Facebook CPMs—the cost per thousand impressions—have increased significantly over the past year as digital ad spending has resurged and advertisers have flocked to the platform, driving more competition into programmatic auctions.

Digital display ad CPMs run between $0.50 and $4, and social media CPMs go between $6 to $9, according to marketing agency Topdraw. But CTV ads have several other features that make them stand out compared with other ads. CTV ads can’t easily be blocked, scrolled past, or ignored. CTV has less clutter than the open web. In Q2, 96% of CTV ads were viewed through completion, per Extreme Reach.

When US advertisers pulled back spending dramatically in March, one of the earliest noticeable effects on the display ad market was falling CPMs. At the same time as marketers were lowering their demand for ads—either to take spending cuts as savings or merely pause and rework their messaging—consumers were spending more time on social and traditional media properties, increasing the supply of impressions. A decline in prices was the natural outcome.

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Social media advertising will remain vulnerable in Q2 and possibly longer. CPMs will stay low, spending cuts will persist, and ad creative will be tricky to get right.

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More importantly many advertisers don’t have the money now to buy the additional impressions, which has depressed CPMs. Adomik, which lets publishers track their ad monetization, released data this week that showed a 17.2% drop in week-over-week ad revenues in the US between March 10 to March 15 and March 17 to March 22. 

With the steady rise in mobile CPMs over the past few years, these lower rates have provided opportunities some advertisers didn’t have prior to the pandemic. Although social media CPMs and costs per click (CPCs) have recovered and even exceed some pre-pandemic prices over the past winter, they still lag behind prices from a year ago.

Social media is a case in point. Socialbakers reported that CPMs and CPCs fell across all industries and social media platforms. CPMs fell from a recent high of $1.88 in late November to $0.81 in late March. Although part of this drop is seasonal, the majority is related to the coronavirus. CPCs also dropped 19% from a previous low of $0.11 in early January to $0.09 most recently.

“I think there is something to be said for the CPM [cost-per-thousand] increase. It’s much more expensive than it was last year. There’s no question there,” said Avi Ben-Zvi, vice president of paid social at Tinuiti. But rising CPMs only account for a fraction of his increased Facebook spend year over year, Ben-Zvi added.

Meta, for all its flaws, still has a user base that numbers in the billions, though advertisers may look elsewhere due to its relatively high CPMs compared to other platforms.

In Q1 2022, the median TikTok advertiser that was also active on Meta found the cost per thousand (CPM) on TikTok to be 39% lower than those on Meta’s ad platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network, per Tinuiti. But there may be additional costs to TikTok advertising.

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Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest ads are all considerably cheaper on a CPM basis, per Tinuiti.

Meta is going to fight hard to keep its advertisers in the fold, but its CPMs are still much higher than its competitors’, according to Tinuiti’s Q1 Facebook Ads Benchmark Report. There’s no better time than now for marketers to spread their social budgets around to other platforms, especially when TikTok is knocking on the door with new performance-focused ad products.