Facebook, Instagram CPMs drop for a second consecutive holiday weekend

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The cost of running ads across Facebook and Instagram continues to dip as CPMs decreased year-over-year when comparing July 1-4, repeating the CPM declines that were seen over Memorial Day weekend.

The cost of running ads across Facebook and Instagram over Memorial Day weekend dipped by 12 percent in the United States from 2021 to 2022, according to a tracker created by Gupta Media.

According to the Gupta Media data, CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) across Facebook feed, Instagram and Instagram stories dropped from $7.91 to $6.99 over the three-day holiday weekend.

And that trend continued as sales picked back up for the Fourth of July.

Gupta Media data shows CPMs for July 1-4 decreased from $6.43 in 2021 to $5.94 in 2022, a decrease of 8 percent.

But while July's CPMs were down year over year, Gupta reports advertisers actually saw the cost of gaining a click (CPC) to their website increased by more than 46 percent to 95 cents a click.

This decrease in CPMs but increase in CPC could be a result of any number of things:

• Tracking and audience constraints have driven advertisers to other channels, driving ad costs down
• Those same tracking and audience constraints have made segmentation more difficult, driving click costs up as advertisers have to target a bit wider with their audiences
• A down economy has limited investment in creative, driving click costs up as brands rechurn old content

Despite the higher CPC, Salesforce is reporting an increase in Fourth of July eCommerce revenue across the merchants it tracks.

Sales revenue grew 9 percent year over year, according to Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at Salesforce. That growth was higher than the average growth seen in 2022 so far.

Salesforce also reports:

1. Order volumes increased slightly (1 percent) but units per transaction decreased by 4 percent. So overall consumption was down
2. Sales growth seemed to be driven primarily by increases in average order value, up 8 percent year over year to $119
3. The average holiday discount was also up to 19 percent in 2022 as compared to 17 percent in 2021

So what does all of this mean?

At the end of the day, brands will continue to be gun-shy to spend too much money at the top of the funnel via social media and search advertising when targeting is so limited and CPMs continue to fluctuate.

With that marketers are looking at new tactics to get in front of their audiences and new ways to create cost efficiencies.