OREANDA-NEWS. December 16, 2015. For years in the United States, Black Friday -- the day after American Thanksgiving -- has marked the official start of deep discounts and the Christmas shopping period. Five years ago, it didn’t exist in the United Kingdom, but this year, Visa Europe predicted expected “as much as £2B spent in shops and online in the space of 24 hours”, an increase of 14% from last year. PwC predicted that 58% of all stores in the UK offered Black Friday discounts, with the average discount of 36%.

However for advertisers looking to reach their audiences and market their products, Christmas season shopping results in increased media costs as more advertisers bid on a relatively fixed amount of inventory which is based on Facebook usage. This year, we examined U.K. Facebook media costs of an index of Social.com customers rising a full 80%, from \\$2.64 to £4.74 CPM, between the start of November and Cyber Monday. This sharp increase approaches the 98% increase seen in the United States.

Advertisers are buying these ads because they work, and consumers are engaging. The average click through rate (CTR) was 1.23% for the month, as advertisers on Facebook had success targeting the right audiences using Facebook. Overall, for the month of November, we saw an overall CPM of Facebook advertisers targeting U.K. consumers of £3.48.

As the Christmas season gets into full swing, Facebook has historically had a large jump in advertising revenue. Last year, Facebook’s advertising revenue in Europe jumped from \\$844 million in Q3 to \\$1.03 billion in Q4, an increase of 22%. This is common for digital advertising; in 2013, Facebook advertising rose 35% between Q3 and Q4. Salesforce looks forward to helping you with your Christmas campaigns!

To see more benchmark data about Facebook advertising, check out our Q2 2015 Advertising Index report.