It's time to stop using CPMs (and CTRs) to gauge anything on Meta

If you hear this excuse – "CPMs are high [and therefore ads were more expensive today" – then stop listening.

Back in the mid-2010s, I remember hearing someone say in a meeting “oh the CPMs were high yesterday.” It was a marketer telling a non-marketer why CPAs had gone up.

Bullshit, was my gut response, that sounds like an excuse.

If you’ve ever spent considerable time in Ads Manager, you’ll know how frustratingly unreliable everything seems. High CPMs in one c…