CPM (cost per mille)
The price you pay per thousand impressions of your ad, regardless of whether anyone clicks on it.
By Tanguy De Keyzer · Founder & digital strategist
CPM stands for cost per mille and is the price you pay per thousand times your ad is shown. You pay for visibility, not for clicks, so you also pay when nobody responds.
How CPM works
In a CPM model you buy reach. If you set a CPM of 10 euros and get 50,000 impressions, that costs 500 euros. This model is often used for display ads and video, where the goal is visibility and recognition rather than a direct click. The difference with cpc is fundamental: with CPC you pay per click, with CPM per impression. That makes CPM attractive when you want your brand to stay top of mind, but risky when your ad prompts too few people to action.
Why a low CPM is not automatically good
A low CPM feels like a bargain, but says nothing about what those impressions deliver. Cheap impressions on an irrelevant audience are a bad buy: you pay for screens, not for customers. So always read CPM together with your ctr and your final cost per lead. A higher CPM on a sharply defined B2B audience often delivers more than a dirt-cheap CPM that scatters your ad across people who never become customers.
CPM in a B2B context
For a B2B service provider you rarely use CPM as a main goal, but as a deliberate part of a plan. Impressions warm up your market and make later click campaigns cheaper and stronger. At Customer Impact we ultimately steer CPM campaigns too on what counts: requests and revenue. We measure through to the roas, so visibility stays a means and does not become a vain reach figure.