Cost Per Mille, or CPM, is a pricing model where advertisers pay for every 1,000 impressions their ad receives. The word "mille" comes from Latin and means thousand. Unlike PPC where you pay per click, CPM charges you based purely on how many times your ad is shown — whether people click or not. This model is ideal for brand awareness campaigns where the goal is maximum visibility, not immediate conversions.
Here's how the math works: say a company spends $5,000 on an online ad campaign and the ad is displayed 2,000,000 times. The CPM would be ($5,000 ÷ 2,000,000) × 1,000 = $2.50. That means the company paid $2.50 for every thousand impressions. Display ads, YouTube video ads, and social media campaigns often use CPM pricing. It's particularly useful when you want to get your brand in front of as many eyeballs as possible.