Cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are terms used in traditional

advertising media selection Advertising media selection is the process of choosing the most efficient media for an advertising campaign. To evaluate media efficiency, planners consider a range of factors including: the required coverage and number of exposures in a target ...

, as well as

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

and marketing related to

web traffic Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...

.What Is CPM-Based Web Advertising?
/ref> They refer to the cost of traditional advertising or

internet marketing The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed. CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s).Cost per impression (CPI), or "cost per thousand impressions" (CPM), is a term used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. It refers to the cost of traditional advertising or internet marketing or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed. CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s). CPM is an initialism for cost per mille, with mille being Latin for thousand. Contents ide 1 Purpose 1.1 Impression versus pageview 2 Construction 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). ''Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance.'' Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. . The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) endorses the definitions, purposes, and constructs of classes of measures that appear in ''Marketing Metrics'' as part of its ongoin
Common Language in Marketing Project
CPM is an initialism for

cost per mille Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin, French and Italian, ''mille'' means ''one thousand''), is a commonly-used measurement in advertising. It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of ...

, with ''mille'' being

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for thousand. In recent years, to address the potential issue of advertisers getting charged for low-value ad impressions, a new metric has become an industry standard: viewable CPM. With this an ad is counted as 'viewable' when at least 50 per cent of a display ad is shown for one second or longer, or a video ad plays continuously for two seconds or more.

Purpose

Cost per impression, along with

pay-per-click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is usually ...

(PPC) and

cost per order Cost per order, also called cost per purchase, is the cost of internet advertising divided by the number of orders. Cost per order, along with cost per impression and cost per click, is the starting point for assessing the effectiveness of a compan ...

, is used to assess the cost-effectiveness and profitability of online advertising. Cost per impression is the closest online advertising strategy to those offered in other media such as television, radio or print, which sell advertising based on estimated viewership, listenership, or readership. CPI provides a comparable measure to contrast internet advertising with other media.

Impression versus pageview

An impression is the display of an ad to a user while viewing a web page. A single web page may contain multiple ads. In such cases, a single

pageview In web analytics and Website governance, website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file (web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide W ...

would result in one impression for each ad displayed. In order to count the impressions served as accurately as possible and prevent fraud, an

ad server Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on Web sites, mobile apps, and Connected TVs. Ad serving technology companies provide software to Web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads th ...

may exclude certain non-qualifying activities such as page-refreshes or other user actions from counting as impressions. When advertising rates are described as CPM or CPI, this is the amount paid for every thousand qualifying impressions served at cost.

Construction

Cost per impression is derived from advertising costs and the number of impressions. :Cost per impression ($) = Advertising cost ($) / Number of Impressions (#) Cost per impression is often expressed as Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) to make the numbers easier to manage.