why your facebook CPMs are so high
High Facebook CPMs are influenced by multiple variables including creatives, landing page design, geographic targeting, and account spend history. The speaker recommends a systematic testing approach to isolate which factor is the primary driver of elevated costs.
Summary
The speaker discusses the multifaceted nature of CPM costs on Facebook, emphasizing that high CPMs can stem from several sources. Creatives and landing page elements are key factors—aggressive pre-landing page copy or heavy pages with multiple GIFs, images, and videos can slow load times and increase CPMs. Geographic targeting also plays a significant role; testing across different regions, from US big four to tier 1 countries, can reveal geographic cost variations. Account maturity matters as well; newer accounts with lower historical spend (around 30k-50k) naturally experience higher CPMs, especially without proper account warm-up. Competitive markets, particularly in the US with product categories like cosmetics, beauty, and health products, inherently carry higher CPMs—the speaker notes that $1.55 CPMs for native statics in these categories is normal. The speaker's core methodology is treating CPM optimization as a testing game where each variable (creatives, landing pages, geos, spend level) is isolated and tested individually to identify which single factor has the most substantial impact on CPM performance.
Key Insights
- The speaker argues that aggressive pre-landing page copy and heavy landing pages with multiple media elements (GIFs, images, videos) can slow page load times, which directly affects CPMs
- The speaker claims that newer ad accounts with lower historical spend (30k-50k) naturally have higher CPMs, particularly if the account hasn't been warmed up properly
- The speaker states that native statics advertising cosmetic, beauty, and health products in the US market carries $1.55 CPMs as a normal baseline due to market competitiveness
- The speaker asserts that isolating and testing individual variables one at a time is the fundamental methodology for identifying which specific factor most impacts CPM performance
- The speaker contends that testing different geographic tiers (US big four versus tier 1 countries) is necessary to understand how location affects CPM costs
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] There's a lot of things that impact CPMs. It's very possible it is the creatives. It's also very possible, especially if you're sending more aggressive preander that the funnel is actually what's triggering the high CPMs. If you have pretty aggressive language on there or if the page is really heavy and you have lots of like GIFs, lots of images, videos, and it's really getting slow, that can also affect your CPMs. I would also test with different geos and try to see if going from US big four to tier 1 affects your CPMs at all. It's all a game of testing. I test new lander. Does that impact my CPM substantially? If it does, I know…
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