CPM Calculator

CPM Calculator works out cost per thousand impressions, the standard way display and video advertising is priced. The M is the Roman numeral for a thousand, not 'million', which is the single most common misreading of the term.

It solves in all three directions, because in practice you know different things at different times. Planning a campaign you have a CPM from a rate card and a budget, and you want the impressions. Reviewing one you have the spend and the delivery, and you want the CPM to compare against the rate card you were quoted.

CPM measures what you paid to be seen, not what you got. A low CPM on an audience that never clicks is worse value than a high one on an audience that converts, which is why the cost per click and the click-through rate are shown alongside it whenever you supply the clicks.

This is arithmetic, not financial advice. It tells you what the numbers do; it cannot tell you whether a decision is right for your circumstances. Fees, taxes and local rules vary, so check anything that matters against the actual offer and speak to someone qualified before committing.

Everything is worked out inside your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored, which matters for the financial calculators in particular: the figures you put into them are nobody else's business.

• Shows cpm, spend, impressions, cost per click and click-through rate together, so you are not running it twice
• A results table you can read across
• Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
• Copy the result in one click
• Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

The cpm calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Comparing two media buys on a like-for-like basis
• Working out the impressions a budget should deliver
• Checking a delivered CPM against the rate quoted
• Converting a CPM rate card into a total cost