10 Actionable Strategies to Tackle High CPMs
If your CPMs are on the rise, you’re not alone. Higher CPMs can strain your ad budgets and make ads significantly less efficient, but there are concrete steps you can take to bring them down. Here’s a list of practical, tried-and-true ideas from Foxwell Founders members to help lower CPMs and improve your ad performance.
1. Check Your Links for Errors
Start by auditing your ad links. Even a minor error like a 404 page or broken URL can trigger poor user feedback, which leads to increased CPMs. Ensure that every link any ad directs to is live and directs customers smoothly to the right landing page.
Action: Run a quick check of all ad links to confirm they’re functional and user-friendly.
2. Add Seasonal or Relevant Messaging
Tapping into current events or seasonal trends or verbiage (or emojis) (like “Holiday Gifts” for BFCM) can boost engagement and help Meta serve your ads to more relevant users at lower costs. A simple update to your ad copy to reflect “gifts” or “limited-time” can make a difference.
Action: Modify ad copy and visuals to include seasonally relevant phrases, such as “Holiday Favorite” or “Perfect Gift,” especially during high-demand seasons.
3. Leverage Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC)
ASC campaigns optimize performance by broadening audience reach. They’re useful for brands with a variety of products, and setting up separate ASCs for each product category that has significantly different audience segments or personas can give the algorithm more clarity, potentially lowering CPMs. OR, if your brand has just one main category for products, you can stick with a single ASC.
Action: Implement ASC campaigns with broad targeting. Separate ASCs by product category to manage performance more effectively.
4. Focus on Broad Targeting Over Niche Audiences
Broad targeting gives Meta’s algorithm more flexibility, allowing it to find cost-effective placements without restricting the audience’s size. Brands with high CPMs often find that moving away from specific lookalike or interest-based audiences reduces ad costs.
Action: Test using broad audiences instead of highly specific interest or lookalike audiences to give the algorithm room to optimize efficiently.
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5. Invest in Organic Content to Drive Paid Efficiency
A robust organic social presence can drive paid ad efficiency by increasing overall engagement and relevance scores, which in turn help lower CPMs. Regularly post organic content, including videos and interactive posts, to keep your brand top of mind.
Action: Create and share organic content consistently across Facebook and Instagram to improve engagement and build familiarity with your audience. High organic engagement can support lower CPMs in your paid efforts.
6. Optimize Your Best Creatives for BFCM
For high-stakes shopping seasons (and seasons with high CPMs), avoid reinventing the wheel. Instead, take your top-performing creatives from the year and give them a seasonal refresh. Overlay holiday elements, highlight special discounts, or add limited-time banners to proven ads. ALSO, don’t sleep on running your best ads as-is with their evergreen nature and no changes during BFCM. Customers assume sales are happening, therefore CTR increases naturally. It’s a winning ad for a reason, and that social proof is going to be unmatched.
Action: Update successful creatives with seasonal touches, like “30% off today” or “Holiday Special,” to keep them relevant without creating new content from scratch.
7. Institute Creative Diversity to Prevent Ad Fatigue
High CPMs can sometimes result from ad fatigue if the same ads are served repeatedly to the same audience. Regularly introduce fresh creative angles, such as user-generated content, testimonials, or behind-the-scenes videos, to keep engagement high. Also be sure to introduce different creative types - not just angles - such as UGC images, professional images, photo graphics, text-only graphics, UGC videos, professional videos, short-form videos, long-form videos, and the list goes on and on.
Action: Rotate new creative types into your campaigns, including customer testimonials, product demos, and seasonal visuals, to maintain audience interest.
8. Monitor Click vs. View Attribution
High CPMs might indicate an issue with user intent. Check your click vs. view data to see how many users are actively engaging versus passively viewing. If your click-through rates are lagging, it may be time to rethink your hook or ad placement.
Action: Regularly review your attribution settings (e.g., 7-day click vs. 1-day view) to understand how users engage with your ads and adjust messaging or targeting accordingly.
9. Experiment with Manual Bidding
Cost or bid cap bidding can help manage acquisition costs, but it may require tweaking. Monitor performance closely, as cost caps can sometimes increase CPMs if they limit ad reach too tightly. Here’s a great video walkthrough that was posted exclusively for the Foxwell Founders membership on how to get started testing cost caps.
Action: Set cost cap bids that align with your desired CPA but be prepared to adjust or test different limits to find a balance between reach and cost-efficiency.
10. Use Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) for Product-Based Brands
For e-commerce brands, DPAs offer an effective way to reach users with highly relevant ads. By showing products based on browsing behavior, DPAs can increase relevance and engagement, helping to keep CPMs lower. You can use these for retargeting as well as prospecting (then we call them DABAs - Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences).
Action: If you sell a wide range of products, implement DPAs to dynamically retarget potential buyers based on what they viewed or left in their cart.
Final Thought: Adjust, Monitor, and Repeat
There’s no single solution for high CPMs, so regular monitoring and adjustment are key. Keep in mind that sometimes CPMs are high due to seasonality, larger macro-economic factors, or platform issues. Before you throw in the towel on ads because CPMs are too high, ask other ad buyers if they’re experiencing the same thing. For example, in 2024, the 6 days prior to the US Presidential Election saw CPMs 23% higher than CPMs the day after the election. Experiment, monitor results, and refine as you go to keep costs manageable and performance strong.
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