Most UK businesses should plan to spend from around £1,500 to £3,000 per month on Meta and TikTok ads to gather meaningful data and see reliable results, split across roughly 70% media budget and 30% creative. You can technically start Meta from a few pounds a day, but TikTok enforces a higher floor, and both platforms need enough spend to exit their learning phase before performance stabilises. Below that, you are usually buying noise rather than outcomes.
That is the short answer. The honest, longer answer depends on your margins, your goal (awareness versus sales), and how much strong creative you can feed the algorithm. Here is how to size a paid social budget properly.
What are the minimum budgets on Meta and TikTok?
The platform minimums and the effective minimums are two very different numbers, and confusing them is the most common budgeting mistake we see.
- Meta (Facebook & Instagram): the technical minimum is roughly £1 per day for impressions or £4 per day for clicks/conversions per ad set. Realistically, a conversion campaign needs enough daily spend to generate around 50 optimisation events per week to leave the learning phase.
- TikTok: TikTok Ads Manager sets a hard floor of $50 per day at campaign level and $20 per day at ad group level — about £40 and £16 respectively. In practice, most UK advertisers should budget £50–£100 per day per campaign to give the algorithm enough signal.
The takeaway: budget for the learning phase, not the floor. A campaign starved of data will report a high cost per result and tempt you to switch it off before it has had a fair chance to optimise.
How much should a UK business actually spend per month?
Use these tiers as a starting framework. They assume you are running on Meta, TikTok, or both, and that a portion is reserved for creative production — because on short-form platforms, the ad is the targeting.
| Tier | Monthly budget (media + creative) | Best for | Realistic expectation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test | from £1,000–£2,000 | Startups and single-location businesses testing one platform | Learn what resonates; expect to gather data before profit |
| Scale-up | from £2,500–£6,000 | Established SMEs, e-commerce, hospitality scaling demand | Consistent lead or sales volume; room to test creative |
| Always-on | from £8,000–£20,000+ | Multi-product brands, national campaigns, launches | Predictable acquisition cost; always-on testing engine |
A useful rule of thumb: your monthly media budget should be at least 10–20 times your target cost per acquisition. If a new customer is worth £40 to acquire, spending £400 a month will never give the algorithm enough conversions to optimise. This is also why we usually steer very small budgets towards one platform done well rather than spreading thin across both.
How much of the budget should go on creative?
On Meta and especially TikTok, creative is the single biggest lever on performance. Fatigue is real — an ad that works in week one often decays by week four, so you need a steady supply of fresh cuts, hooks and formats. We typically recommend reserving 25–35% of total budget for creative production: multiple hooks, native-feeling TikToks, Instagram Reels, and variations to test. On a £3,000 month that is roughly £900, which buys a half-day shoot; at £10,000 and above it funds a monthly content retainer with ad-creative variants. Our guide to content creation pricing in the UK prices what each of those actually produces.
On paid social, you are not really buying ad space — you are buying attention, and only strong creative earns it. A brilliant £2,000 media budget with weak creative loses to a modest budget with three scroll-stopping edits.
This is where a production-led approach pays for itself. For the full picture on how creative and management fees stack up, see our guide to how much social media management costs in the UK, and our short-form video playbook for Reels, TikTok and Shorts for the formats that actually convert.
Should you split budget across Meta and TikTok?
It depends on where your audience pays attention and how much you can spend. A quick decision framework:
- Under £2,000 a month: pick one platform. For most B2C and considered purchases, that is Meta. For younger, trend-led or entertainment-driven brands, TikTok.
- £2,000–£6,000 a month: lead with your strongest platform (often 70%) and test the second with the remainder.
- £6,000+ a month: run both properly, with platform-native creative for each — never just reposting the same asset.
The mistake to avoid is halving a small budget so neither platform ever exits its learning phase. Concentration beats dilution when data is scarce. And cheaper impressions do not automatically mean cheaper customers: TikTok usually wins on CPM, Meta usually wins on cost per conversion for considered purchases, which is the comparison worth running before you split anything.
What drives your ad costs up or down?
Two businesses spending the same amount can see wildly different results. The main factors:
- Seasonality: UK Meta CPMs climb from September into the Black Friday and Christmas window as competition spikes. Published 2026 UK benchmarks put the increase at roughly 35% to 60%, peaking around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so a Q4 budget buys materially fewer impressions than the same spend in spring.
- Audience & placement: broad prospecting is cheaper per impression than tight retargeting; Reels and TikTok feeds often cost less than in-feed static placements.
