Do Audience Engagement Ads Still Work in 2025?

Back in the mid-2010s, “engagement campaigns” felt like a magic trick. Brands could pay pennies for video views, post clicks, or quick likes, then retarget those warm prospects with conversion ads. A decade later, privacy updates, rising CPMs, and Meta’s evolving ad tools have forced marketers to question whether those cheap interactions still earn a place in the media plan. For tactical ways to cope with data loss, check Combating iOS Privacy Changes: Smart Ad Targeting Strategies for Facebook. After auditing more than forty accounts across ecommerce, SaaS, and local services, we have pulled together the findings below to help you decide whether engagement is still worth your budget in 2025.

1. What Counts as an “Audience Engagement” Ad Today?

Before diving into the numbers, let’s clarify the formats. “Engagement” now covers a surprisingly wide range of objectives inside Meta Ads Manager, and each one sends a slightly different signal:

• Page, post, and reel interactions such as likes, comments, and shares

• Three-second, 15-second, and ThruPlay video views

• Event responses and on-Facebook leads that never leave the platform

• Audience Network placements that surface Meta inventory inside partner apps and sites — need more detail on placement strategy? Read our walkthrough on how to use Facebook Audience Network for extra reach without wasting budget.

Common engagement actions used by Facebook advertisers in 2025.

These actions sit at the top of the funnel yet remain some of the cheapest ways to reach a target audience, averaging just over $4 CPM in our dataset. That price difference is the main reason many brands still test engagement—provided they know what to do with the traffic afterward.

2. Why Marketers Fell Out of Love With Engagement

Many advertisers walked away from engagement after 2021. Four culprits show up in almost every post-mortem:

1. Signal loss after iOS 14.5 cut off a chunk of tracked events, making it harder to measure downstream value from lightweight actions.

2. Advantage+ and broad targeting promised similar reach without the extra step of building warm audiences. If you’re still weighing objective choices, Meta Ad Campaign Objectives Explained breaks down when each one shines.

3. Misaligned KPIs tempted teams to chase cheap likes instead of revenue.

4. Platform-wide inflation nearly doubled “cheap” CPMs between 2020 and 2024.

These shifts did not kill engagement altogether; they simply changed how to fit it into a modern funnel that relies on smarter targeting and first-party data.

3. The Data: Do Engagement Audiences Still Convert?

To move beyond theory, we aggregated ninety days of performance data from ad sets using three different audience types.

Warm engagement audiences are roughly 30% cheaper per click than traditional interest stacks, making them attractive for top-funnel testing. For step-by-step targeting ideas, see Interest Stacking: A Powerful Method for Facebook Audience Segmentation. Despite the lower CPC, engagement pools still trail broad automation by about 11% on final purchase cost. Brands that publish consistent video content or maintain an active community see the biggest lift, suggesting engagement works best when paired with strong creative.

Do not obsess over the exact figures; results will vary by vertical, offer, and seasonality. Focus on the gap between audience types and how the pattern maps to your own benchmarks.

4. Five Ways to Make Engagement Work in 2025

Engagement can still pull its weight, but only when used as a springboard, not a shortcut. Keep these tactics in mind:

• Pair engagement with high-intent retargeting. Build a rolling 30-day pool of users who watched at least 50 % of a video, then follow up with a purchase or lead-generation objective. Not sure how to build that retargeting pool? Follow our tutorial on how to set up Facebook retargeting.

• Optimize creative for silent autoplay. Captions, quick motion graphics, and a hook in the first two seconds are non-negotiable because 70% of viewers watch with the sound off.

• Add lookalikes once the pool exceeds 2k people. A two-percent lookalike broadens reach without losing the core signal. Need a refresher? Custom vs Lookalike Audiences: What Works Best for Facebook Campaigns? walks through the pros and cons.

• Segment by depth as well as recency. Someone who watched 95 % of a reel is a stronger prospect than someone who tapped a like button, even if that like happened yesterday.

• Exclude recent purchasers to prevent wasted impressions and avoid fatiguing loyal customers.

Following these rules often closes the CPA gap with Advantage+ or even beats it for high-AOV items, because the retargeting stage filters out casual scrollers.

5. Niche Targeting Tricks That Still Deliver

Some tactics never go out of style; they simply evolve with the platform. The strategies below can breathe new life into modest budgets, especially for local or niche advertisers:

• Location-based targeting works well for brick-and-mortar launches, particularly when a recognizable local face appears in creative.

• Homeowner filters layered over warm video views can pinpoint high-value prospects for roofing, solar, or real-estate offers. Our Facebook Ads Targeting Updates: How To Adapt in 2025 article covers the newest demographic options in depth.

• Cross-platform warm-ups send top-funnel content to TikTok or YouTube, then retarget on Meta where conversion friction tends to be lower.

Layering niche demographic data with engagement behavior unlocks better results.

Use these ideas alongside a solid measurement plan, and ad dollars will stretch further than expected.

6. The Verdict

Do audience-engagement ads still work in 2025? Yes, as long as they are treated as a catalyst, not a cure-all. Cheap impressions, post interactions, and short video views continue to prime both the algorithm and the prospect, seeding warm audiences that lower blended CPA.

In recent campaigns, we lean on engagement to expand reach at low cost, then let Meta’s automation handle bids and budgets once intent heats up.

Key Takeaways

Keep this checklist handy before launching your next engagement campaign:

• Engagement CPMs remain the lowest in Meta’s objective lineup.

• Privacy changes demand stronger creative and tighter retargeting windows.

• Combining engagement, lookalike, and broad targeting balances scale with efficiency.

• Regularly monitor audience overlap so you do not cannibalize your own reach. If overlap is causing performance dips, The Role of Audience Overlap in Facebook Ads Performance shows how to diagnose and fix it.

Use engagement campaigns strategically, measure them holistically, and your 2025 media plan will thank you.