Worked scenario
The Q4 holiday surge
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated July 2026
The short answer
Every Q4, retail budgets pour into the same auctions you bid year-round, and identical impressions reprice upward into Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then crash in January. No platform publishes an official seasonal premium, so this page works the arithmetic at stated multiples instead of inventing a percentage.
What is sourced and what is not
Sourced: the mechanism. Meta prices by auction, so more bidders means higher clearing prices; Gupta Media's tracker charts the monthly Meta CPM curve through the year and is the place to read the current season's actual shape. Not sourced anywhere: a single official Q4 uplift percentage. Any site quoting one without a dated tracker behind it is decorating.
Same campaign, two dates: the arithmetic
Take a $2,000monthly budget at Meta's sourced $13.48 global average as the calm-season baseline. The table prices the identical budget at stated November multiples; the multiples are arithmetic scenarios, not sourced deltas, and are labeled as such.
| Scenario | CPM | $2,000 buys | Impressions lost vs June |
|---|---|---|---|
| June baseline (sourced average) | $13.48 | 148,368 | 0 |
| November at 1.25x (stated multiple) | $16.85 | 118,694 | 29,674 |
| November at 1.5x (stated multiple) | $20.22 | 98,912 | 49,456 |
| November at 2x (stated multiple) | $26.96 | 74,184 | 74,184 |
The point survives any particular multiple: a fixed budget buys meaningfully less reach in Q4, and the loss compounds if your conversion season is also your expensive season.
Should a non-retail advertiser pause?
- Lean outif your buyers are not seasonal: January typically buys the same audience at the year's thinnest auction pressure.
- 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 a multiple you liked in the table above.
Seasonality is cause number four of nine at why is my CPM so high. Year-scale movement: CPM trends 2026. Run your own multiples in the calculator, and the Meta context lives at Facebook CPM.