How to Lower CPM: 15 Ways to Reduce Ad Costs

Written by Tanuj Sharma • 4+ Year Experience Expert

You launch a campaign with a healthy budget, good targeting, and strong expectations.

A few days later, you check the results.

Your CPM is much higher than you expected.

The first reaction for many advertisers is to increase the budget or make random changes to the campaign.

In most cases, that’s the wrong approach.

A high CPM usually has a reason. It could be your audience, ad creative, bidding strategy, competition, or even the time of year you’re advertising. Simply spending more money rarely fixes the problem.

The good news is that lowering your CPM doesn’t require a huge budget or advanced marketing skills. Small improvements in the right areas can often reduce advertising costs while helping your campaign reach more of the right people.

In this guide, you’ll learn 15 practical ways to lower your CPM without sacrificing campaign performance. These are the same optimisation techniques advertisers use every day to improve efficiency across platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and other advertising networks.

Why Lowering CPM Matters

Every business wants to get the most value from its advertising budget.

A lower CPM means you can reach more people for the same amount of money.

For example, imagine you have a budget of $1,000.

With a $20 CPM, your budget buys approximately 50,000 impressions.

If you reduce your CPM to $10, that same budget can generate around 100,000 impressions.

You’ve doubled your reach without increasing your spend.

Of course, lowering CPM should never be the only goal.

If reducing CPM means showing your ads to people who have no interest in your product, your campaign may become less profitable.

The objective is to lower advertising costs while still reaching the right audience.

That’s exactly what the following strategies are designed to help you do.

1. Improve Your Ad Creative

Your ad creative is often the biggest factor affecting CPM.

Advertising platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok want to show ads that people actually engage with. If users stop scrolling, watch your video, click your ad, or interact with it, the platform sees your ad as more valuable.

When your ad gets better engagement, it often becomes cheaper to deliver over time.

On the other hand, if people ignore your ad, the platform may have to spend more to show it, which can increase your CPM.

How to Improve Your Ad Creative

You don’t need to redesign your entire campaign. Start by testing one element at a time so you know exactly what improves performance.

Step 1: Check Your Current Performance

Open your advertising dashboard and look at the ads with the highest CPM.

Compare them with your best-performing ads.

Pay attention to metrics like:

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CPM
Engagement (likes, comments, shares, or video views)
Conversion Rate (if applicable)

Ads with a high CPM and low engagement are usually the first ones you should improve.

Step 2: Change One Element at a Time

Avoid changing everything at once.

Instead, test a single element so you can clearly measure the impact.

Good elements to test include:

The headline
Primary ad text
Main image
Video thumbnail
Call-to-action button
Offer or discount
Product photo

For example, if you’re running a Facebook ad with a static image, create another version using a short video while keeping everything else the same.

This makes it much easier to identify what actually improved performance.

Step 3: Let the Test Run

Don’t judge the results after a few hours.

Allow each variation to collect enough impressions before deciding which version performs better.

Making changes too quickly can give misleading results because the platform is still gathering data.

Step 4: Keep the Winner

Once one version consistently delivers a lower CPM and stronger engagement, pause the weaker ad and continue testing new ideas.

Optimization isn’t a one-time task.

The best advertisers continuously test new headlines, images, videos, and offers instead of relying on the same creative for months.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers accidentally increase their CPM by making simple mistakes.

Some of the most common include:

Using low-quality or blurry images
Writing long blocks of text that are difficult to read
Showing the same creative for several weeks without updating it
Trying to sell immediately without explaining the value of the product
Changing multiple parts of the ad at the same time, making it impossible to know what improved performance

What You Can Expect

A stronger creative won’t guarantee a lower CPM overnight.

However, better engagement usually helps advertising platforms deliver your ads more efficiently. Over time, this can reduce your CPM while improving clicks, conversions, and overall campaign performance.

2. Expand Your Audience the Right Way

Many advertisers believe that narrowing their audience will always improve results.

It sounds logical. If you target fewer people, your ads should become more relevant.

In reality, that’s not always true.

When your audience becomes too small, you’re competing with other advertisers for the same group of people. More competition often means a higher CPM.

For example, imagine you’re running Facebook Ads for a fitness supplement.

