Enter spend and impressions to get cost per thousand, or set a target CPM to find the budget.
CPM prices attention in blocks of a thousand. It is the standard unit for display, video and social buying, because that inventory is sold on reach rather than response.
Two things trip people up. An impression is a served ad, not a seen ad – viewability is measured separately and typically lands between 50 and 70 percent, which means your effective cost per viewed impression is often double the CPM you paid. And a low CPM is not automatically good: cheap inventory is cheap because demand for it is low. A $2 CPM that reaches nobody relevant costs more per outcome than a $30 CPM that does.
CPM is what you agreed to pay per thousand impressions. eCPM is what a thousand impressions earned or cost after the fact, used to compare buys priced on different models – a CPC campaign has an eCPM even though nobody bid on impressions. vCPM charges only for impressions that met a viewability standard, usually 50 percent of pixels in view for one second on display, two seconds on video.
If you are comparing a CPC search campaign against a CPM display campaign, convert both to eCPM first. Otherwise you are comparing prices for different things.
| Channel | Typical CPM |
|---|---|
| Google Display Network | $2–8 |
| Meta – Facebook and Instagram | $7–18 |
| YouTube in-stream | $9–25 |
| TikTok | $6–14 |
| $25–70 | |
| Connected TV | $25–55 |
| Programmatic open exchange | $1–5 |
If the campaign has a conversion goal, CPM tells you almost nothing. You can halve CPM by moving to worse placements and watch every downstream number get worse at the same time.
CPM earns its place in two situations: buying reach for an awareness campaign where there is no click to measure, and diagnosing why a CPC rose. If cost per click jumped and CPM is flat, the problem is click-through rate – the creative. If CPM jumped and CTR is flat, the problem is auction pressure – competitors, seasonality or a narrower audience.