- Objective: awareness (CPM) is cheaper than conversions (cost per purchase); the further down the funnel, the higher the cost per event.
- Creative quality: higher engagement lowers your effective CPM — the platforms reward ads people actually watch.
- Offer & landing page: a slow or unconvincing landing page wastes ad spend regardless of targeting.
What does a £3,000 monthly budget actually buy?
Say a London hospitality brand wants bookings, with a target cost per booking of £25 and a £3,000 monthly budget:
- Reserve creative: ~£900 (30%) for three TikTok-native edits and a batch of Reels hooks.
- Media budget: ~£2,100 (70%), roughly £70/day.
- Platform: lead on Meta (£50/day) with a TikTok test (£20/day) once creative is ready.
- Expectation: at £25 per booking, ~£2,100 could deliver in the region of 80 bookings a month once optimised — but the first 2–4 weeks are largely a learning investment.
That £3,000 is media plus creative only. Management sits on top of it, as does Meta’s 2% fee on ads served to UK audiences, and every figure here excludes VAT. See what social media management costs in the UK for the retainer side. Numbers will vary by sector and offer, which is exactly why we start with a strategy conversation rather than a fixed package.
Why work with 9495 Creative on paid social?
We are a London creative and video production agency, and paid social is where our two strengths meet: strategy and craft. Because our directors and strategists are fully in-house — no stock templates, no outsourcing — the same team that plans your campaign shoots and edits the creative that powers it. That means faster iteration, platform-native TikToks and Reels built for the feed, and a clear line of sight from brief to results. You get a visual treatment or strategy proposal within five business days, monthly reporting dashboards, and honest guidance on what your budget can realistically achieve.
Whether you are testing your first £1,500 or scaling a £20,000 always-on programme, we will size the budget to your goals rather than sell you a number. Start a brief and we will map a realistic paid social plan for your business — or explore our full services first.
How much does social media advertising cost in the UK?
Social media advertising in the UK costs whatever you choose to spend — the platforms have no meaningful minimum — but a realistic monthly budget for a business that wants results is £1,000–£2,000 to test, £2,500–£6,000 to grow and £8,000–£20,000+ to scale, with creative production included. Cost per click and cost per thousand impressions vary widely by industry, audience and season, which is why quoting a single “price of social media advertising” is meaningless. The useful question is not what the ads cost but what a lead or a sale costs you, and the tiers above are built to answer exactly that.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum budget to run Meta and TikTok ads in the UK?
Meta lets you start from around £1 per day per ad set, but TikTok Ads Manager enforces a higher floor of roughly £40 per day at campaign level and £16 at ad group level. Realistically, budget from £1,000 to £2,000 a month so campaigns can exit the learning phase and produce reliable data.
How much should a small UK business spend on paid social per month?
Most UK small businesses should plan from £1,500 to £3,000 per month across media and creative. A useful rule is to set your monthly media budget at 10 to 20 times your target cost per acquisition, so the algorithm has enough conversions to optimise against.
How much of my ad budget should go on creative?
Reserve roughly 25 to 35 percent of your total budget for creative production. On Meta and especially TikTok, creative is the biggest driver of performance, and you need fresh hooks and formats regularly to counter ad fatigue.
Should I run Meta and TikTok at the same time?
If your budget is under about £2,000 a month, concentrate on one platform done well rather than splitting it. Above roughly £6,000 a month you can run both properly, using platform-native creative for each rather than reposting the same asset.
When will I see results from Meta or TikTok ads?
Expect the first two to four weeks to be a learning investment while the platforms gather data. Performance typically stabilises once a campaign has enough conversion events per week, after which cost per result becomes more predictable.
How much does social media advertising cost per month in the UK?
For a UK business that wants measurable results, a realistic monthly social advertising budget is £1,000–£2,000 to test, £2,500–£6,000 for consistent growth and £8,000–£20,000+ to scale, with creative production included. The platforms themselves have no meaningful minimum, but below around £1,000 a month you rarely gather enough data to optimise properly.
What is a realistic starting budget for social media ads?
Start with £1,000–£2,000 a month across one or two campaigns for at least eight weeks. That is enough to learn which audiences and creative work before you commit a growth budget, and it keeps spend proportionate for a startup or single-location business.
Do these budgets include agency management fees and VAT?
No. The tiers on this page cover media plus creative production. Management is charged separately, usually as a percentage of spend, a flat monthly fee or a hybrid, and sits on top. Meta also applies a 2% location fee on ads served to UK audiences from July 2026, and VAT depends on your registration, so quote every budget excluding VAT.
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