What is CPM?
CPM is the cost per thousand impressions: what you pay for your ad to be shown a thousand times. It is the base price of attention in every auction driven channel, from social feeds to programmatic video.
What moves CPM
- Competition: more advertisers chasing the same audience raises the price. Year end is expensive everywhere.
- Audience: narrow, high demand segments cost more to reach than broad ones.
- Placement and format: premium video costs more than a sidebar banner, and earns it.
- Creative quality: platforms reward engaging content with cheaper delivery, so good creative literally lowers your CPM.
Why it matters
CPM tells you what attention costs; it says nothing about what attention is worth. It matters as an input: rising CPMs with flat results signal fatigue or competition, unusually low CPMs often mean low quality inventory nobody else wants.
The honest view
Judging campaigns on CPM alone is how you end up with cheap impressions nobody sees and nothing sold. Use CPM for diagnostics and planning, then judge the work on cost per outcome and incremental impact. Buying attention cheaply only matters if the attention turns into acquisition.
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