What do you do when your CPMs spike?
I’m not talking about a moderate increase from say $15 to $25; I’m talking about a huge jump that makes your campaigns completely unsustainable.
At that point, you need more than Meta’s standard advice — like to broaden your targeting, improve creatives, focus on video, or simplify campaign structures. These tactics might help, but will often fall short in addressing extreme CPM issues.
And while market saturation can sometimes explain these costs, it isn’t always the root cause.
So in this post, we’re giving you a 3-Step Framework to help you systematically diagnose and fix an unexpected spike in CPMs, so you can bring your costs down and save your campaigns.
Let’s jump in!
Step 1: Identify When the Issue Started
First, we need to pinpoint exactly when the CPM spike occurred: were they high from the beginning of the campaign, or did they increase suddenly?
Use Meta Ads Reporting to break down your data into months, weeks, or even days if needed to identify patterns or shifts in performance.
If you identify a time period when CPMs spiked
Focus any specific modifications made during that time — this could be a change to your website, your campaign setup, a newly installed app, a platform update, or changes made to your copy, creative or targeting.
Just write down everything that comes to mind for that period.
If CPMs were high from the beginning
We’ll start with the most common potential problems, and work our way through the framework to identify and fix the issue.
Step 2: Systematic Testing Framework
If you were able to successfully identify what triggered the spike in CPMs, simply revert that change. Your CPMs should go back to normal within the next day if this is indeed the cause.
If you weren’t able to pinpoint the reason, work through the following 9 common causes for inflated CPMs. We’ll change one variable at a time to ensure we accurately pinpoint the root cause.
For each potential cause, we give you:
- The hypothesis for each issue
- A simple test you can run to diagnose the problem
- The key metric to look at to interpret the test result
1. Facebook Page Health
Hypothesis: Your Facebook/Instagram page may be penalized, leading to inflated CPMs.
Test: Pick your best-performing campaign and duplicate it. Change only the Facebook/Instagram page for all ads and run the campaign for 24–48 hours while also running the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the two pages. Lower CPMs on the test campaign indicate issues with the original page.
2. Ad Account Integrity
Hypothesis: The ad account may be flagged or have a low trust score.
Test: Create a new ad account or use an existing healthy ad account. Pick your best-performing campaign in the original ad account and launch the same campaign structure in the new one. It’s important that all the settings are the same, so even use the post IDs of the ads from the original campaign. We want everything to be the same, but the ad account. Run the campaign for 24–48 hours while also running the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the two accounts. Lower CPMs on the new account suggest the original ad account is the reason for your high CPMs.
3. Pixel Health
Hypothesis: A corrupted or flagged pixel could be causing inflated CPMs.
Test: Implement a new pixel on your website and duplicate the best-performing campaign so far using the new pixel in the setup. Change only the pixel in the setup and run the campaign for 24–48 hours while also running the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the two campaigns. Lower CPMs point to pixel issues.
4. Landing Page Compliance
Hypothesis: Non-compliant elements on your landing page may be triggering penalties.
Test: Direct ads to a different landing page that is 100% compliant with Meta’s policies. Use a simple, clean landing page with no aggressive claims. Pick your best-performing campaign and duplicate it. Change only the landing page and run the campaign for 24-48 hours besides the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the two campaigns. Improved CPMs confirm landing page issues.
5. Domain Reputation
Hypothesis: The entire domain could be flagged by Meta.
Test: Pick your best-performing campaign and duplicate it. Change only the landing page (on a different domain) and run the campaign for 24–48 hours besides the control campaign. You need to change only the domain (use a fresh, compliant domain).
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the two campaigns. Better CPMs on the campaign going to the new domain suggest domain-level penalties.
6. Targeting Strategy
Hypothesis: Overly narrow targeting may be causing high CPMs.
Test: Run the best-performing ads in a new campaign with broad targeting.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between the broad targeting ad set and the rest in the ad account for the period of the test. Improved CPMs suggest targeting issues.
7. Creative Type Breakdown
Hypothesis: Certain creative formats may be underperforming or flagged.
Test: Compare CPMs across image, video, and carousel ads. If you haven’t tested all formats, do so.
Key Metric: Analyze breakdowns by creative type. Identify which creative type delivers the lowest CPMs.
(And if you need help diversifying and scaling your creative production, check out our Ad Creative Class!)
8. Creative Compliance
Hypothesis: Your creative could be triggering higher CPMs.
Test: Launch an ad (or ads) without a copy and headline. Pick your best-performing campaign and duplicate it. Change only the creative, but use creative that is just an image of your product and run the campaign for 24–48 hours besides the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between this ad and the ads in the best-performing campaign. A drop in CPMs indicates the original creative was problematic.
9. Ad Copy Compliance
Hypothesis: Your ad copy could be triggering higher CPMs.
Test: Launch an ad using a compliant copy and headline (or even launch the ad without a copy). Pick your best-performing campaign and duplicate it. Change only the copy and headline, but keep the creative the sae and run the campaign for 24–48 hours besides the control campaign.
Key Metric: Compare CPMs between this ad and the ads in the best-performing campaign. A drop in CPMs indicates the original copy/creative was problematic.
Step 3: Prioritization and Execution
When going through this systematic framework, keep these 4 things in mind to help expedite the process and maximize your results:
- Start with the most likely culprits based on your account history.
- Prioritize easy-to-execute tests (e.g., changing the Facebook page or ad account).
- Implement changes one at a time to accurately identify the source of the problem.
- Document all results for future reference and optimization.
Final Thoughts
A CPM spike can feel really frustrating, especially when standard advice doesn’t fix the issue.
But by systematically isolating and testing each factor — from account integrity to creative variations — you can uncover the root cause and restore your costs to a sustainable level.
Just be sure to never accept high CPMs as the norm without a thorough investigation.
Thanks for reading. Happy testing and scaling!
