State of Digital Advertising Report

Advertising CPM (Cost-per-Mille) Trends

What does the CPM trend reveal?

CPM, or cost per mille, is an advertising metric that measures the average cost of showing an ad one thousand times. CPM, similar to the cost of goods, is determined by supply and demand. In the digital advertising world, publishers serve as the suppliers; the websites or mobile apps that host and deliver ads to advertisers’ target audiences.

The selling and buying of digital ads on the web is typically conducted in an auction format that can be handled programmatically by two types of platforms: the supply-side platform (SSP), representing the publishers, and the demand-side platform (DSP), representing the advertisers. Since the amount of advertising space offered by the publishers doesn't typically fluctuate, changes in CPM are mostly driven by advertisers’ demand for ads.

Note: CPM varies by industries, geographies, and channels. CPM of specific campaigns may experience different patterns.

Display Retargeting CPM Trend

Display retargeting CPMs surged 12% year-over-year in April and May, following a 19% jump in Q1. While the growth is still strong in Q2, this slowdown reflects advertisers adjusting to changing economic conditions.

Display Prospecting CPM Trend

Display prospecting CPMs fell 48% year-over-year in April and May. While the decline widened in Q2, monthly trends suggest pricing has likely reached a bottom.

Account Based Marketing CPM Trend

Account-based marketing, also known as ABM, is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy that targets a specific group of high-value accounts through personalized advertising and sales outreach.

ABM advertising CPMs were 2% lower in April and May compared with the same period last year, signaling stable demand for ads with precise audience targeting.

The Economic Outlook - Getting Worse Before Getting Better?

Inflation Rate

The U.S. inflation rate accelerated to 3.8% in April 2026, its highest level since May 2023, fueled by a sharp rise in energy costs tied to the conflict in Iran.

* The U.S. government did not publish the October 2025 inflation rate data due to the shutdown.

Consumer Sentiment

The Consumer Sentiment Index plunged to a record low of 44.8 in May 2026 as energy costs and overall inflation accelerated.

Consumer Spending

U.S. consumer spending growth rose to 4.8% in April 2026, though part of the increase was driven by higher energy costs, according to the Bank of America Consumer Checkpoint report. The persistent K-shaped spending pattern continues, with higher-income households maintaining strong spending while middle- and lower-income consumers pull back on discretionary purchases.

* The unusual fluctuation in February was due to the extra day in February 2024, a leap year.

2026 - the Year of the Perfect Storm

April and May data highlight the economic fallout from the Iran conflict, with CPM trends reflecting growing advertiser caution. At the same time, 2026 has become the “year of the perfect storm,” where macroeconomic instability collides with an AI-driven shift in consumer behavior.

With more than 60% of Google searches now ending without a click to an external website, and consumers increasingly turning to AI platforms for information and recommendations, people are no longer browsing the web the way they once did.

For both B2B and B2C brands, succeeding in this environment requires an evolved digital marketing strategy built to adapt to rapid change. The old playbook no longer fits the realities of the AI era; marketers need a new one.

A New Playbook for the AI Era

The traditional digital marketing playbook is built around a linear process for guiding customers through the marketing funnel:

• Awareness & Traffic Generation: Marketing begins by driving attention and traffic through brand awareness campaigns, search-optimized content, and social distribution designed to bring audiences directly to a company’s website.
• Conversion & Consideration: Once prospects arrive, the focus shifts to communicating value, building trust, and guiding them toward a conversion, whether that’s a purchase, subscription, demo request, or lead form completion.
• Re-engagement & Retargeting: If visitors leave without converting, retargeting campaigns across web, social, and mobile channels work to re-engage them and encourage a return visit, often supported by tailored messaging or offers.

While this playbook operated effectively for years, the rise of zero-click searches and AI answer engines has fundamentally changed how consumers discover information. As a result, web traffic has declined significantly, limiting brands’ ability to attract top-of-funnel audiences through organic search while also reducing the reach and effectiveness of brand awareness campaigns that rely on publisher website traffic. The result is a growing challenge for marketers: fewer opportunities to engage consumers through the channels and tactics that once powered the top of the funnel.

Your Website is No Longer the Starting Point of the Customer Journey

Traditionally, a brand's website served as the hub of the customer journey. It educated prospects, showcased products and services, captured leads, and ultimately drove conversions. For years, digital marketing strategies were designed around a single objective: getting people to visit your website.

Today, that model is changing. As zero-click search, AI answer engines, social platforms, online communities, and connected media continue to reshape consumer behavior, discovery increasingly happens away from a brand's owned properties. Prospects are forming opinions, evaluating solutions, and making decisions before ever visiting a website, if they visit one at all. Rather than serving as the center of the entire customer journey, the website is now one part of a much broader digital ecosystem.

In the AI era, successful marketing strategies must coordinate both on-site and off-site engagement. While conversions often still happen on owned properties, awareness and influence are increasingly built across AI platforms, social networks, publisher sites, industry communities, connected TV, digital out-of-home, and other digital touchpoints. The rapid expansion of connected channels and screen types creates new opportunities to reach audiences; it also increases the complexity of targeting, measurement, and attribution. As a result, the traditional website-centric playbook is becoming less effective.

The new digital marketing playbook represents a strategic shift from a site-centric inbound approach, which focuses on driving traffic to a brand's website, to an unbound strategy, which emphasizes delivering information about a brand, and its products and services directly to potential customers across all digital channels and screen types. This is already mirrored in the evolution of Hubspot’s flagship user conference, which recently rebranded from INBOUND to UNBOUND.

Retargeting for Multidirectional Conversion Paths

While consumer behavior and the digital landscape continue to evolve, the fundamental marketing objective remains the same: building awareness, driving consideration, and converting prospects into customers. For more than a decade, retargeting has been a cornerstone lower-funnel tactic, helping brands re-engage website visitors and drive conversions. But as discovery and engagement increasingly occur across a distributed ecosystem rather than a single brand website, retargeting must evolve alongside it.

By connecting first-party data, such as website interactions and CRM records, with identity signals like advertising IDs, device IDs, and IP addresses, marketers can build a more complete view of their audiences across channels and screens. This allows brands to recognize and engage consumers as they move between digital environments, creating opportunities for retargeting that extend far beyond a website visit.

Consider a major industry conference. A brand may have a physical presence on the show floor while simultaneously running campaigns across publisher sites, social media, Connected TV (CTV), and Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH). Rather than treating each channel as a separate effort, marketers can orchestrate connected experiences across them. Someone who engages with a social ad may later see a CTV ad at home reminding them about the brand’s presence at the conference. Conference attendees exposed to a DOOH placement near the venue may subsequently receive a display ad on their personal devices directing them to a landing page. Each interaction builds on the last, regardless of where it occurred.

In this environment, retargeting is no longer simply a tactic for bringing website visitors back to convert. It has evolved into a full-funnel strategy that helps brands maintain relevance across the many touchpoints that shape modern buying decisions. As customer journeys become increasingly multidirectional, retargeting becomes the connective tissue that links awareness, consideration, and conversion across channels, screens, and moments of engagement.