Calculate campaign spend per thousand impressions

Media buyers use it to express advertising spend per thousand impressions before comparing the cost of different channels.

Calculate campaign spend per thousand impressions. Everything runs in your browser, so the values you enter are never uploaded, shared, or stored.

How to use

Open the tool and look at the two input lines: the first one takes your advertising spend, the second one the number of impressions.
Type or paste the amount spent on line one, then the impression count on the following line, with nothing else added.
Run the calculation and read the result area, where the cost per thousand impressions is shown.
Repeat the operation with the numbers of another advertising channel to compare both figures on one basis, then clear the fields.

Example

The worked example uses 480 as the spend and 120000 as the impression count. Once the calculation runs, check the figure in the result area: it tells you what a thousand impressions costs, which is what you need to judge a channel against your budget.

Input

480
120000

Limits and formats

The tool does not pull campaign data from anywhere, so you need the spend and the impression count before you start.
A cost per thousand based on a small number of impressions moves around a lot and may not reflect the whole campaign.
Currencies are not converted, so keep the same unit for the spend and for every channel you compare.
Double-check what you typed: a misplaced decimal point or a missing zero changes the whole figure.

Where processing happens

Everything runs inside your browser, so the budget and the impression count never leave your device. Nothing is transmitted, no account is needed, and closing the tab removes the values you typed so you can start again later.

Frequently asked questions

How is CPM different from cost per click?

Cost per click divides the spend by the clicks received, while CPM divides it by thousands of impressions. Both describe the same campaign but measure different things: click cost follows how many people acted, while the thousand-impression cost simply follows how widely the ad was shown.

Can I compare campaigns with very different budgets?

Yes, that is exactly what this calculation is for. Reducing every spend to a thousand impressions puts a small campaign and a large one on the same footing, so you can line up the two figures and see which channel is cheaper for the same volume of exposure.

Does the figure account for impressions that were never seen?

No. The result depends only on the two numbers you enter. If your impression count is an estimate, or counts only viewable impressions, then the figure you get describes that estimate rather than the total number of times the ad was shown.