Facebook Advertising Trends: CPCs Increased 80% During the Holidays

Online retail sales reached a new $37.2 billion record high this holiday shopping season. That’s up a sizable 15% from 2010.

With social networks cited by consumers as their leading online shopping portal (topping both retail and comparison sites), it’s no surprise that many advertisers turned to Facebook this year to place ads and take advantage of the social network’s 800 million active users, engagement and targeting parameters.

The result of this increased demand for Facebook ads was higher cost per clicks (CPCs). It is a trend we saw over the course of November and December, with over 80% higher CPCs during peak holiday shopping season (just featured on ReadWriteWeb):