Worked scenario
The Q4 holiday surge
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated October 2026
The short answer
Every Q4, retail budgets pour into the same auctions you bid year-round. On Gupta Media's public tracker table, Meta's average CPM (Facebook and Instagram combined) went from $8.06 in June 2025 to $10.02 in December 2025, and the tracker names December as Meta's most expensive month. No platform publishes an official seasonal premium; a dated tracker is the closest thing to one.
What is sourced and what is not
Sourced: the mechanism and one tracker's monthly record. Meta prices by auction, so more bidders means higher clearing prices; Gupta Media's table shows what that did to its observed averages month by month. Not sourced anywhere: a single official Q4 uplift percentage that applies to your account. Your own month-on-month history is the number that does.
Same budget, four months of 2025
Take a $2,000 monthly budget and price it at each month's tracker average. The CPMs are Gupta Media's published monthly figures; the impression counts are our arithmetic on them.
| Month (Meta average) | CPM | $2,000 buys | Change vs June |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 2025 | $8.06 | 248,139 | 0 |
| October 2025 | $6.95 | 287,770 | +39,631 |
| November 2025 | $9.72 | 205,761 | -42,378 |
| December 2025 | $10.02 | 199,601 | -48,538 |
Source: Gupta Media, Social Media Ads Cost (public monthly table), retrieved October 2026. Averages across the agency's observed impressions, not Meta's prices.
Two things the table shows that a flat "Q4 is expensive" rule misses. October 2025 was the cheapest month of that year on the tracker, so the surge is concentrated in November and December rather than spread across the quarter. And the surge reverses: the same table runs from $10.83 in December 2024 to $8.27 in January 2025.
Should a non-retail advertiser pause?
- Lean out of late Q4 if your buyers are not seasonal: on this record, both early autumn and January bought the same audience for less than December did.
- Stay in if Q4 is your demand season too; paying the surge beats missing your own market. Judge with cost per result, not CPM (why).
- Either way, compare your own account's month-on-month CPM before believing any generic percentage, including one tracker's averages.
Seasonality is one of the causes at why is my CPM so high. Year-scale movement: CPM trends 2026. Run your own months in the calculator, and the Meta context lives at Facebook CPM.