, CTA buttons, and product tags.

Instagram is a visual platform with a young audience and a mobile-first user experience. Instagram Ads are generally concerned with attention-grabbing pictures, videos, and Stories and integrate well into users' feeds.

Instagram has fewer ad options than Facebook, but it allows for a one-of-a-kind way to interact with audiences through influencer marketing, stories, and shoppable posts.

Instagram is ideal for companies with a strong visual identity and seeking to reach a younger, trend-oriented audience.

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How Do Instagram Ads Work?

Creating your Instagram ads isn't complicated, and you have a few different options. Most likely, the quickest method to purchase Instagram ads is to convert one of your standard posts into an advertisement.

If you have an Instagram Business account, you will notice a "Promote" button on your posts.

If you choose "Promote," you can select where your ad sends people, whom you want to target, how much you're willing to spend, and what dates your ad will run. Once your promoted post is live, you can monitor its performance with Instagram's analytics data.

And just in case you didn't know, Facebook owns Instagram. So, you can also use Facebook Ads Manager to build your Instagram ads.

In Facebook Ads Manager, you'll click "Create," enabling you to establish your campaign's terms. You'll determine things such as your ad objective, your budget, your audience, and your ad creative.

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Who Is the Target Audience for Facebook Ads vs Instagram Ads?

Target Audience For Facebook Ads

Age: Facebook has a wider age bracket, with a higher percentage of users aged 35-64. It's especially popular with the older generations in comparison to Instagram.

User Intent: Facebook visitors frequently seek to talk to friends and relatives or participate in groups and, therefore, are more likely to act on content related to their interests.

Geographic and Interest Targeting: Facebook provides fine-grained targeting options where companies can reach people by location, interests, life events, behaviors, and more.

Target Audience For Instagram Ads

Age: Instagram is more prevalent among youth demographics and has many users between the ages of 18-34. It has become the go-to platform for Gen Z and Millennials.

User Intent: Instagram users are more inclined to interact with visually appealing material and seek inspiration, entertainment, or the newest tendencies.

Visual Appeal: Since Instagram is a great visual platform, ads with beautiful images and films perform better in this space.

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What are the Pros and Cons of Facebook Ads?

Like any ad platform, Facebook ads have strengths and weaknesses. These are some benefits and drawbacks of Facebook ads:

Pros:

Targeted Advertising

Facebook has an extremely sophisticated targeting system that enables advertisers to reach particular demographics, interests, behaviors, and even custom audiences.

Massive User Base

Facebook has more than 3 billion monthly active users (as of late 2024, Statista report), presenting a huge audience for advertisers to target.

Diverse Ad Formats

Facebook accommodates multiple ad types, such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and others, so advertisers can select the type of ad best suited for their content.

Detailed Analytics

Facebook's Ad Manager delivers highly detailed analytics and insights so that advertisers can monitor the performance of their campaigns and make decisions based on facts.

Cost-Effective

Facebook advertisements can be economical, particularly for small businesses. Advertisers can establish a budget and a bid strategy based on their intentions.

Engagement Opportunities

Facebook advertisements offer scope for engagement aside from clicks. Users can share, comment, like, and even click the advertisement to reach the advertiser's website, leading to increased website traffic.

Algorithm Changes

Facebook continuously changes its algorithm, which can affect the ads' reach and impact. The advertisers must be aware of changes and adjust accordingly.

Ad Saturation

More companies using Facebook ads means the platform becomes congested, which reduces the chance of each ad standing out and reaching its desired audience.

Privacy Concerns

Facebook has come under fire over user privacy and handling of data. Some people might be wary of engaging with ads because of privacy issues.

Ad Fatigue

If the same audience keeps seeing the same ad, they might get fatigued and lose interest, which would mean less engagement and effectiveness.

Competition

Facebook advertising's popularity has also brought greater competition, so the CPC may be higher, and competition may be harder for small businesses with smaller budgets.

Platform Dependency

Being dependent only on Facebook for advertising makes your strategy vulnerable to the decisions and updates of the platform. If something goes wrong or some updates affect your campaign adversely, it can be harder to make a swift change.

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What are the Pros and Cons of Instagram Ads?

As a property of Facebook, Instagram has its own set of strengths and weaknesses as an advertising medium. Some pros and cons of Instagram ads are as follows:

Pros:

Visual Appeal

As a visually-driven platform, Instagram is best suited for companies with visually attractive products or services. High-quality pictures and videos can attract users effectively.

Large User Base

With more than a billion monthly active users, Instagram offers exposure to a huge and diverse population.

Engagement

Instagram users tend to be highly engaged, and the app has features like likes, comments, and shares, offering avenues for interaction and brand engagement.

Targeting Options

Like Facebook, Instagram offers advanced targeting capabilities, enabling advertisers to target specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and buying motives.

Integration with Facebook Ad Manager

Since Facebook owns Instagram, Instagram ads can be controlled through the Facebook Ad Manager, ensuring a smooth experience for advertisers on both platforms.

Stories and Carousel Ads

Instagram provides exclusive ad formats like Stories and Carousel ads, offering advertisers creative freedom.

