What Is CPM on YouTube?

CPM is the price side: YouTube calls it how much money advertisers are spending to show ads on YouTube, as the cost per 1,000 ad impressions before YouTube’s revenue share. It changes with the season, the audience’s country and the topic of the video.

It includes only ad and YouTube Premium revenue, and only views of monetized videos where ads were shown. That is why it is higher than RPM, which spreads what you keep over every view, including the ones with no ad.

For a creator, a high CPM topic is one advertisers want to be next to, such as finance or software, but it says nothing about how many views a video will get. RPM is the number that tells you what a thousand views paid you.

CPM also explains why the same channel earns more in some months than others: advertisers spend most before the end-of-year holidays and least in the first weeks of the year, and viewers in some countries are worth more to them than in others. None of that is in the creator’s hands, which is why YouTube shows it as a separate number.