Cost per Chat: What It Means, How to Calculate It, and What's a Good Rate

For shops that close sales through chat, likes and reach tell you little about whether ads are profitable. A more useful measure in Ads Manager is how many people started a conversation and how much each conversation cost.

How to calculate cost per chat

The formula is total spend ÷ total messaging conversations started. If you use the same text across several ads, add up the total spend and chats before dividing. Don't average the cost per chat of individual ads, as those with smaller budgets can skew the result.

Where to find it in Ads Manager

In the Ads Manager table, add the columns Messaging conversations started and Cost per messaging conversation started. Meta counts conversations started through ads according to its own rules, so these figures may not match the number of chats your admin sees in the inbox.

What's a good cost per chat?

There is no single benchmark for every shop. A shop selling a THB 200 product and one selling a THB 5,000 service can afford very different costs per chat. Two comparisons are useful:

• Compare with your shop's average. Text performing well below your average is worth building on. Text performing well above it is a good place to start when deciding what to pause.
• Compare with profit per order. If about 1 in 5 chats leads to a sale and each order earns THB 300 in profit, you can afford roughly THB 60 per chat (300 ÷ 5) before you start losing money.

What to watch out for

• Too few chats to judge. An ad that gets 2 chats from THB 100 in spend may look promising, but the result could be down to chance.
• Mixed objectives. Ads with different objectives aren't all optimised for chats, so avoid comparing them directly.
• Cheap chats aren't sales. Check what happens in the conversations, not just how little they cost.

Sources

• Meta Business Help Center: Messaging conversations started
• Meta Business Help Center: About attribution models and attribution settings

FAQ