Instead of targeting:

Men
Age 18–45
Interested in Fitness

you target:

Men
Age 25–28
Living in New York
Interested in CrossFit
Follow five specific fitness influencers
Income in the top 10%

Your audience becomes much smaller, and your CPM can increase because many advertisers are trying to reach those same users.

The goal isn’t to target everyone.

The goal is to give the advertising platform enough people to optimise your campaign efficiently.

How to Expand Your Audience

Broadening your audience doesn’t mean removing all targeting.

It means removing restrictions that don’t add much value.

Step 1: Check Your Audience Size

Open your campaign settings and review the estimated audience size.

If the platform labels your audience as Very Narrow or shows only a small number of potential users, your targeting may be too restrictive.

Compare it with similar campaigns that have performed well in the past.

Step 2: Remove One Restriction at a Time

Don’t remove every filter at once.

Instead, test one change and measure the results.

For example, you can:

Increase the age range.
Add nearby cities or regions.
Include related interests instead of one specific interest.
Target multiple job titles instead of just one.
Broaden your gender or language settings if they aren’t essential.

Testing one adjustment at a time makes it much easier to identify what actually lowers your CPM.

Step 3: Use Lookalike or Similar Audiences

If your advertising platform supports Lookalike Audiences (Meta) or Similar Segments (where available on other platforms), use them.

These audiences are built from people who already interact with your business, making them broader than manual targeting while still remaining highly relevant.

This often produces a better balance between audience quality and advertising costs.

Step 4: Compare Results After a Few Days

Once your updated audience has collected enough impressions, compare it with the original campaign.

Look at:

CPM
CTR
CPC
Conversions
ROAS (if applicable)

A lower CPM is helpful only if the quality of your traffic stays strong.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers accidentally make their audience too small.

Some common mistakes include:

Targeting too many interests at once.
Limiting campaigns to one small city without a business reason.
Using several audience filters together that overlap heavily.
Excluding large groups of potential customers unnecessarily.
Expanding the audience too much without checking traffic quality.

Finding the right balance is far more effective than choosing the smallest or largest audience possible.

What You Can Expect

A slightly broader audience gives advertising platforms more opportunities to deliver your ads at a lower cost.

You may not see an immediate drop in CPM, but over time, broader targeting often leads to more stable delivery, lower advertising costs, and better campaign scalability especially as your budget grows.

3. Refresh Your Ads Before People Stop Noticing Them

Even a great advertisement won’t perform well forever.

At first, your audience may interact with it. They click the link, watch the video, or engage with the post.

After seeing the same ad several times, people often stop paying attention.

This is called ad fatigue.

When engagement drops, advertising platforms have a harder time showing your ads to interested users. To keep delivering impressions, they may charge a higher CPM.

That’s why many successful advertisers refresh their creatives regularly instead of waiting for performance to decline.

How to Prevent Ad Fatigue

You don’t need to create a brand-new campaign every week.

Small updates are often enough to keep your ads fresh.

Step 1: Monitor Your Frequency

Open your campaign dashboard and check the Frequency metric.

Frequency tells you how many times, on average, each person has seen your ad.

If the number keeps increasing while your CTR falls and CPM rises, it’s a strong sign that your audience is getting tired of the same creative.

For awareness campaigns, a frequency above 3–4 is often worth reviewing, although the ideal number depends on your campaign and audience.

Step 2: Watch for Performance Drops

Look for these warning signs:

CPM increasing every week.
CTR gradually decreasing.
Engagement falling.
Conversions dropping while impressions continue to rise.

When several of these happen together, it’s usually time to refresh your ad.

Step 3: Update One or Two Elements

Instead of building a completely new campaign, try changing one or two parts of the ad.

For example:

Replace the main image.
Use a different video.
Rewrite the headline.
Change the opening sentence.
Update the call-to-action.
Highlight a different benefit.
Feature a customer testimonial instead of product features.

These small changes often make the ad feel new without losing the campaign’s existing data.

Step 4: Rotate Multiple Creatives

Rather than relying on one advertisement, prepare several versions before launching your campaign.

For example, create:

Three different headlines.
Two images.
Two videos.
Two call-to-actions.

Rotate them over time instead of showing the same creative for months.

This helps reduce ad fatigue and gives you more data about what your audience responds to best.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers unintentionally increase their CPM by refreshing ads the wrong way.