Cons:

Algorithm Changes

Like Facebook, Instagram's algorithm changes, affecting ad visibility and effectiveness. Advertisers must keep themselves updated about changes and modify their strategies accordingly.

Ad Saturation

As more companies use Instagram ads, the platform becomes crowded, and it may become difficult for single ads to cut through.

Visual Content Requirement

Since Instagram is a visually oriented platform, companies that lack a strong visual element might struggle to develop content that appeals to the platform's audience.

Competition

The growing popularity of Instagram ads has also resulted in heightened competition; hence, ads' costs could rise, especially for trending demographics and placements.

Limited Linking Options

Instagram limits the number of clickable links within regular posts to one in the bio. Even though ads support clickable links, users are usually wary of clicking on links from unknown sources, which might restrict click-through rates.

Youthful Demographic

Although Instagram has a wide following, its core market is generally younger. Depending on your target market, this could be a strength or a weakness.

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Facebook Ads vs. Instagram Ads: What are the Differences Between the Two?

Although the two platforms might appear the same on the surface, they also differ significantly regarding the audience, content on the platforms, and fees.

Cost

One of the most significant reasons for selecting Facebook over Instagram (or vice versa) must be the cost. Fortunately, we've got guides on Facebook ad costs in 2025 and Instagram ad costs in 2025!

For cost per impression, Instagram is slightly higher at $10.81, just a cent above Facebook's $10.62.

Yet the difference opens up in cost per click, where Instagram's rate of $1.19 is more than twice that of Facebook's $0.59. The cost per engagement is fairly similar, with Instagram costing $0.06 and Facebook costing $0.07.

As you can observe, the advertising prices on Facebook and Instagram for CPC, CPM, and CPE are almost identical. Therefore, advertisers can design ads on either platform without considering much in terms of prices.

Ad Formats

Instagram and Facebook ads provide marketers with an amazing variety of ad formats. However, Facebook has a couple more Facebook ads under its hat.

a. Image Ads

Image ads are basic, single-image ads with text and a call to action. They are ideal for fast, simple messages such as advertising a product, event, or offer with powerful visuals.

b. Video Ads

Video ads employ motion content to engage users with a more dynamic message. They are ideal for storytelling, product demonstrations, or demonstrating a brand in action, so they are great for creating emotional connections.

c. Carousel Ads

Carousel ads enable brands to present many images or videos in one swipeable layout. They're ideal for the display of multiple products, attributes, or offerings and for revealing a multi-stage story in a single advertisement.

d. Collection Ads

Collection ads have a cover image or video with several images of products below, enabling browsing and buying within the ad. They work best for e-commerce businesses needing to display a mix of products and seamlessly drive conversions.

e. Story Ads

Stories ads are vertical, full-screen ads that display people's Stories on Facebook and Instagram. Organic Stories that are posted fade away after 24 hours, but story ads can remain live for as long as you want.

They are perfect for creating engaging, bite-sized content that grabs attention within a less formal, more daily browsing environment.

These ad types are the same on both social media platforms.

f. Reels Ads

Reel ads are vertical video or image ads that are short and are embedded in Instagram and Facebook Reels, providing a very engaging and visually rich experience like the content on TikTok.

The ads are ideal for reaching highly engaged, younger audiences and promoting trending content, product releases, or behind-the-scenes experiences. These ad formats are also the same.

g. Shopping Ads

Shopping ads enable businesses to feature and sell products directly on Facebook/Instagram by adding them to photos and videos, and even links that direct users to shopping apps.

They thus are great for e-commerce companies wanting to reach visually-oriented, mobile-first customers.

h. Explore Ads

Explore ads appear in the Explore tab on Instagram, where the algorithm serves up content to users based on what they are interested in—making them well-suited for brand awareness and product discovery.

Facebook does support a few other ad types that are not yet available on Instagram, such as:

• In-stream video ads: Mid-roll video ads are shown inside longer video content on Facebook.
• Playable ads: Interactive advertisements that enable users to test a game or app inside the ad itself.

Having read this, it should be obvious that whatever your purpose is, Facebook and Instagram advertisements can make your vision a reality.

Audience

While the prices and formats are similar, neither will do you much good if you can't get your target audience in front of you on the platform. Let's dive in, compare some data, and see how the audiences compare!

Facebook has been around for a while now, and it appears that just about everyone (and their grandma) is on Facebook.

Of their 3 million+ monthly visitors, men between the ages of 25 and 34 constitute Facebook's largest user demographic. Right behind them are men between 18 and 24, who comprise Facebook's second-largest user demographic.

Though Facebook has a large user demographic for the 45+ crowd, most users are under 44.

Compared to Facebook, the audience on Instagram is skewed much more to a younger age group and has somewhat of a lesser reach, with just 2 million monthly active users. More than half of Instagram's worldwide audience is 34 or younger.

Despite both being social media apps, both have a lot of significant differences, such as the demographic of users.

You will also see the difference between Instagram and Facebook users across the older age groups. Instagram, on average, has about half the users in the 55+ group that Facebook does.

Whereas both will appeal to younger users, Instagram's user base is more youth-heavy. If you want to appeal to older groups, Facebook is still the better choice.

