Money Spent by Small Businesses on Ads (2025)

Get ready to dive into the world of money spent on PPC advertising in 2025! This Monthly Insights article explores key trends shaping ad spend from Small Businesses (SMBs).

Plus, we’re going to analyze that factors for Google Ads and Facebooks Ads that drive 2025’s money spent. It’s all about pay per click advertising to help you grow traffic and revenue.

Let’s go…

It’s a challenge to dig up the data on ad money spent in total, but we are able to draw a few conclusions from a various reported results. These results focus more on average costs per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPM), average monthly spending ranges, and general trends.

However, we can synthesize some information and provide estimated ranges and helpful context.

1) Amount of Money Spent on Google Ads from Small Businesses

Let’s start with a few high level stats on small business ad spend.

• Average Monthly Spend: Multiple sources indicate that small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) typically spend between $1,000 and $10,000 per month on Google Ads in 2025. Some suggest a broader range of $100 to $10,000 per month.
• Percentage of SMBs Using Google Ads: Around 65% of SMBs are reported to have their own PPC campaigns, with over 80% using Google Ads for PPC.

Around 65% of SMBs are reported to have their own PPC campaigns, with over 80% using Google Ads for PPC.

6 Factors Influencing Ad Spend by SMBs

The actual amount spent varies significantly based on:

• Industry
• Business Goals
• Target Audience
• Competition
• Experience
• Overall Market

Ad Spend by Industry

Highly competitive industries like legal services or finance can have much higher costs per click, requiring a larger budget to achieve visibility.

For example, a personal injury lawyer might spend upwards of $9.00 per click, while a local bakery might spend around $0.95 per click.

See our full PPC Cost Breakdown by Industry

Business Goals, Audience, & Competition

Brand awareness. campaigns might require broader targeting and higher spending than lead generation or direct sales campaigns.

Target Audience. Larger or highly specific audiences can increase costs. Local businesses targeting a small area might need a smaller budget than those targeting a national audience.

Competition. Higher competition for specific keywords and ad placements drives up costs.

General Factors Impacting Ad Spend

Experience Level. Businesses new to Google Ads might start with a smaller budget (e.g., $1,000 – $5,000 per month) and increase it as they learn and optimize.

Overall Market. Google’s ad revenue in the first three quarters of 2024 was $192.2 billion, indicating a massive overall market.

Small business spending contributes a significant portion of this.

See Also: How much should I spend on Ads?

2) Amount of Money Spent on Facebook Ads from Small Businesses

Not strictly a PPC ad platform, Facebook is often used for PPC ads.

So, let’s take a look at SMB ad spending on Meta.

• Average Monthly Spend: For Facebook Ads in 2025, small businesses might expect to budget between $100 and $500 per month as a starting point.
• Budget Allocation. Some suggest allocating 5-10% of their overall marketing budget to Facebook Ads.

There’s an infinite set of metrics to watch. Match your metrics to the objectives, and determine your ad budget based on those, and only those, metrics.

Factors Influencing Spend on Meta

Similar to Google Ads, Facebook Ads costs are influenced by a range of factors.

Target Audience & Ad Placement

A broad ad placement strategy is often recommended by Facebook Ads because it allows the machine learning to determine placement.

It does this by monitoring ad results to the campaign’s stated objective.

When results in a placement (i.e. Messenger, Reels, Instagram posts, stories, etc) meet the objective, the Facebook’s platform delivers more impression to that placement.

But there are factors that impact the amount a SMB will spend.

Target Audience. Reaching specific demographics and interests affects costs. These is based on location, competition, and consumer behavior.

Ad Placement. Where the ad appears (e.g., news feed, stories, right column) influences pricing.

Seasonal Changes & Competition

Seasonality. Advertising costs can fluctuate based on the time of year and major events. Sometimes this is in sync with commerce seasons, other times it’s a function of competitor action.

Competition. Higher competition for certain audiences or placements can increase costs.

See Also: How local SEO can boost ad spend for e-commerce.

Ad Strategy

Ad strategy is an internal set of factors a SMB has control over.

In fact, a quality marketing team can make a huge difference in ad spend. With some ad campaigns cutting costs by 80% on Meta Ads.

Ad Quality & Relevance Score. Higher quality and more relevant ads can lead to lower costs.

Bidding Strategies. Different bidding strategies (e.g., spend-based, goal-based, manual) impact how the budget is used.

Objectives & Costs

Campaign Objectives. Different campaign goals (e.g., awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, sales) have varying costs. For instance, lead generation campaigns might have a higher cost per lead than traffic campaigns.

Average Costs (CPC & CPM). The average Cost Per Click (CPC) for Facebook Ads in 2025 is estimated to be around $0.701, while the average Cost Per Mille (CPM – cost per 1,000 impressions) is around $13.57. These averages vary by industry.

For example, the finance and insurance industries often have higher CPCs.

Video Ads. Video ads tend to receive significantly more clicks than image ads, which might influence spending strategies.

In Summary

While a precise total spending figure for small businesses on these platforms is not available, the data suggests that individual small businesses allocate anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per month for Google and Facebook Ads.

The actual amount depends on a multitude of factors specific to their business, industry, target audience, and marketing goals. The overall market for both platforms is substantial, and small business spending is a significant component.

Our Recommendations for PPC Monet Spent

First, avoid the costly mistakes of DIY advertising. These mistakes, while saving your labor costs, end up driving up customer acquisition costs in the long-run.

Instead, think of outsourcing advertising as an investment in your business systems.

Second, have clear advertising objectives.

Any ad spend will get results. It’s a question of, which results?

Become familiar with the 6 objectives of advertising and develop a strategy that precisely pays for a desired outcome.

Third, only measure what matters.

There’s an infinite set of metrics to watch. Match your metrics to the objectives, and determine your ad budget based on those, and only those, metrics.

Digging deeper into these topics, is path too far from the topic of this Monthly Insights article, so we’ll save that for our in-depth PPC blog topics.

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Sources Accessed 4/13/2025