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Industry Insights  ·  2026-08-25  ·  9 MIN READ

Q2 2026 Ad Benchmarks: Meta CPMs +10%, Microsoft CPCs +19%, Google Flat

Every quarter a handful of agencies publish aggregate performance data, and every quarter most advertisers skim the headline and move on. That is a mistake this time. Q2 2026 was the quarter the cost curves stopped moving together. Google search CPCs rose 1%. Microsoft's rose 19%. Meta CPMs posted their sharpest increase since Q1 2022 while YouTube CPMs actually fell. If you are still planning budget on a blended "digital costs go up 10% a year" assumption, your Q4 numbers are going to miss.

The figures below come from Tinuiti's Q2 2026 Digital Ads Benchmark Report, which aggregates anonymised performance data from more than $4 billion in annual managed ad spend. It is the largest consistently published dataset in the industry, and unlike vendor-published "benchmarks," it is not selling you the channel it is measuring. All figures are year over year unless noted.

Paid search: Google held the line, Microsoft didn't

The single most useful number in the report: Google Search advertisers spent nearly 14% more in Q2 and paid only 1% more per click. Clicks grew 13%. That is close to pure volume growth — advertisers bought more traffic rather than the same traffic at a higher price.

That last line is the one to sit with. Microsoft has spent years being sold as the cheaper alternative to Google, and for a long time that was true. In Q2 2026 Microsoft CPCs rose nineteen times faster than Google's. The arbitrage is closing. If your Microsoft budget exists purely because the CPCs were lower, re-run that comparison before you renew it — the assumption is now several quarters out of date.

One structural factor worth knowing: Tinuiti attributes part of the easing pressure in Shopping auctions to Amazon's continued absence from most U.S. Shopping listings. Competitors are picking up click growth that would otherwise have been contested. That is a temporary gift, not a permanent condition, and it is not something you control.

Performance Max: advertisers are pulling budget back

Among advertisers running both Shopping and Performance Max, PMax accounted for 60% of combined spend in Q2, down from 67% in Q1. It generated 60% of sales at a ROAS similar to standard Shopping.

Read that carefully, because it is the opposite of the story Google tells. PMax is not outperforming standard Shopping — it is matching it. And advertisers responded to parity by moving seven points of budget back into the campaign type they can actually see inside. When two campaign types return the same ROAS, the one with query-level visibility and negative keyword control is worth more, because it is the one you can improve.

Paid social: Meta's biggest CPM jump since 2022

Meta CPMs rose 10% year over year — the largest increase since Q1 2022. Spend was up 11%; impressions grew just 2%. Advertisers paid substantially more to reach approximately the same number of people.

The Facebook and Instagram split matters more than the blended Meta number. Facebook delivered fewer impressions at a materially higher price. Instagram delivered 17% more impressions at flat CPMs, largely because Reels inventory expanded fast enough to absorb the demand. If your Meta budget is weighted toward Facebook placements and your efficiency slipped this quarter, that is the mechanism — and it is a placement decision, not a creative one.

Reddit: the fastest growth at the steepest price

Reddit posted the fastest spending growth of any social platform in the report at +33%. It also posted an 83% CPM increase, following a 71% rise in Q1.

Two consecutive quarters of CPM inflation above 70% is what a land grab looks like from the inside. Early Reddit advertisers found genuinely underpriced attention. That window is closing quickly, and anyone building a 2027 plan on Reddit's 2025 economics should model the cost base as if it doubles again.

Retail media: Amazon DSP had its best quarter since 2021

Commerce media was the growth story of the quarter, and the DSP line is the headline.

Amazon DSP growing 67% while CPMs rose only 4% means the inventory supply expanded roughly in line with demand — the healthiest possible version of a channel scaling. Compare that with Reddit, where 33% spend growth came with an 83% CPM increase. Same direction of travel, completely different economics underneath.

Walmart deserves more attention than it gets. Spend and clicks both up more than 50% with CPCs slightly down is the profile of a marketplace where advertiser demand has not yet caught up with available inventory. That is where efficiency lives, and it is usually temporary.

Video and display: YouTube got cheaper, GDN got expensive

GDN is the outlier nobody is discussing: fewer impressions delivered, at meaningfully higher cost. A 16% CPM increase against a 9% impression decline is not a channel scaling — it is a channel contracting while getting more expensive. If GDN is a standing line in your media plan rather than a deliberate retargeting choice, Q2 is the quarter to justify it.

One detail from the YouTube data worth flagging to anyone still treating Shorts as a mobile format: 60% of Shorts ad spend was delivered on TV screens. Vertical video is being watched on televisions. That has real implications for creative — text sized for a phone held at arm's length does not read from a sofa.

What this means for Q4 planning

Five things we would change in a plan built before this data landed:

The broader point: "digital advertising costs" is no longer a single number that moves in one direction. In one quarter, Google Shopping CPCs fell 1% while Reddit CPMs rose 83%. Any budget built on a blended inflation assumption is quietly mispricing every channel inside it.

If you want a second opinion on where your own numbers sit against these benchmarks, that is what our free 30-minute audit is for — no pitch, no obligation, delivered within one business day.

Sources

Industry figures in this article are drawn from the organisations below. Campaign-level benchmarks reflect North American Media Experts client data.

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