Platforms · Meta
Why your Meta CPMs keep climbing, and the three levers that still work
Meta CPMs are up roughly 20% year over year across our accounts, and no, it's not just you. Here's what's driving it and the three things that still bring costs back down.
Senior media buyer
What's actually pushing CPMs up
Three things are happening at once. More advertisers joined the auction after Meta automated most of the setup, which means more bidders for the same eyeballs. Advantage+ moved everyone's budgets into the same placements, so the cheap corners of the feed got crowded. And Reels monetisation is still ramping, so Meta prices attention there more aggressively every quarter.
The part nobody wants to hear: you can't out-bid this. The auction doesn't reward bigger budgets anymore, it rewards better creative. The lever moved from the media buying tab to the content studio.
The numbers
- +21% avg CPM, our book YoY
- +38% advertisers on Meta since 2024
- -19% CPM on accounts running 10+ creatives
Lever one: creative volume
Accounts testing eight or more creatives a month saw CPMs drift down while single-ad accounts paid the auction tax. Meta's delivery system rewards ads that earn engagement, and you find those by testing, not by polishing one ad for a fortnight. This is exactly why we built an in-house creative pipeline instead of outsourcing it.
Lever two: broader targeting with better signals
Stacked interests made sense in 2019. Now they mostly restrict the algorithm into expensive pockets. Broad audiences with strong creative and clean conversion data let Meta find buyers cheaper than your assumptions. The catch: broad only works if your tracking is honest, which is why we fix Conversions API before touching audiences.
Lever three: landing page conversion rate
A 1% conversion rate at a $40 CPM is a $40 lead. A 3% rate at a $45 CPM is a $15 lead. You can whinge about CPMs or you can fix the page the click lands on. Most of the CPL wins we deliver in the Meta management work come from the page, not the ad account.
What we're telling clients
Stop comparing this year's CPM to last year's. Compare this month's CPL to the one your business can afford. If the number works, the CPM is a detail. If it doesn't, the fix is creative and conversion rate, and both are in your control.
If you skimmed
The short version
- CPMs are up ~20% for everyone, it's auction pressure not your account
- Creative volume is the discount: 8+ tests a month beats polishing one ad
- Your landing page decides whether a $45 CPM is expensive or cheap
Senior media buyer at Target Growth Lab
Runs our biggest e-commerce accounts and reads auction reports for fun.
Want this done for your account?
The free audit covers everything in this article, applied to your numbers.