---
title: What rising ad prices mean for a small business
description: Meta's average price per ad rose again in 2026, and Google search clicks cost more than they did in 2024. Here's what that means for a small business.
image: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1763038311036-6d18805537e5?fm=jpg&q=70&w=1600&h=900&fit=crop
---
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3. What rising ad prices mean for a small business
Google Ads
# What rising ad prices mean for a small business
Anne Blaha · October 19, 2026 · 4-minute read
Rising ad prices mean the same budget buys less attention each year. Meta's average price per ad, across all its ads worldwide, rose 10% in 2024, 9% in 2025 and 12% in each of the first two quarters of 2026. Ads still have a place, and they work best when they point at something you own.
## What Meta and Google report
Meta reports the change in its average price per ad each quarter and each year, against a year earlier. The figures cover every ad on Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other apps, worldwide, so your own costs can run higher or lower.
Google search ads have moved the same way. In WordStream by LocaliQ's US benchmarks, the average cost of a Google search click was $4.66 in the 2024 report and $5.42 in the 2026 report.
Not every number points up. In the same 2026 report, the average cost of a lead fell 4.9%, the first fall in five years. A campaign that's run well can still be worth what it costs. What to plan around is the price of attention, and that has kept climbing.
## What you pay for, and for how long
With most online ads, you pay for each click, each view or each thousand times the ad is shown, for as long as the campaign runs. When you stop paying for an ad, it stops running. A video on your own channel stays up for as long as you leave it there.
That's the difference between renting attention and owning media. The price of rented attention can go up every year.
## Followers on a platform
The same goes for followers on a social platform. Engagement per post, for the same number of followers, fell 36% on Facebook, 16% on Instagram and 34% on TikTok in Rival IQ's 2025 benchmark of brand accounts. Engagement counts responses to a post, such as likes, comments and shares, not the people who saw it. And the audience still lives on someone else's platform.
## What lasts
Videos on your own channel keep being found after they go up. For the top 1,000 brand channels, over 60% of organic watch time came from content published 30 or more days earlier. That's Google's own data, from May 2025.
Every video you add joins the ones already up. On a plan of four videos a month, your library holds 24 videos after six months, each one answering a question customers ask.
## Use ads as a boost
Keep the ads that work for you. Ads are good at reaching people quickly, including people who have never heard of you.
Point them at something you own. An ad can send people to a video on your own channel, and the video stays up after the campaign ends.
## How Brand Builder builds media you own
[Brand Builder](https://www.ballyhooaiadvantage.com/ai/brand-builder) makes videos about your services and your industry every month. They arrive ready to post on your own channel and website, as long-form videos for YouTube and clips for social. You get two, four or six a month, and every month you pick the topics.
Each video is presented by a digital version of you, made with Ai, that looks and sounds like you. It's built from one short session of footage through our proprietary process. After that, there's no more filming.
If you want to see what your videos could look like, [book a free call](https://www.ballyhooaiadvantage.com/book?src=header).
---
*Anne Blaha, founder, Ballyhoo Ai Advantage. Twelve years in Columbus, Ohio, working with small businesses across the US.*
### Sources
- Meta Platforms, quarterly results, 2024 to the second quarter of 2026 (average price per ad, all ads worldwide, against the same period a year earlier).
- WordStream by LocaliQ, Google Ads Benchmarks, the 2024 and 2026 reports (US search campaigns).
- Rival IQ, 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report (150 companies per industry; engagement per post divided by followers).
- Google Data, May 2025, published on Think with Google (the top 1,000 brand channels on YouTube).
Photo by Apex Virtual Education on Unsplash.
**Anne Blaha**
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