Ease of Use

Facebook's almost everything a marketer could ever want—Pages, groups, events, shopping cart functionality, business analytics, job postings, a community marketplace, a dating app platform, fundraisers, video games, and more.

And although all of these things can be useful and entertaining in the proper context, it's difficult not to feel swamped. That said, once you get to know the ecosystem, it provides some of the most comprehensive functionality in a social networking site.

You won't find anything else remotely similar to it—which is how it managed to maintain its relevance all these years.

Instagram, by contrast, is beautifully minimalist—it's a site committed to making it easy for users to discover and connect with visual media. There aren't as many choices as Facebook, but part of its popularity lies in that minimalism.

Content on the Feed

The features and audiences of Facebook and Instagram can be vastly different, so it's not surprising that the content marketing on each of the platforms will also vary.

Facebook content is more diverse than that of Instagram, mainly because fewer types of posts are available.

Facebook has it all, from text-based posts, news pieces, and status updates to videos, images, and links to other websites. Facebook also accommodates long-form content and is better suited for more elaborate storytelling.

Instagram, however, is a visual platform based on quality images and video. The point is you can't even make a post without adding a video or an image.

Posts are also shorter because of post restrictions, as there is a 2,200-character limit versus Facebook's 63,206 characters.

Instagram Stories, Reels, and static images are important post formats, making them ideal for short, pictorial updates and bite-sized, engaging content.

In short, Facebook supports a wider variety of content, whereas Instagram is centered around visually oriented, short-form visual content. Both sites are used for different reasons, so adapting your content to align with user expectations is worth adopting.

ROAS (return on ad spend)

Advertisers don't put ads up for entertainment; they want them to generate more revenue. That's why ROAS is such a fantastic KPI to measure success.

ROAS, return on ad spend, is the way to measure how much revenue you're producing per dollar spent on advertising.

To find it, you divide the revenue you generate in a campaign by how much it costs. If you have spent $100 advertising and made $500 in sales, your ROAS would be 5. That's because you're making $5 in revenue for every dollar you spend.

Although Facebook and Instagram aren't in the #1 position for ad ROAS, you can see they're not far behind as they occupy the second and third positions out of the top four platforms:

Paid search occupies the number one position here, which is not unexpected since the intent behind the keyword search terms and shown ads is far more aggressive than the passive viewing ads on social media platforms. Facebook's ROAS of 10.88 is greater than that of Instagram. Yet, a ROAS of 8.3 would be more than sufficient for most advertisers.

Which is Better, Facebook Ads vs Instagram Ads?

Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are formidable digital marketing tools in a marketer's arsenal, but they both have their merits and are ideal for various business types and objectives.

Facebook has a more varied audience, cheaper ad prices, and more advanced targeting capabilities, making it perfect for lead-generating businesses and relationship-building.

Conversely, Instagram does well with visual media, high engagement, and a younger audience, making it ideal for e-commerce and lifestyle businesses.  To get the highest ROI, most businesses select to advertise on both of them, taking the best strengths of each.

By knowing your audience, business objectives, and content plan, you can develop an ad plan that suits you and yields the best outcome.

Connect With Us to Get Ahead With Your Social Media Ads Strategy

If this page has made you understand that you must review your social strategy before venturing into PPC services (paid ads), contact us at Arramton Infotech.

As the best digital marketing agency in Delhi, our experience in paid social media ads enables us to create more leads for your businesses. Regardless of whether you prefer in-person meetings at our brick-and-mortar office or remote consultations, start now and reach out to us here. Our friendly team can customize our solutions to your unique sales and marketing needs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q. Which among the two is better for sales, Facebook or Instagram Ads?

Ans: Facebook offers a greater age group and a large audience base. Instagram, however, is used by younger demographic audiences. Both the platforms, though, have solid targeting tools. When it comes to audience engagement, Instagram fares slightly better. Its extremely visual nature allows for higher engagement rates. This is particularly true for brands that have visually appealing products.

Q. Can Instagram Ads, compared to Facebook Ads, generate more sales?

Ans: Instagram Ads have been found to work extremely well for companies with products that involve visual storytelling. Such as, for example, beauty, fashion, and lifestyle companies. Instagram interactive and immersive ad formats such as Stories assist. They produce higher conversion rates. Facebook Ads for companies with a broad, mature audience are more effective. It produces better sales, particularly with its sophisticated targeting capabilities.

Q. Which platform, Facebook Ads VS Instagram Ads, has better targeting options?

Ans: Both utilize META's advanced targeting options. This enables businesses to target their audience with targeted options based on behaviors, interests, demographics, and more. Instagram is part of the Facebook ecosystem. Therefore the targeting abilities are on both platforms, almost identical. Yet Facebook is superior in reaching a wide range of audiences and serves ads across its greater network. This can be helpful to businesses that want to expand their audience and market reach.

Q. Why is Facebook the best social media platform for advertising?

Ans: Facebook is deemed to be one of the most effective advertising platforms for local and global businesses to target their specific audiences based on factors, such as demographics, preferences, and behaviours. You can find your potential customers anywhere in the world if they have access to the internet.