CPM calculator that solves for the price, the reach or the budget

CPM is the cost of a thousand ad impressions, from the Latin mille. It is how Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, programmatic display and connected TV actually charge, whatever bidding strategy sits on top: the auction sells impressions, and clicks, leads and purchases are what happens after. That makes CPM the cleanest price in paid media. It is set by demand for the audience and the placement, and it is counted by the platform, so it is almost never wrong.

Everything downstream depends on it. CPC is CPM divided by a thousand times the click-through rate; cost per lead is that CPC divided by the conversion rate. When a campaign's lead cost rises, the first question is whether the CPM moved (the audience got more expensive) or the rates did (the creative or the page got worse). The calculator's CTR extension shows the first step of that chain.

It depends entirely on the channel and the audience. Google Display and Search sit around €2 to €5, Meta between €8 and €16, TikTok and YouTube a little lower, LinkedIn €35 to €70, connected TV €20 to €45. A LinkedIn CPM five times Meta's is not a bad price: it buys a thousand people filtered by job title and company, and for a B2B offer that audience converts at a rate that more than covers the difference.

So compare CPM within a channel and against your own history. A rising CPM on the same audience means more advertisers competing for it, or a frequency problem: the platform is showing your ad to the same people again and running out of cheap inventory. Either way, the fix is rarely the bid.

Add a click-through rate and the calculator shows how many clicks the impressions produce and what each one costs: clicks = impressions × CTR, CPC = spend ÷ clicks. On CPM-priced platforms this is the whole lever. A 1.0 percent CTR on a €10 CPM is a €1.00 click; lift the CTR to 1.5 percent and the same CPM gives a €0.67 click. Creative that earns more clicks per thousand views is the cheapest media buy there is.