May 12, 2026
High CPC, low CTR, reducing ER – it’s a social media marketer’s nightmare. How do you address the balance and spot the early signs for trouble? We’ve got some tips.
B2B or B2C, LinkedIn or Meta, the platform top-level metrics give you an indication of how your content is being perceived in feed, as well as how frequently said content is being seen.
The combination and the data that’s presented will never give you a complete picture – but you can see the signs of trouble.
Here are some things to dig into to get a better understanding of campaign performance (not an exhaustive list – and def not the only 5 things you need to pay attention to!)
“Impression frequency is so high?!”
Frequency tells you how often your social media audience is seeing content. For example, your campaign may have reached 10,000 people – the total impressions are 30,000 – so the impression frequency is 3, as the core group of 10,000 has seen an ad roughly 3 times.
In isolation, what does this number mean?
Not a lot!
You can have a rule of thumb, that a user seeing an ad more than once a week is excessive. Maybe even 1 every 2 weeks is fine. Higher than this and you’re likely running into one of the following issues (if not a few in combination):
Higher CPM – your ad spend is being wasted on the same audience members seeing the ad too many times
Lower CTR/ER – your audience is burnt out by your content, or it’s not even engaging in the first place. Depending on objective, restricted clicks mean the algorithms will not push the ads far and wide. It’s time to refresh that creative!
Watch the trends of both of the above.
“The CPM is so expensive!”
This is the cost per 1,000 impressions and it’s an indicator of how costly it is to reach the audience you’re going for.
High CPM could be reflective of a couple of things:
- Highly competitive audience to reach – lots of businesses in your space are also bidding for room
- Audience is valuable – mainly B2B orientated; if you’re aiming for key buyers, that comes at a cost
- Very niche audience that isn’t online frequently
- Feed-only placements. Avoiding 3rd party placements or audience network options
- Too high a budget. The campaign is forced to spend against a small audience.
- Low interaction levels
- Seasons/events. Highly competitive times of year for your industry (see point 1).
You can’t control all of these at once and certainly, if you know your audience is highly valued or competitive to reach, higher CPMs can be considered normal. But getting it down, you’ll need high performing creatives at the very least…
“The engagement rate isn’t taking off”
While we consider engagement rate to be something of a vanity metric, it is still an indicator of how your content stands out in feed.
If the ER is below your industry benchmark, it’s likely because it’s just not jumping out. That doesn’t mean the branding is a problem, it could be the text – the provocative wording just isn’t connecting with your audience.
Consider the following:
- Static imagery typically has lower engagement levels. Less info to digest, quicker action to click a or just a scroll-on.
- Animation/short videos – unless they start with people talking about problems solving, it’s hard to get these off the ground.
- Carousels – story tell factor. Make the first slide short and punchy, easy to read and provocative enough that a click is imperative.
- Mobile first – can your ad be seen properly on a small screen?
- See above for impression frequency – have you oversaturated the audience? Time for newer visuals or a new message altogether.
“CTR is tanking!”
Your clicks through to your social profile and or landing page have flattened or dipped. The above issues in engagement rate and impression frequency are transferable, but CTR reflects a click-through so is more likely to perform relative to how enticing your message is.
If every social ad needs a CTA link, then you need to give everyone a reason to give up their time.
We’d always suggest going back to your objective – is it even website visits? If not, CTR isn’t the main metric to worry about, but if it is, consider creatives or the targeting as the primary issue.
This doesn’t mean you near to tear everything up and start again, but it is definitely worth looking into your audience profiling and the creative you have put in front of them.
“Dwell time seems low”
Probably the biggest red flag there is. Below 2.25 seconds and we’d say you’re not being noticed.
This is almost certainly a creative issue, and if this doesn’t get rectified then none of the other four points matter.
Dwell time is often ignored or not considered an issue, but it is one of the biggest indicator of relevancy and can make or break a campaign. If you’re not hooking people in early on, then it isn’t social first…
Are you having issues with any of these? Let us know – we can help.