What is Cost Per Mille?

Cost Per Mille is an advertising term (CPM) that means Cost Per Thousand impressions. It’s also a payment model that denotes advertisers paying a set cost per thousand impressions. Unlike other payment models that charge for actions like clicks, Cost Per Mille is calculated on the basis of views.

Even though it’s primarily an online marketing metric, it’s also used as a benchmarking metric in radio, television, newspaper and other forms of advertising to calculate the cost of a campaign.

Cost Per Mille is one of the most common web ads payment models. When advertisers want to assess the success of their campaign, they also monitor CTR (click-through rate) to compare how many people viewed the ad and how many clicked on it. If only CTR was measured, it wouldn’t properly measure the impact of a campaign as viewers may still be influenced by viewing the ad.

Cost Per Mille is best used for brand awareness campaigns, as it amplifies a company’s brand or a specific message. If viewers aren’t required by the campaign objectives to take actions, Cost Per Mille is a good choice for advertisers.

It’s important to denote that if the ad is placed on two locations on the same page, advertise are paying for two impressions instead of just one.

The formula for Cost Per Mille is

Cost Per Mille = CPM rate x CPM units