Planit
Create free account
Free tool

CPM calculator

Cost per thousand impressions, both ways round. Enter what you know and the missing number appears as you type.

What do you want to work out?
Cost per thousand impressions — CPM = budget ÷ impressions × 1,000
The formula

CPM = budget ÷ impressions × 1,000

CPM is what you pay for a thousand impressions, not for one. That is why the thousand appears in the formula. An impression is one showing of your ad, so the same person seeing it three times is three impressions.

Worked example

You spend 12,000 and the campaign delivers 4,000,000 impressions.

12,000 ÷ 4,000,000 × 1,000 = 3.00

Your CPM is 3.00.

Estimated awareness rates

What a thousand impressions actually costs

A CPM only means something beside another CPM. These are the estimates Planit starts an awareness plan from, drawn from Gulf market buying through 2026 and quoted before any negotiation. Treat them as a sanity check rather than a price list: rates move through the year, and your own buy will shift with season, audience and how much you are spending.

The spread is the point. The same thousand impressions costs about thirty times more on LinkedIn than on Facebook, because the two are not selling the same thing. Facebook sells scale and broad targeting against enormous inventory. LinkedIn sells a small, scarce audience with job titles attached. A cheap CPM buys more showings; it does not buy more of the right people. Judge the rate against who it reaches, and the spread stops looking like a pricing error and starts looking like a choice.

One line of a media plan.

A real plan needs every channel, every placement and the totals underneath. Planit turns your rates into a client-ready plan, then exports a PDF to send and a spreadsheet that recalculates when you change a number.

Build a plan, it's free
More free tools
CPV calculator CPC calculator Reach and frequency calculator

Questions

Is a lower CPM always better?
No. A low CPM usually means cheaper inventory, which often means less attention. A premium placement at a higher CPM can deliver more of the people you actually want. Judge CPM against who you reached, not on its own.
What is a good CPM?
There is no single answer, because the platform decides most of it. On the rates below, a Facebook feed buy around $0.53 and a LinkedIn feed buy around $16.00 can both be fair, because they are not selling the same audience. Compare your CPM against the same platform in the same market, and against your own past campaigns before anything else.
How is CPM different from CPC?
CPM charges you for showing the ad. CPC charges you only when someone clicks. Awareness campaigns usually buy on CPM, traffic campaigns on CPC.
Why is LinkedIn so much more expensive than Facebook?
LinkedIn sells a scarce audience with job titles attached, and has far less inventory to sell it on. Facebook sells enormous reach with broader targeting. A LinkedIn CPM around thirty times a Facebook one is normal rather than a mistake; the question is whether the people you need are worth that multiple.
Does a CPM include agency fees?
Usually not. The CPM is a media rate. If you work with an agency, the management fee sits on top, which is why a plan should show media, fee and grand total separately rather than burying one inside the other.