Cost per mille
see-pee-EM
The cost per 1,000 ad impressions. The standard pricing unit for display advertising and brand awareness campaigns.
CPM is the price you pay per 1,000 impressions of your ad. If you pay $50 CPM, you are paying $50 for every 1,000 times your ad is displayed. 'Mille' is Latin for thousand.
CPM is the standard pricing model for display advertising, programmatic ads, and brand awareness campaigns. You pay for exposure, not clicks. This makes sense when the goal is awareness (getting your brand in front of people) rather than direct response (getting people to click and convert).
For B2B companies, CPM rates vary: $20-40 for standard display, $50-100+ for targeted LinkedIn or programmatic placements to specific audiences. The more targeted the audience, the higher the CPM. Reaching 'all LinkedIn users' is cheap. Reaching 'VPs of Engineering at Series B-D SaaS companies' is expensive.
Examples
A brand awareness campaign on CPM pricing.
Budget: $20,000. CPM: $40. Total impressions: 500,000. Estimated reach: 125,000 unique people. The goal is awareness, not clicks. Brand recall survey before and after measures the impact.
CPM versus CPC decision.
The team debates between CPM ($50 per 1,000 impressions) and CPC ($15 per click) for a LinkedIn campaign. At a 0.8% CTR, 1,000 impressions produce 8 clicks. CPM cost per click: $6.25. CPC cost per click: $15. CPM is cheaper per click but the CTR may decline because the platform does not optimize for clicks.
Targeted CPM for ABM campaigns.
An ABM display campaign targets employees at 50 named accounts. CPM for this micro-audience: $120. But the audience is 5,000 people at 50 target accounts. Total budget: $3,000 for a month of saturation advertising to exact ICP accounts. Cost per account reached: $60.
In practice
Read more on the blog
Frequently asked questions
When should you use CPM versus CPC?
Use CPM for brand awareness campaigns where the goal is exposure. Use CPC for demand gen campaigns where the goal is website visits and conversions. CPM is better when you want to control reach. CPC is better when you want to control cost per visitor.
What is a good CPM for B2B?
Standard display: $20-40. LinkedIn: $50-100+. Programmatic targeting ICP audiences: $60-150+. Newsletter sponsorships: $30-80 per 1,000 subscribers. The more targeted the audience, the higher the CPM. A $100 CPM reaching the exact right audience is cheaper than a $20 CPM reaching the wrong one.
Related terms
How much you pay each time someone clicks your ad. The basic unit of cost in pay-per-click advertising.
The number of times your ad or content is displayed. Counts views, not people. One person seeing your ad three times is three impressions.
The number of unique people who saw your content or ad. Unlike impressions, reach counts people, not views.
Any marketing channel where you pay for visibility: search ads, social ads, display ads, sponsorships, and paid content placements.
Revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising. A ROAS of 5:1 means every $1 in ad spend generated $5 in revenue.
Want the complete playbook?
Picks and Shovels is the definitive guide to developer marketing. Amazon #1 bestseller with practical strategies from 30 years of marketing to developers.