Free tool

CPM calculator

Divide the fee by impressions and multiply by a thousand. This gives you CPM and cost per engagement together, which is how you compare a large creator against a small one fairly.

Fee paid

USD

Impressions

Engagements

CPM

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Enter a fee and impressions.

Cost per engagement

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Add engagements to see cost per engagement.

The formula

CPM = fee ÷ impressions × 1,000

Cost per engagement = fee ÷ total engagements

CPM exists to normalise for size. A 5,000 dollar deal delivering 500,000 impressions and a 500 dollar deal delivering 50,000 both come out at a 10 dollar CPM, which is the point: without it, larger creators always look expensive and smaller ones always look cheap.

Use impressions rather than reach if you have both. Impressions count repeat views, which is what advertising CPM conventionally measures, so it is the figure comparable with your paid social benchmark.

Reading the number

Creator CPMs commonly land between about 5 and 30 US dollars depending on platform, niche, and audience size. High-intent business audiences run well above that and are still worth buying, because the value of a reached person is not constant.

The comparison that matters is against your own paid social CPM and against the other creators in the same campaign, not against an industry average. A creator whose CPM is double the campaign average but whose audience converts at four times the rate is the one you rebook.

CPM values every impression identically, which is its main weakness. Read it alongside cost per engagement and, where you can track it, cost per acquisition.

Common questions

How do you calculate CPM?: Divide the fee by the number of impressions, then multiply by 1,000. A 2,000 dollar fee delivering 250,000 impressions gives a CPM of 8 dollars.
What is a good CPM for influencer marketing?: Creator CPMs commonly sit between 5 and 30 US dollars. Rather than aiming at a universal target, compare against what the same budget would cost you in paid social and against the other creators in the campaign.
Should you use reach or impressions for CPM?: Impressions, if you have them, because that is what advertising CPM measures and it keeps the figure comparable with your paid media benchmarks. Using reach produces a higher CPM for the same deal, so be consistent about which you use.

Related terms

CPM: CPM is the cost of a thousand impressions, calculated as the fee divided by impressions, multiplied by one thousand. It is the standard way to compare the efficiency of creator deals against each other and against paid media.
CPE: CPE is the cost of a single engagement, calculated as the fee divided by total engagements. It measures what a brand paid for each like, comment, save, or share.
Impressions: Impressions are the total number of times a piece of content was displayed, counting repeat views by the same person.
Reach: Reach is the number of unique accounts that saw a piece of content at least once. Each person is counted once no matter how many times they saw it.
ROAS: ROAS is revenue divided by the spend that produced it, expressed as a multiple. A campaign that returned 30,000 in revenue on 10,000 of spend has a ROAS of 3.

CPM tells you what reach cost. To work out whether the campaign paid for itself, see ROAS and conversion tracking.