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CPM calculator
Pick the one you want and fill in the other two. There is nothing to submit and no field to clear first. Built for digital media buying — Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google — though out-of-home and PR quote CPM the same way, and the arithmetic does not change.
- CPM
- = ad spend ÷ impressions × 1,000
- ad spend
- = CPM × impressions ÷ 1,000
- impressions
- = ad spend ÷ CPM × 1,000
Solve for
What the campaign cost over the period you are looking at.
How many times the ad was served.
CPM
$10.00
Cost per 1,000 impressions
Target: under $10.80 first order · under $19.44 lifetime — profitable on the first order
Assumes a typical e-commerce shop — set your own economics ↓
$10.00=$5,000.00÷500,000×1,000
Your campaign, end to end
Every metric is two of these five numbers, divided. Follow a line to see which two. Open one and your campaign comes with you — fill a gap there and the rest fill in here.
What should these numbers be?
Not what a benchmark table says — those blend other businesses’ margins and customer values, which is why no two agree. Enter your own and every metric gets the range your economics can actually afford.
Revenue from a first conversion — order value for a shop, deal value × close rate for lead gen.
What is left of that revenue after cost of goods, shipping and fees.
Lifetime revenue ÷ the first order. Leave empty to judge on first orders alone.
- CPMunder $10.80 to profit on the first order · under $19.44 to break even over a lifetime
Yours is $10.00 — profitable on the first order.
- CTRabove 0.93% to profit on the first order · above 0.51% to break even over a lifetime
Yours is 1.00% — profitable on the first order.
- CVRabove 2.78% to profit on the first order · above 1.54% to break even over a lifetime
Yours is 3.00% — profitable on the first order.
- CPCunder $1.08 to profit on the first order · under $1.94 to break even over a lifetime
Yours is $1.00 — profitable on the first order.
- CPAunder $36.00 to profit on the first order · under $64.80 to break even over a lifetime
Yours is $33.33 — profitable on the first order.
- ROASabove 1.67× to profit on the first order · above 0.93× to break even over a lifetime
Yours is 1.80× — profitable on the first order.
How CPM is calculated
CPM is cost per mille — the cost of a thousand impressions. Divide what you spent by the impressions you got and multiply by a thousand: a $5,000 campaign that served 500,000 impressions ran at a $10.00 CPM.
The same relationship answers the other two questions. Impressions a budget will buy is spend ÷ CPM × 1,000, so $5,000 at a $10.00 CPM buys 500,000 of them. Spend a flight will cost is CPM × impressions ÷ 1,000. Switch what you are solving for at the top of the calculator and it rearranges itself.
What CPM does and does not tell you
CPM prices attention, not results. It is the right number for comparing two placements or two audiences on the cost of reach, and for sanity-checking a media plan before it runs.
It says nothing about whether anyone acted. A cheap CPM against an audience that never clicks costs more than an expensive one against an audience that does, which is why CPM is worth reading next to CTR and CPA rather than alone. Fill in clicks or conversions on those pages and your campaign carries over — the other metrics above fill in as you go.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you calculate CPM?
Divide the campaign’s total cost by the number of impressions it served, then multiply by 1,000. $5,000 spent for 500,000 impressions is (5,000 ÷ 500,000) × 1,000 = a $10.00 CPM.
What is the CPM formula?
CPM = ad spend ÷ impressions × 1,000. Rearranged, impressions = ad spend ÷ CPM × 1,000, and ad spend = CPM × impressions ÷ 1,000. The calculator shows whichever of the three you asked for, with your own numbers substituted into the line under the answer.
How do I work out impressions from a budget and a CPM?
Divide the budget by the CPM and multiply by 1,000. A $5,000 budget at a quoted $10.00 CPM buys 500,000 impressions. Set the calculator to solve for impressions and it does this for you — you do not have to empty the spend field first.
How much is 1 CPM?
A CPM of 1 means a thousand impressions cost one unit of currency, so 1,000 impressions cost $1 and a million cost $1,000. CPM is always quoted per thousand — the M is mille, Latin for thousand, not million.
What is a good CPM?
There is no single number, and a page that gives you one without saying where and when it was measured is guessing. CPM moves with the platform, the placement, the country, how narrow the audience is and the time of year — retail auctions in Q4 routinely run at well above their January level. The comparison worth making is against your own account: pull the trailing 90 days for the same placement and audience and read this campaign against that. If you want an outside figure, take it from the platform’s own reporting rather than a blog post. Or work out what you can afford instead: enter your margin and conversion value under the funnel below, and the page derives the CPM ceiling your own campaign can support.
Is CPM the same as eCPM?
No, though they are quoted in the same units. CPM is what you agreed to pay for a thousand impressions. eCPM is what a thousand impressions turned out to cost once a campaign bought on clicks or actions is expressed per thousand impressions so it can be compared against one bought on CPM. This calculator handles either — the arithmetic is identical, only where the cost came from differs.
Does this work for YouTube, Meta or TikTok?
Yes. CPM is defined the same way everywhere, so nothing about the arithmetic is platform-specific. What does differ is what each platform counts: YouTube reports impressions and views separately and bills some formats per view, so use the impression count if you want a CPM that compares with Meta or TikTok.
Is it free, and do you keep what I type?
Free, with nothing to sign up for and no account. The arithmetic runs in your browser — typing a number makes no server request, and there is no database of what visitors enter, so we could not build a benchmark out of your figures even if we wanted to. One thing worth knowing: your numbers are written into the page URL so you can bookmark or share them, which means they also travel inside any link you send.
