CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions)

What is CPM?

CPM comes from Latin Cost per Mille — cost per thousand. It is what you pay to have an ad shown one thousand times. Unlike CPC, you pay whether the person clicks or not.

CPM is the right metric when the goal is:

• Branding and awareness: anchor the brand in the audience's mind
• Product launch: generate mass curiosity
• Institutional campaign reach: hit the largest possible audience on a fixed budget

How to calculate

CPM = (Spend / Impressions) x 1,000

For example, R$ 2,500 spent for 180,000 impressions = CPM of R$ 13.89.

2026 Benchmarks — Brazil

• Meta Ads (Reels): R$ 6 to R$ 18
• Meta Ads (feed/stories): R$ 10 to R$ 25
• TikTok Ads: R$ 5 to R$ 15
• YouTube (TrueView): R$ 12 to R$ 30
• LinkedIn Ads: R$ 35 to R$ 80
• Spotify Ads (audio): R$ 18 to R$ 40

Practical example

A craft beer brand invests R$ 30,000 in a pre-summer branding campaign:

• Impressions: 2,100,000
• Reach: 720,000
• CPM: R$ 14.28
• Average frequency: 2.9

For a regional awareness campaign, with CPM within benchmark and adequate frequency (2 to 4 is ideal for recall), the result is considered efficient. Useful complementary metrics: brand lift study, recall research, and branded-search growth on Google Trends.

When NOT to use CPM

• When the goal is direct conversion. Use conversion optimization and look at CPA.
• When you have a very low budget (R$ 30/day). Impressions will be so few that CPM swings too much.
• When the audience is very small (1% lookalike of a small base). Frequency spikes and CPM rises.

Common mistakes

• Thinking low CPM = good campaign. It may be delivering to the wrong, cheap audience.
• Comparing CPM across formats without adjustment (Stories and Reels have very different CPMs).
• Ignoring seasonality. November CPM can be double March's.