Meta's average price per ad rose 12% year over year in both Q1 and Q2, according to the company's earnings reports — and media buyers are reworking their strategies in response.

The benchmark, calculated by dividing total advertising revenue by the number of ads delivered, has climbed as Meta invests heavily in AI models and data centers. Several marketers said CPMs and PPAs have increased across various ad formats in recent months.

Meta defends the price hikes. Max Nelson, Meta spokesperson, said in an email that an internal analysis published in June, covering more than 1 million campaigns, found advertisers earned $4.13 in revenue on average for every dollar spent on Meta — a 25% increase since 2022. Nelson said the company believes advertisers benefit from Meta's investments in products like Andromeda, which optimize campaigns.

How are buyers fighting higher CPMs?

Some clients are abandoning the crowded holiday window entirely. Farhad Divecha, founder and group CEO of the agency Accuracast, said high CPMs combined with thinner margins from Black Friday discounts have discouraged certain clients from heavy holiday advertising in recent years.

"The same people who weren't doing a big push around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the whole November to December time period are actually looking at post-Christmas as an attractive new option," Divecha said. Typically at that time, "those really peak CPMs do come down."

Several media buyers said select clients now plan to purchase ads during the "Q5" period — late December into January — rather than spending during the holidays.

Others are doubling down on Meta's own tools to offset rising costs:

• Buying high-impact products like Advantage+ and specific ad units
• Running iterative creative testing and A/B testing
• Diversifying ad creative to satisfy Meta's AI-driven algorithms, which prioritize creative variety

"[Meta is] really pushing on [the idea that] 'creative is the new targeting,'" said Ankit Jadav, associate director, paid social at Rain. "That's been the common theme we've been telling clients in general with these AI-based algorithms and broad targeting: the creative has to do the heavy lifting."

Performance, not just price, determines whether the increases matter, Jadav added: "If we can dial in the messaging and the audience, that 12% is not that big of a deal at the end of the day."

What is Meta getting for its AI spending?

Meta executives argue the ad technology investments are paying off. CFO Susan Li noted during Meta's Q4 2025 earnings call that monetization efficiency from "optimizing the level of ads" in organic user engagement has been critical to revenue performance. On the Q2 2026 call, Li said Advantage+ solutions had delivered "over $75 billion in annual revenue run rate."

The spending behind that output is enormous. Meta's capital expenditures are expected to range from $130 billion to $145 billion this year alone, the company has disclosed to investors. That includes new data centers — one announced in July for El Paso, Texas, in partnership with BlackRock — and consumer AI products such as Muse, a personal agent that debuted in early September.

For now, buyers appear willing to absorb the price increases — provided creative and targeting keep delivering returns that outpace the 12% climb.