• by Colin Kirkland , October 25, 2023

A new study conducted by Gupta Media, which breaks down the seasonal and year-over-year trends in social media ad costs, shows X’s continued plunge in ad rates, TikTok’s ongoing CPM rise compared to that of Meta-owned platforms, a general slowdown across all apps, and more.

Based on CPM rates collected across eight social-media platforms and tens of billions of advertising impressions, Gupta’s findings show X's advertising rates plunging 78% since the platform was purchased by Elon Musk, dropping as low as $0.32 CPM in August 2023, which marks a three-year-low.

Compared to every leading social-media platform, X saw the largest year-over-year decrease in CPM rates by far.

However, the company did see an increase in CPM rates the week after Meta launched its competing service Threads -- rising 72% before further decline. This was likely due to Meta's announcement that Threads would not be ad-supported in the near future, and would not be integrated into Meta's Business Suite this year.

In direct contrast to X, TikTok is currently experiencing the fastest year-over-year growth in ad rates -- seeing a 12.28% increase in CPM in 2023 compared to 2022, and a 90% increase in CPMs since 2021.

The company’s advertisements remain cheaper than ads on Facebook and Instagram, but Gupta’s findings show TikTok's rates growing at almost double the rate of Meta, which is up just 7.4% in 2023 compared to 2022.

In its report, Gupta Media predicted that TikTok's recent investment in TikTok Shop, its e-commerce offering, will catapult the platform’s CPM rate even more during the upcoming 2023 holiday season.

“While TikTok CPMs have consistently been on the rise, the platform is still in its infancy relative to its competitors. Year-to-date, TikTok ads are 53% more efficient than Meta ads,” the report states. “But will that number hold up during the hyper-competitive Q4 holiday season?"

We believe it will. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, 2022, TikTok ads were 49% cheaper, on average, than Meta ads.”

Furthermore, the report shows that competition for consumer attention in November and December, specifically around major shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is driving seasonal CPM increases by as much as 66% during the holiday shopping season.

Still, overall growth across social media platforms has slowed in 2023.

Looking at prior-12-month growth as of August 31, 2023, Gupta says YouTube and TikTok are showing growth at less than half the rate of the same period measured one year earlier. TikTok was up 66% in August 2022 compared to September 2021, but was up just 14% for September 2022-August 2023.

Similarly, YouTube was up 45% for September 2021-August 2022 compared to 13% the next year. Meta also was up 3.6% compared to 1.9% in the same prior period.