Figure 1 — Meta US/Canada
Running to Stand Still
Meta's nominal US/Canada Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) grew 6.5x from 2015 to 2023. But once you adjust for attention decay, audience composition shift, bot fraud, and scam-ad share, the effective inventory barely moved. The widening gap between the two lines is the cost of degradation — Meta running harder every year to stand still.
The blue gap is the degradation tax — ~$234per US user each year that advertisers pay Meta in nominal ARPU growth but don’t receive in real attention, legitimate audience, or real humans.
Nominal ARPU growth
6.5x
2015-2025
Effective ARPU growth
~1.7x
2015-2025
Quality multiplier
-74%
0.52 → 0.14
Real price per attention
~13x
2015-2025
Nominal ARPU
The number Meta actually reports in its 10-K filings. Average Revenue Per User in the US/Canada region — the literal price advertisers paid Meta per US user in a given year. $41.65 in 2015 → $226.93 in 2023.
Effective ARPU
Nominal ARPU multiplied by the quality multiplier — what advertisers actually got per dollar spent, adjusted for attention decay (Nelson-Field: 2s active attention on Facebook), audience shift (Pew: upper-income daily use 78% → 45%), bot fraud (fraud0: ~21%), and scam-ad share (Reuters: ~10% of 2024 revenue). The gap between the two lines is the degradation tax.
Primary Sources