Avoid these mistakes:

Waiting until performance drops significantly before updating creatives.
Running the same ad for months without testing alternatives.
Replacing every element at once, making it impossible to know what improved results.
Ignoring frequency and only watching CPM.
Assuming one successful ad will continue performing forever.

What You Can Expect

Refreshing your creatives regularly helps maintain audience interest and improves engagement over time.

While CPM won’t always decrease immediately, fresh advertisements often perform better than old ones, leading to more stable delivery, stronger engagement, and lower advertising costs over the long run.

4. Test Different Ad Formats Instead of Using Just One

Many advertisers create one ad, see decent results, and keep running the same format for months.

That’s a missed opportunity.

Different people consume content in different ways. Some stop scrolling for videos, others prefer carousel ads, and some are more likely to click on a simple image with a clear message.

Advertising platforms also distribute different formats differently. If one format consistently gets better engagement, the platform can often deliver it more efficiently, which may help lower your CPM.

The only way to know what works for your audience is to test multiple formats.

How to Test Different Ad Formats

You don’t need a huge budget or dozens of creatives.

Start with two or three formats and compare the results.

Step 1: Choose One Message

Keep your offer the same.

For example: 20% Off Running Shoes

Don’t change the headline, audience, or landing page.

Only change the format.

This makes the comparison fair.

Step 2: Create Multiple Versions

Turn the same message into different ad formats.

For example:

A single image ad
A carousel showing different products
A 15-second video
A vertical Reel or Story
A collection ad (for eCommerce)

Since every ad promotes the same offer, you’ll quickly see which format your audience prefers.

Step 3: Run Them at the Same Time

Launch the ads together instead of one after another.

Running them during the same period keeps outside factors like holidays or competition from affecting your comparison.

Give each format enough impressions before deciding which one performs better.

Step 4: Compare the Results

After collecting enough data, review metrics such as:

CPM
CTR
CPC
Video watch time (for video ads)
Conversion rate
ROAS

Don’t choose the format with the lowest CPM alone.

Choose the one that delivers the best overall results.

For example, if a video has a slightly higher CPM but doubles your conversion rate, it’s probably the better choice.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid these mistakes when testing formats:

Changing the audience while changing the format.
Testing different offers at the same time.
Stopping a test after only a few hundred impressions.
Assuming videos always perform better than images.
Looking only at CPM and ignoring conversions.

What You Can Expect

Many advertisers discover that one format clearly outperforms the others.

For some businesses, short videos reduce CPM because they hold attention longer.

For others, a simple product image generates the best results.

Testing helps you find the format your audience responds to instead of relying on assumptions.

5. Let Your Campaign Leave the Learning Phase

One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is changing campaigns too often.

A campaign goes live in the morning.

By the afternoon, the CPM looks high.

The advertiser increases the budget.

The next day they change the audience.

A day later they replace the creative.

Every major change forces the advertising platform to start learning again.

Platforms like Meta Ads and Google Ads need time to understand who is most likely to engage with your advertisement.

During this learning period, performance can fluctuate. Higher CPM is completely normal because the platform is still collecting data.

Making constant edits prevents the algorithm from stabilising.

How to Handle the Learning Phase Properly

The best thing you can do is allow the platform to gather enough information before making major decisions.

Step 1: Check Campaign Status

Open your campaign dashboard.

If the platform shows Learning, Learning Limited, or a similar status, avoid making unnecessary changes unless there’s a serious issue.

Step 2: Avoid Daily Edits

During the learning phase, don’t keep changing:

Budget
Audience
Bidding strategy
Placements
Campaign objective

Frequent edits delay optimisation.

Step 3: Wait for Enough Data

Instead of reacting to one expensive day, review performance after your campaign has gathered a meaningful amount of impressions and clicks.

Advertising platforms make better decisions when they have more data.

Step 4: Make One Change at a Time

If optimisation is needed, change only one major setting.

For example:

Increase the budget.
Refresh the creative.
Expand the audience.

Then allow the campaign to stabilise again before making another adjustment.

This approach makes it much easier to understand what actually improved performance.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers accidentally increase CPM by:

Editing campaigns every day.
Increasing and decreasing budgets repeatedly.
Restarting campaigns too quickly.
Judging performance after only a few hours.
Launching a campaign and expecting perfect results immediately.

