What’s Happening with Google CPMs?

Google is among the most mature digital advertising platforms in the space, which can lead to more predictable and stable CPMs. However, with previous changes in iOS tracking and upcoming cookie deprecation, advertisers are becoming more wary and cautious of analytics and measurement.

To help shed light on industry-wide trends, we have partnered with Varos to dig into and analyze advertising data across industries and verticals. Our goal is to help advertisers understand whether the price increases they're seeing are specific to their account, or a result of industry-wide trends.

YoY increases on CPMs are in line with expectations, given the maturity of Meta’s platform and advertiser base. It’s also expected that we’ll continue to see higher CPMs for the remainder of the year; it’s normal to see CPMs rise steeply leading up to Black Friday through New Year’s, before dropping to their lowest points in January and February. And this year, we should expect to see a steeper than usual increase towards the end of Q3 through the end of Q4 given the combination of election season and the holidays.

What Does This Mean for Advertisers?

Google is often the first platform advertisers invest in as part of their paid marketing strategy. Most advertisers build and maintain a steady baseline spend using paid search before experimenting with other ad formats such as programmatic display or YouTube. However, many Right Side Up clients are also diversifying into lower CPM channels such as TikTok. 

If you're interested in chatting about Google ad performance or channel diversification, reach out to us. We'd love to discuss your growth strategy, no strings attached.

Varos offers real-time benchmarks for digital marketing and revenue metrics (CAC, retention, CPM, CTR, Conversion Rate, etc.) compared to similar companies. We're a data co-op that has 6,000+ companies sharing data with us ($4bn annual ad spend tracked).