1,000,000 impressions for $5,000.00 works out to a $5.00 CPM.
A $0.50 CPC at a 1% CTR equals a $5.00 effective CPM.
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CPM is your campaign cost divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. Spend $5,000 on 1,000,000 impressions and your CPM is $5.00. CPM stands for cost per mille, the Latin word for thousand, and it is the standard price tag for ad visibility on Facebook, Google Display, TikTok, LinkedIn and programmatic networks. The calculator above solves for any of the three variables: enter the two numbers you know and it fills in the third.
The three rearrangements of the formula cover every situation a media buyer runs into:
The same math powers the CPC to CPM converter: effective CPM = CPC x CTR x 1,000 / 100. If you pay $0.50 per click and 1% of viewers click, those 1,000 impressions produced 10 clicks at $0.50 each, so the publisher effectively earned a $5.00 CPM.
CPMs swing widely by platform, audience, season and ad quality, so treat any single number as a midpoint rather than a promise. Industry benchmark reports commonly cite Facebook and Instagram CPMs in the $10 to $15 range, Google Display around $3, and TikTok lower still, often in the low single digits for broad targeting. LinkedIn typically runs far higher because B2B audiences are narrow and valuable. Expect CPMs to climb in Q4 when retail advertisers flood the auction, and to drop for broad audiences versus tightly targeted ones.
Each pricing model shifts risk between you and the platform:
| Metric | You pay for | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| CPM | 1,000 ad views | Brand awareness and reach campaigns |
| CPC | Each click | Traffic and consideration campaigns |
| CPA | Each conversion | Direct response with proven tracking |
CPM puts the performance risk on you: cheap impressions are worthless if nobody clicks or converts, so always read CPM next to CTR and conversion rate. CPC and CPA cost more per unit but only charge when something happens.
One last comparison worth running: organic clicks have no CPM. Every visit you earn from search rankings arrives at zero marginal cost, month after month. If your paid CPMs keep climbing, request a free SEO audit and see how much of that demand you could capture without paying for impressions at all.
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