What You Can Expect

Once the learning phase ends, campaign performance usually becomes more stable.

CPM may decrease naturally as the platform gains a better understanding of who is most likely to engage with your ads.

Patience often produces better results than constant optimisation.

6. Improve Your Click-Through Rate (CTR)

A high CPM is often linked to a low CTR.

When people ignore your advertisements, advertising platforms assume your ad isn’t relevant to the audience. As engagement drops, the platform may have to work harder to find users willing to interact with your ad, which can increase your CPM.

That’s why improving your CTR doesn’t just bring more visitors to your website it can also help reduce your advertising costs.

How to Improve Your CTR

Step 1: Find Your Lowest-Performing Ads

Open your advertising dashboard and sort your ads by CTR.

Focus on the ads that have:

High CPM
Low CTR
Plenty of impressions

These are usually the biggest opportunities for improvement.

Step 2: Rewrite Your Headline

Your headline is the first thing most people notice.

Instead of writing something generic like:

“Premium Running Shoes Available”

Try something that immediately communicates value:

“Run Longer Without Foot Pain”

People click because they see a benefit, not because they see a product.

Step 3: Strengthen Your Call-to-Action

Many advertisements lose clicks because they don’t clearly tell people what to do next.

Use direct calls-to-action such as:

Shop Now
Get Your Free Quote
Download the Guide
Start Your Free Trial
Learn More

Keep the action simple and obvious.

Step 4: Match the Ad to the Audience

If you’re targeting beginners, don’t use technical language.

If you’re targeting business owners, speak about business problems instead of product features.

The closer your message matches your audience, the higher your engagement is likely to be.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid these common CTR killers:

Weak headlines
Generic stock photos
Too much text inside images
Misleading clickbait
Sending users to an unrelated landing page

What You Can Expect

As your CTR improves, advertising platforms receive stronger engagement signals.

Over time, this often leads to better delivery and a more competitive CPM while also bringing more qualified visitors to your website.

7. Optimize Your Ad Placements

Where your ad appears can have a big impact on your CPM.

Many advertisers manually choose placements because they think they know where their audience spends time.

Sometimes they’re right.

But in many cases, they’re unknowingly limiting the advertising platform from finding cheaper impressions.

For example, if you only run ads in the Facebook Feed, you’re competing with every other advertiser targeting that placement. If you also allow Stories, Reels, Audience Network, or Instagram placements, the platform has more opportunities to deliver your ads at a lower cost.

The goal isn’t to appear everywhere.

The goal is to find the placements that give you the best balance between cost and performance.

How to Optimize Your Placements

Step 1: Check Your Current Placements

Open your campaign dashboard and navigate to the placement report.

Look at each placement individually instead of reviewing your campaign as a whole.

Pay attention to:

CPM
CTR
CPC
Conversions
ROAS

You’ll often notice that one or two placements are responsible for most of your advertising costs.

Step 2: Compare Performance

Don’t assume the cheapest placement is the best.

For example:

Instagram Reels might have a higher CPM but generate twice as many sales.
Facebook Feed might have the lowest CPM but very few conversions.

Always compare cost with results.

The best placement is the one that helps you achieve your campaign goal not simply the one with the lowest CPM.

Step 3: Test Automatic Placements

If you’ve always selected placements manually, create another campaign using automatic placements.

Most advertising platforms use machine learning to decide where your ad is most likely to perform well.

After running both campaigns for several days, compare the results.

You may find that automatic placements deliver a lower CPM while maintaining similar or even better performance.

Step 4: Remove Consistently Weak Placements

After collecting enough data, identify placements that repeatedly show:

High CPM
Low CTR
Poor conversion rates

If a placement consistently underperforms, reduce its budget or remove it from future campaigns.

Focus more of your spending on the placements that actually generate results.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers increase their CPM without realising it.

Avoid these mistakes:

Running ads in only one placement without testing others.
Turning off automatic placements before collecting enough data.
Judging placements only by CPM.
Removing placements after just one or two days.
Ignoring conversion data while chasing lower advertising costs.

What You Can Expect

Placement optimisation usually doesn’t produce dramatic overnight changes.

However, after identifying where your audience responds best, many advertisers see lower CPMs, better engagement, and a stronger return from the same advertising budget.

8. Choose the Right Campaign Objective

Your campaign objective tells the advertising platform what success looks like.

