Are Facebook Ads Worth it In 2025? Pros & Cons

Social media is a huge part of our lives in 2025. If you’re a business owner, you’ve likely considered, and maybe even tried, to run ads on social media. 

Facebook has evolved in many ways since its birth in 2004. What once was a small website used to connect with friends and family is now an industry leading platform in the marketing and advertising world. 

Meta reported 3.48 billion active daily users and an 11% increase in ad impressions on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. This shows that Meta’s advertising platform is extremely active & growing. Advertisers are spending on Meta ads, and people are seeing the ads. Meta Investor Relations

Facebook ads are working every day, but you have to decide if they’re the right fit for the needs of your business. 

The Game-Changing Pros of Running Facebook Ads

There are pros and cons to most ad platforms, but in my opinion, with Facebook the pros outnumber the cons. Some benefits of using Facebook ads include; cost, broad user base, detailed targeting options, and AI-assisted tools. 

Facebook Ads are considered much more cost effective than other ad platforms. Meta uses an auction system, which ends up giving users a lot of bang for their buck. 

Meta’s Ad Auction System

Meta’s ad auction is a real-time process that runs every time there’s an opportunity to show an ad to a user. Instead of picking the highest bidder, Meta aims to pair each impression with the ad the user will most likely be interested in. 

This sounds like a good user experience, right? How does Meta do this? In order to accomplish this, Meta evaluates and combines three main factors: your bid, the estimated action rate, and the ad’s quality & relevance. 

The bid is how much a user is willing to pay. The estimated action rate covers how likely a user is to click on the ad or convert. 

After combining these three factors, the ad with the highest total score wins the auction. These ads that get delivered more often have engaging creative, effective and accurate targeting, and an appropriate plan for the ad spend and duration of the campaign. 

Meta’s ad auction style helps ensure that both advertisers and users achieve their goals, while sticking to the advertisers set budget. 

Meta “Advantage+” Suite AI-Assisted Elements

Meta’s “Advantage+” suite uses AI powered algorithms to simplify ad setup. Currently, in 2025, the AI automation covers; ecommerce, sales, lead-generation, and more. 

In the past, users have made individual ad sets in order to target different audiences. This has helped them discover which audiences are the right fit for the ads. 

Now, with Advantage+ AI powered tools, users can make unlimited ad sets under the same singular umbrella. Through machine learning, AI finds high-quality users that are most likely to respond positively to the ads being promoted. This is done by using their past conversion data and pixel data. 

This AI system is constantly testing copies of ads, including photos and videos, and seeing which combinations perform best for individual viewers. 

As of now, users are still able to adjust some settings in their ad set up. These currently include location, age range, and other settings. 

AI still may predict that settings other than those manually set up will perform better, so it may show the ad to viewers outside of those manually set settings. 

The jist of these powerful AI tools is that you don’t have to be an expert in order to succeed with Meta ads. However, the eye and input of a seasoned marketer is always beneficial. 

Additionally, in April 2025 Meta’s ads containing product tags were expanded. This expansion allows businesses without Facebook or Instagram accounts to tag products in ads. 

Cons & Pitfalls of Facebook Ads

Social Sellinator says, “Think about it this way – you wouldn’t perform surgery on yourself or represent yourself in court. Facebook advertising has become equally specialized, with layers of complexity that can make even experienced marketers feel like they’re solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded.” 

Facebook ads require users to test audiences, different creative formats, and campaign strategies. This can be a challenge for beginners. 

Creative Fatigue & Burnout

Ever heard of the term ‘doom scrolling’? In 2025, most people have experienced a time or two of endless scrolling on their social media platform of choice. 

As social media has evolved, we have become accustomed to endless options and eternal entertainment.

How long does it take you to decide when to scroll to the next post or video? For most, it’s not long. 

A quote from Kontent.Ai 

“Research by Gitte Lindgaard and her team shows that people form an opinion about a website’s aesthetics within just 50 milliseconds of seeing it. This initial judgement usually starts the same, even if they spend more time on the site. Source: nngroup.com” 

We judge digital content quickly, so users have to make sure their Meta ads are intriguing enough to catch attention in the first impression. 

When the same ad is shown to a user more than once, users often ignore or block the ad. What does this mean to businesses? Those making the ads need to be constantly optimizing and changing the ad, to ensure interest even from those who may have already seen a previous ad. 

This constant process of refreshing ads can lead to creative fatigue. This fatigue could be considered a con of Meta ads. 

However, you could channel this fatigue and turn it into an opportunity to stretch and grow your creative abilities. 

Learning Curve

Meta ads take practice & lots of trial and error. Some users are likely to think that they know how to run Meta ads because they can boost a post. 

In simple terms, boosting a post is not the same as running a Meta ad campaign. 

Meta ads require users to understand complex settings, like audience options, text variations, visual content options, placement settings, and more. 

Having success with Facebook ads requires ongoing testing and optimizing.

It would be nice to just quickly make an ad, publish it, and let it work its magic. However, that is not the way to have a successful, effective ad campaign. 

This learning curve could be considered a con of Facebook ads. 

Are Facebook Ads Right for Your Business in 2025? 

Like with most digital marketing tools, there are multiple pros and cons to using Facebook ads in 2025. 

If you can handle the learning curve, and stay motivated to constantly refresh your ads, Meta ad campaigns could be the right fit for you. 

With auction style budgeting and AI-powered tools, Facebook ads are highly effective and relatively cost friendly. 

If this all seems like too much to handle, we get it! Business owners are busy. 

We’re ready to help you have success using Meta ads. Reach out to us at Built Marketing today!