Gupta Media: Facebook's worldwide CPM hit an all-time low of $1.95 on Tuesday; the average US CPM has remained below $3 since March 22, its lowest in two years
a disaster for the publishing industry. Prices for ads on Facebook & Instagram are down by more than 50% in the last month. https://twitter.com/... Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / @ashkan : Near-term impact of advertising retrenchment will hurt Google & Facebook but mid/long term they will benefit disproportionally as EVERYTHING will shift digital faster - TV ads - Retail vs eCommerce - their other efforts in Health, Employment, Fintech, etc https://www.mediagazer.com/... Eric Jhonsa / @ericjhonsa : “We've observed between a 35% to 50% decline in average CPMs across the Facebook Ads marketplace in the countries most affected by COVID-19 in the last couple of weeks.” https://www.mediapost.com/... @mdudas : Facebook ad pricing has fallen off a cliff https://www.mediapost.com/... @jason_kint : Yes, Facebook and Google have been quiet. It's important to remember FB freaked market out two months ago (pre-COVID) when it forecasted most revenue deceleration was still ahead due to privacy laws restricting its microtargeting (CCPA has only tightened). https://www.thestreet.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Gupta Media's all-time-low worldwide CPM of $1.95 puts a number on what analysts had only estimated days earlier: a projected $44B+ hit to Facebook and Google's 2020 global ad revenue as COVID-19 froze advertiser demand. Prices on Facebook and Instagram are down more than 50% in a month, and the US average has sat below $3 since March 22 — its lowest in two years.
The collapse lands hardest on publishers dependent on the platform ecosystem, but it cuts both ways: as later Gupta Media data showed, prices that bottomed near $1 last spring rebounded to almost $5 by November, suggesting this is a cyclical trough rather than a permanent repricing of Facebook inventory.
First-order effects
- Publishers lose half their effective monetization overnight as Facebook and Instagram CPMs fall more than 50% month-over-month, gutting revenue tied to social distribution.
- Advertisers still spending — internet gaming, e-commerce, and online learning companies seeing usage growth — can buy the same impressions at a steep discount, per CNBC's reporting on the slump.
Second-order effects
- Facebook's own disclosure of 'signs of stability' in early April after three weeks of sharp demand contraction signals the discount window for aggressive advertisers may be closing fast, pressuring them to lock in budgets now.
- Google faces the same retrenchment in the analyst loss estimates, and any advertiser shifting spend between the two platforms during the trough reshapes relative auction pricing across both marketplaces.
Third-order effects
- As Karbasfrooshan argues, the crisis accelerates the shift of TV, retail, and services budgets toward digital, leaving the duopoly positioned to benefit disproportionately once demand returns — a pattern the 2021 rebound to ~$5 CPMs bears out.
- The episode foreshadows the structural pressure that followed: by 2022, Meta was raising prices post-Apple ATT and pushing some advertisers toward Google, Amazon, and TikTok, showing how quickly a buyer's market flips back.
The trend: Digital ad pricing swings violently with macro shocks while the underlying share of advertising migrating to platforms like Facebook keeps rising, making each crash a transfer of inventory to the advertisers bold enough to buy it.