This single setting influences how your ads are delivered and who is most likely to see them.

Choosing the wrong objective can increase your CPM because the platform starts optimising for the wrong outcome.

Imagine your goal is simply to make people aware of your new clothing brand.

If you choose a Sales objective instead of Brand Awareness, the platform will search for people who are likely to purchase rather than people who are most likely to see your ad.

That usually creates more competition and can increase your advertising costs.

The same happens in reverse.

Running an awareness campaign when your goal is generating leads often produces plenty of impressions but very few meaningful results.

How to Choose the Right Objective

Step 1: Define Your Goal Before Creating the Campaign

Before you click Create Campaign, ask yourself one question:

What do I actually want people to do?

Your answer determines the objective.

For example:

Increase brand awareness → Awareness
Drive visitors to a website → Traffic
Generate enquiries → Leads
Sell products → Sales
Get app installs → App Promotion

Choosing the correct objective gives the platform a much better starting point.

Step 2: Don't Optimise for Everything

A campaign should have one primary goal.

Trying to increase awareness, traffic, leads, and sales all at the same time usually makes optimisation more difficult.

Keep each campaign focused on a single objective.

Step 3: Review Results Regularly

After your campaign has collected enough data, compare your objective with the actual results.

Ask yourself:

Am I reaching the right audience?
Are people taking the action I wanted?
Is the CPM reasonable for this campaign goal?

If the answer is no, your objective may need to change.

Step 4: Create Separate Campaigns for Different Goals

If you have multiple objectives, don’t force them into one campaign.

Instead, create separate campaigns.

For example:

One campaign for brand awareness.
Another for website traffic.
Another for remarketing and sales.

This gives the advertising platform much clearer instructions and often leads to better optimisation.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid these common mistakes:

Choosing Sales when your brand is completely new.
Running Awareness campaigns while expecting immediate purchases.
Changing campaign objectives every few days.
Measuring success using the wrong metric.

What You Can Expect

A well-matched campaign objective helps the advertising platform find the right audience more efficiently.

Over time, this often improves delivery, increases engagement, and can reduce CPM because your ads are being shown to people who are more likely to respond.

9. Exclude Low-Quality Audiences and Use Retargeting

One mistake many advertisers make is showing the same ad to everyone.

Not every person who sees your ad is likely to become a customer.

Some users have already bought from you.

Some visited your website months ago and lost interest.

Others simply aren’t the right audience.

Paying to show ads to these people increases your costs without improving your results.

Instead of trying to reach everyone, focus your budget on people who are most likely to take action.

How to Exclude the Right Audiences

Step 1: Review Your Audience Reports

Open your advertising platform and check which audience segments are performing poorly.

Look for audiences with:

High CPM
Low CTR
Very few conversions
High cost per conversion

These groups are usually the first candidates for optimisation.

Step 2: Exclude Existing Customers

If your goal is to acquire new customers, there’s usually no reason to keep showing the same acquisition ad to people who have already purchased.

Most advertising platforms allow you to upload a customer list or create an audience from past purchasers.

Exclude these users from your prospecting campaigns.

This keeps your budget focused on finding new customers instead of repeatedly paying to reach existing ones.

Step 3: Build a Retargeting Audience

People who have already interacted with your business are often much easier to convert than someone seeing your brand for the first time.

Create audiences based on users who have:

Visited your website
Added products to their cart
Watched your videos
Engaged with your social media posts
Started but didn’t complete a purchase

Then create separate campaigns specifically for these users.

Because they’re already familiar with your business, retargeting campaigns often achieve better engagement and more efficient advertising costs.

Step 4: Keep Prospecting and Retargeting Separate

Don’t combine cold audiences and warm audiences in one campaign.

Create separate campaigns for each stage of the customer journey.

For example:

Campaign 1 → New customers
Campaign 2 → Website visitors
Campaign 3 → Abandoned carts
Campaign 4 → Previous customers

This gives you much clearer performance data and makes optimisation much easier.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid these common mistakes:

Showing acquisition ads to existing customers.
Using one audience for every campaign.
Never excluding inactive users.
Running retargeting campaigns without setting a frequency limit.
Spending more on retargeting than prospecting.

What You Can Expect

Removing low-value audiences helps your budget go further.

