CPM (cost per 1,000 views)

What is CPM?

CPM stands for cost per mille, mille being Latin for thousand. It is what you paid divided by the number of views you got, multiplied by 1,000. Spend €50 on a campaign that collects 20,000 views and your CPM is €2.50. Paid social is sold in this unit, which makes it the simplest way to put a promoter campaign next to an Instagram ad and ask both the same question.

CPM says nothing about who saw the thing or what they did next. A cheap CPM from people in the wrong city is worth less than a dearer one from people who actually go out on Saturdays. Read it next to reach, which counts people rather than views, and next to the engagement rate, which tells you whether anyone replied, tapped or followed.

How to calculate CPM

The formula is cost ÷ views × 1,000. For paid ads, Meta works it out for you. For promoter stories you do it yourself: add up what the promoters cost you (a fee, a guest-list place, a drink balance) and divide by the story views their stories collected. Count only stories that actually stayed up. A story deleted after an hour still cost you the reward if you handed it over in advance, and its views barely count.

Rewards in kind need an honest price. A guest-list place on a night that never sells out costs you close to nothing; on a sold-out night it costs a ticket you could have sold. Pick the figure that reflects your real cost and use the same rule every time, or your CPMs will not be comparable from one event to the next.

Example: promoters against an ad

Say a club night in Leipzig books eight promoters for the week before the party. Each gets a €15 drink balance, €120 in total. Their stories collect 9,600 views between them, so the CPM is €12.50. The same week the organizer puts €60 into a story ad that is shown 15,000 times: a CPM of €4. The ad looks cheaper, but its views went to a broad audience across the city, while the promoter views came from people who follow someone from the scene. Which of the two sold more tickets is a question for the ticket shop, not for CPM alone.

Tips for using CPM

• Compare like with like: story views against story views, not against feed impressions.
• Price every reward, including guest list and free drinks, before the night rather than afterwards.
• Track CPM per event across a season. One night tells you little; a trend shows which crews and formats work.
• Do not chase the lowest CPM. A promoter with fewer, closer followers often fills more of the room.

CPM on Parmo

Each organizer's stats show Cost / 1k views per event: the reward value committed to the event divided by the views on its verified stories. Only verified stories count, so a story that came down early adds no views. The public benchmarks show what stories on Parmo typically reach, and Reading your stats explains the dashboard.

Common questions

How do you calculate CPM?

Divide what you spent by the number of views and multiply by 1,000. €30 for 12,000 views is a CPM of €2.50.

What is a good CPM on Instagram?

It depends on the audience, the city and the season, so there is no single good number. Compare your own events with each other, and with what your ads cost in the same week.

What is the difference between CPM and TKP?

There is none. TKP (Tausend-Kontakt-Preis) is the German name for the same figure, the cost per thousand contacts.