Solve for total cost, cost per impression, or impressions in one click. Instantly see the CPM equivalent, projected clicks, and your true effective CPC — no email required.
Results update live as you type
Optional — project clicks
The formula: Cost Per Impression = Total Cost ÷ Impressions. CPM = CPI × 1,000. All figures are estimates for media-planning purposes.
CPM Equivalent
$8.00
Est. Clicks
2,500
Effective CPC
$1.60
Based on a 0.50% click-through rate.
CPM equivalent simply multiplies your cost per impression by 1,000 — the standard quoting unit.
Real impression costs fluctuate by platform, audience, ad quality, and seasonality.
Effective CPC = Total Cost ÷ Clicks — useful for comparing impression buys against CPC campaigns.
Cost per impression is the foundation of awareness, video, and programmatic media buying. Here's what drives it.
CPI is the cost of one impression; CPM is the cost of 1,000. CPM = CPI × 1,000. Media is quoted in CPM because per-impression prices are tiny fractions of a cent.
Ad inventory is sold per view through auctions and direct deals. You pay each time your ad renders, whether or not the viewer clicks or even notices it.
Audience targeting, ad placement, competition, format (video costs more than display), device, geography, and seasonality all move your cost per impression.
Impressions count every view including repeats to the same person. Reach counts unique people. Frequency = impressions ÷ reach — how often each person sees you.
Click-through rate is the share of impressions that become clicks. A 0.5% CTR on 500,000 impressions yields 2,500 clicks — the bridge from awareness to traffic.
Choose impression-based pricing for brand awareness, reach, video views, and retargeting where visibility and frequency matter more than immediate clicks.
CPI is the finest-grained media price there is — and among the least useful on its own.
Cost per impression is simply CPM divided by a thousand. It is worth calculating when you are comparing inventory at very different scales, or when a vendor quotes a flat cost for a fixed number of impressions and you need to convert it into something comparable.
What it cannot tell you is whether the impression was worth buying. An impression is a chance to be seen, not evidence of being seen: an ad rendered below the fold, in a background tab, or in a mobile game by a mis-tap all count identically to one that genuinely landed.
| Inventory type | Typical viewability | What that means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Premium publisher display | 65% – 80% | Most impressions are genuinely seen. Worth the higher price. |
| Open programmatic display | 40% – 60% | Roughly half of what you buy is never actually visible. |
| In-app / mobile game | 30% – 55% | Cheap and high volume; accidental clicks inflate engagement metrics. |
| Social in-feed | 50% – 70% | Good viewability, but scroll speed limits real attention. |
| Video pre-roll | 70% – 90% | High viewability by format; completion rate is the metric that matters. |
| Connected TV | 90%+ | Effectively unskippable, which is what justifies the price. |
Adjust for viewability before comparing prices. A $0.004 impression at 40% viewability costs $0.010 per viewable impression — more than a $0.008 impression at 85%.
Divide your cost per impression by the viewability rate to get what you actually pay for an impression a human could have seen. This single adjustment reorders most media plans.
Reach counts people; impressions count renders. A campaign can post enormous impression volume against a tiny audience, which is a frequency problem wearing a scale costume.
CPI is a conversion unit for comparing quotes across vendors and formats. It should never be the metric a campaign is optimised toward.
Unusually low impression prices are the classic signature of invalid traffic. If a rate is far below market, the impressions are probably not real.
Time-in-view is a better predictor of outcome than impression count. Where a vendor can report it, weight it more heavily than raw volume.
Effective cost per click and cost per acquisition are what actually matter. CPI is a diagnostic that explains those numbers, not a substitute for them.
The cheapest impressions in the market are cheap precisely because nobody sees them. Optimising for CPI reliably buys the worst inventory available.
A connected TV impression and a display banner impression are different products. Converting both to CPI does not make them comparable.
Cheap impressions tempt large volume against small audiences. The result is very high frequency and diminishing, then negative, returns.
On any significant programmatic spend, use third-party verification. Self-reported impression counts are the vendor grading their own work.
Used properly, cost per impression is a translation tool: it lets you put a flat-fee sponsorship, a CPM buy and a programmatic package on the same axis. Used improperly, it becomes a target — and targeting it will steer your budget toward exactly the inventory that produces the least. Convert to viewable CPI, compare, then decide on outcomes.
We plan and manage display, YouTube, and programmatic campaigns for businesses across Canada. No long-term contracts.