CPM Calculator — CPM, Impressions, Budget, Reach & Frequency
CPM = (total cost ÷ total impressions) × 1,000. That single formula answers most media-math questions, and this free calculator runs it in all three directions: give it any two of cost, impressions, and CPM and it solves for the third, then converts the result into the reach and frequency your campaign will actually deliver.
The CPM formula
- CPM = (cost ÷ impressions) × 1,000
- Impressions = (budget ÷ CPM) × 1,000
- Cost = (impressions ÷ 1,000) × CPM
Worked example: a $5,000 buy that delivers 500,000 impressions works out to (5,000 ÷ 500,000) × 1,000 = a $10 CPM. Reversed, a $50,000 budget at a $25 CPM buys (50,000 ÷ 25) × 1,000 = 2,000,000 impressions. CPM stands for cost per mille — cost per thousand impressions — not cost per million.
Reach and frequency
Impressions on their own tell you volume, not effect. The second identity every planner needs is impressions = reach × frequency, where reach is the number of unique people exposed at least once and frequency is the average number of times each of them sees the ad. Two million impressions can mean one million people twice or 500,000 people four times — same spend, very different campaigns. The calculator takes your impressions plus a target audience size and returns reach, reach as a percentage of the audience, and average frequency, so you can see the trade-off before you commit budget.
What counts as a good CPM
A good CPM is one that is in line with its channel and buys the attention your objective needs; a low CPM against worthless inventory is the most expensive kind of cheap. As working 2026 ranges for mid-market North American campaigns: programmatic display runs roughly $2–$8, TikTok $6–$12, Meta $8–$18, YouTube $10–$25, streaming audio $15–$30, LinkedIn $25–$60, and connected TV $28–$55. Q4 pushes nearly all of them up. Treat any benchmark as a starting hypothesis and re-baseline against your own account data every quarter — our 2026 CPM & CPC benchmarks by channel goes through the ranges channel by channel.
Why planners reverse the math
Benchmarks become budgets the moment you run the formula backwards. If a campaign needs five million impressions of awareness on CTV and CTV prices at a $40 CPM, that is a $200,000 line item — calculated in seconds, defensible in a client meeting. Do that across every channel in the plan and you have a first-draft budget before a dollar is committed. That is exactly the step MediaPlan automates when it drafts a full channel mix.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate CPM?
CPM = (total cost ÷ total impressions) × 1,000. Divide what you spent by the impressions you received, then multiply by a thousand. A $5,000 buy that delivered 500,000 impressions has a CPM of $10.
How do you calculate impressions from a budget and a CPM?
Impressions = (budget ÷ CPM) × 1,000. A $50,000 budget at a $25 CPM buys 2,000,000 impressions. To go the other way, cost = (impressions ÷ 1,000) × CPM.
What is a good CPM?
It depends entirely on the channel, and cheaper is not automatically better. Typical 2026 mid-market North American ranges are roughly $2–$8 for programmatic display, $6–$12 for TikTok, $8–$18 for Meta, $10–$25 for YouTube, $15–$30 for streaming audio, $25–$60 for LinkedIn, and $28–$55 for connected TV. A $40 CTV CPM and a $6 display CPM can both be good buys, because you are paying for very different attention.
What is the difference between reach and frequency?
Reach is the number of unique people exposed to the campaign at least once. Frequency is the average number of times each of those people sees it. They are tied together by one identity: impressions = reach × frequency. With a fixed budget, buying more reach costs you frequency and vice versa.
What does CPM stand for?
Cost per mille — the cost of one thousand ad impressions. Mille is Latin for thousand, which is why the M is not an abbreviation of million.