Enter spend and views to get CPV, cost per thousand views and how many views a budget buys - with YouTube and social benchmarks.
Cost per view is the price of one counted video view. The arithmetic is trivial; the definition is not. YouTube skippable in-stream counts a view at thirty seconds, or at the end of the ad if it is shorter, or on any click. Meta counts a ThruPlay at fifteen seconds. TikTok counts at six. Some placements count at two seconds with fifty percent of pixels in view.
| Placement | Typical CPV |
|---|---|
| YouTube skippable in-stream | $0.01–0.05 |
| YouTube in-feed / discovery | $0.03–0.10 |
| YouTube Shorts | $0.005–0.02 |
| Meta video views | $0.005–0.03 |
| TikTok in-feed | $0.005–0.02 |
| Connected TV (non-skippable) | $0.03–0.08 |
The useful direction is usually reverse. You know how many people the campaign has to reach, and you need the spend. Put the target CPV in the optional field and the calculator recalculates the budget: 300,000 views at $0.02 is $6,000, and no amount of optimisation changes that arithmetic – only the CPV does.
That gives you a straightforward negotiating position with anyone proposing a video plan. If the budget and the reach target imply a CPV below what the placement has ever delivered, the plan is not ambitious, it is wrong.
Optimising CPV down until the views stop meaning anything.
Optimising CPV down until the views stop meaning anything. Bid low enough, widen the placements enough, and you can halve CPV overnight – by buying autoplay views in muted feeds from audiences with no interest in the product. The metric improves while every downstream number decays.