Instead of paying for impressions that are unlikely to generate results, your ads reach people with a higher chance of engaging or converting, making your campaigns more efficient over time.

10. Test, Measure, and Optimize Continuously

There isn’t a single setting that permanently lowers your CPM.

Digital advertising changes every day.

Competitors launch new campaigns.

Audience behaviour changes.

Platforms update their algorithms.

An ad that performs well today may struggle a month from now.

The advertisers with the lowest CPM aren’t the ones who guessed correctly the first time.

They’re the ones who keep testing, measuring, and improving their campaigns.

How to Build an Optimization Routine

Step 1: Set a Weekly Review Schedule

Choose one day each week to review your campaigns.

Avoid checking performance every hour.

Weekly reviews make it easier to identify real trends instead of reacting to normal daily fluctuations.

Step 2: Track the Right Metrics

Don’t focus only on CPM.

Review:

CPM
CTR
CPC
Conversion Rate
CPA
ROAS

Looking at these metrics together gives you a much better understanding of campaign performance.

Step 3: Test One Change at a Time

When optimising a campaign, change only one major element.

For example:

Test a new headline.
Expand the audience.
Change the placement.
Replace the creative.

If you change everything at once, you won’t know what actually improved the results.

Step 4: Record Your Results

Keep a simple spreadsheet or document with every test you run.

Write down:

What you changed.
When you changed it.
The CPM before the change.
The CPM after the change.
Other important metrics.

After a few months, you’ll have valuable data showing what consistently works for your business.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Many advertisers make optimisation harder than it needs to be.

Avoid these mistakes:

Copying someone else’s strategy without testing it.
Chasing a low CPM while ignoring profitability.
Making several changes at the same time.
Stopping tests before enough data has been collected.
Assuming one successful campaign will work forever.

What You Can Expect

Continuous optimisation won’t always produce dramatic improvements overnight.

However, small changes made consistently often lead to significant long-term gains.

A campaign that becomes just 5–10% more efficient each month can save a substantial amount of advertising budget over the course of a year while delivering stronger overall results.

Final Thoughts

Lowering your CPM isn’t about finding a secret trick or changing one campaign setting.

It’s the result of making dozens of small improvements that work together.

Better creatives attract more attention.

Broader but relevant audiences create more opportunities.

Fresh ads prevent audience fatigue.

The right placements, campaign objectives, and audience strategy help advertising platforms deliver your ads more efficiently.

Most importantly, don’t judge success by CPM alone.

A campaign with a slightly higher CPM that brings in qualified leads or profitable sales is far more valuable than one with the lowest CPM but poor business results.

Keep testing, measure your performance regularly, and make decisions based on data instead of assumptions. Over time, those small improvements can reduce your advertising costs while helping every dollar of your budget work harder.

If you want to measure your campaigns quickly, use our free CPM Calculator to calculate your Cost Per Mille in seconds and track how your optimisation efforts are improving campaign performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to lower CPM?

There isn’t a fixed timeline because every campaign is different. Small improvements, such as changing your ad creative or expanding your audience, can sometimes reduce CPM within a few days. Larger optimizations, especially on new campaigns, may take one to two weeks as the advertising platform collects enough data and completes its learning phase.

Can increasing my budget lower CPM?

Sometimes, but not always. A larger budget doesn’t automatically reduce CPM. If your targeting, creative, or campaign objective is poor, increasing your budget may simply result in spending more money. It’s usually better to optimize your campaign first and then increase the budget once it’s performing well.

Does audience size affect CPM?

Yes. Very small audiences often have higher CPMs because more advertisers compete for the same group of people. Expanding your audience slightly while keeping it relevant can give the advertising platform more opportunities to find lower-cost impressions.

Why is my CPM low but I'm not getting sales?

A low CPM only means your ads are inexpensive to show. It doesn’t guarantee that you’re reaching the right audience or generating conversions. If people see your ads but don’t click or buy, review your targeting, ad creative, landing page, and offer instead of focusing only on CPM.

Should I focus only on lowering CPM?

No. Lowering CPM is helpful, but it shouldn’t be your only goal. A campaign with a slightly higher CPM can still be more profitable if it generates qualified leads, sales, or a stronger return on ad spend. Always evaluate CPM alongside metrics like CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS to get a complete picture of campaign performance.