What the campaign or placement cost in total.
Total times the ad was served.
CPM (cost per mille — Latin for thousand) is what you pay an ad platform per thousand times your ad is shown. It's the standard pricing unit for awareness buying. CPM is the cleanest dimension to compare placements within the same channel; it lies if you compare across channels with different intent.
CPM = (cost ÷ impressions) × 1,000
| Google Display ads | $4 | $2-8 |
| Facebook ads | $11 | $7-15 |
| Instagram ads | $10 | $5-15 |
| TikTok ads | $7 | $4-10 |
| YouTube ads | $11 | $9-15 |
| LinkedIn ads | $33 | $25-60 (B2B) |
| X / Twitter ads | $6.5 | $5-9 |
| Reddit ads | $5 | $3-8 |
| Programmatic display | $3 | $1-5 |
| Out-of-home (digital) | $9 | $5-15 |
Audience quality. LinkedIn targets decision-makers at named companies; an impression on the CFO of a Series B SaaS is worth orders of magnitude more than the same impression on a teenager scrolling Instagram. The auction prices that in. High CPM is not automatically bad; the question is whether the marginal impression actually converts.
Whether the impression converted. Whether the audience was the right one. Whether the creative held attention or scrolled past in 0.4 seconds. Pair CPM with CTR (did the impression earn a click?) and conversion rate (did the click earn a customer?) for the full picture.
Cost per mille — the price an advertiser pays for one thousand ad impressions. Standard pricing unit for awareness-focused media buys on every major ad platform.
Channel-dependent. Programmatic display $1-5, Facebook $7-15, Instagram $5-15, TikTok $4-10, LinkedIn $25-60 (B2B). Compare to the channel average, not to other channels.
Three common reasons: (1) very narrow audience targeting bids you into premium inventory; (2) creative fatigue means the platform throttles delivery and prices rise; (3) competitive auctions in your category. Test broader audiences and fresh creative first.
No. Low CPM is good only if the audience is the right one. A $1 CPM on bot traffic or unqualified audiences is worse than a $20 CPM on your exact ICP. Always pair CPM with downstream conversion data.
CPM bills you per thousand impressions (whether or not anyone clicks). CPC bills you only on clicks. CPM is preferred for awareness and creative testing; CPC for direct-response and conversion campaigns where every impression should drive an action.
The cheapest CPM is the one you don't pay. UGC creators and organic distribution earn impressions instead of buying them — and those impressions convert 3-4× better than paid. That's our work.