CPM Calculator
Calculate Cost Per Mille (cost per 1,000 impressions).
Enter impressions and cost to find CPM, or CPM and budget to find impressions.
CPM stands for Cost Per Mille — the cost to serve 1,000 ad impressions. It is the standard pricing model for display advertising, video pre-rolls, and brand awareness campaigns.
The core formulas:
CPM = (Total Ad Spend / Total Impressions) × 1,000
Total Impressions = (Total Ad Spend / CPM) × 1,000
Total Cost = (Impressions / 1,000) × CPM
What each variable means:
- Impressions: the total number of times your ad was displayed, counting one per ad unit per page load
- Ad Spend: the total amount paid to the ad network or publisher
- CPM: your effective cost rate per thousand impressions
Worked example: A banner ad campaign costs $1,800 and delivers 450,000 impressions.
CPM = ($1,800 / 450,000) × 1,000 = $4.00 CPM
To buy 2,000,000 impressions at a $4 CPM: Total cost = (2,000,000 / 1,000) × $4 = $8,000
Typical CPM ranges by platform (2024–2025):
- Display/banner ads: $0.50–$3.00
- Facebook/Instagram: $5–$15
- YouTube pre-roll: $4–$10
- LinkedIn: $25–$50
- Premium news publishers: $10–$30
- Programmatic (open exchange): $0.50–$2.00
CPM vs CPC vs CPA:
CPM suits brand awareness, CPC (cost per click) suits traffic, and CPA (cost per acquisition) suits direct response. A common sequence for e-commerce is to build awareness on a CPM buy, then retarget the people it reached on a click or acquisition basis.
The two models are convertible, which is worth knowing before you argue about which is cheaper. A $10 CPM with a 1% click rate is a $1 effective cost per click; the same $10 CPM at 0.2% is $5 a click. Whether a CPM deal beats a CPC deal depends entirely on a click rate you are guessing at in advance, so buy on CPM when you are confident in the creative and on CPC when you are not.
What the number hides
An impression counts when the ad is served, not when a person looks at it. The industry viewability standard is modest: half the pixels on screen for one continuous second, two for video. Plenty of cheap programmatic inventory fails even that, so a $0.50 CPM at 40% viewability is worse value than a $1.50 CPM at 80%, despite looking like a third of the price.
Frequency is the other omission. A million impressions delivered to a hundred thousand people is a campaign; the same million delivered to ten thousand is the same advert shown a hundred times to a small group, which is closer to harassment than reach. Ask for reach and frequency alongside impressions, because CPM alone cannot distinguish the two.
Rates are also seasonal. Inventory prices climb through the fourth quarter as retail budgets compete for it, so a CPM quoted in June is not what you will pay in November.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
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