With over two billion monthly active users, YouTube has become a powerful and even essential channel for advertising. Which means if you are a YouTube creator whose channel is eligible for monetization, there are lots of opportunities to earn money from the platform.
Here’s everything there is to know about CPM in a few steps:
What is CPM?
Whether you’re a seasoned creator who’s been on YouTube for years, or just starting out, CPM is an important metric to make sure you’re maximizing YouTube’s potential as an income generator.
CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions, is the amount an advertiser must pay YouTube for every 1,000 impressions their ads receive on a video. So it is an indicator that can vary depending on the amount paid by the advertiser to display his ad.
As with Google and other platforms, the cost of advertising on YouTube depends on a range of different factors (auction price, type of ad, etc.). For example, let’s say an advertiser pays $10 for an ad and that ad gets 5,000 views on your video. To calculate the CPM, you divide 10 by 5000 = 0.002€, then multiply 0.002€ by 1000. Therefore your CPM is equal to 2€.
In other words, apart from being tied to your income, CPM is a relevant indicator of the value of your content and helps you identify companies you may want to partner with in the future.
highest cpm on youtube
While CPMs vary by country, the TSZ website reports a comprehensive list of CPM rates seen in 2021, here are the top 10:
For France, the average CPM rate is approximately €3.80.
However, despite being a prominent metric, the CPM metric is not designed for content creators but for advertisers.
For the broadcaster, it is first of all a question of knowing how much the producer earns, and it is not necessary to know how much this or that advertiser pays. Of course, income In the end Calculated based on CPM for the manufacturer,
What is rpm?
For an advertiser who paid €10 for 5,000 impressions, your CPM is equal to €2. But that is not the amount your video will earn you, as YouTube takes a percentage of the CPA (45%, to be exact). Therefore you will only receive 45% of these €2.
So, if you earn €2 CPA from one video, you will deposit €0.9. This amount is called RPM (Revenue Per Thousand Views): This is the income you actually earn from the ads placed on your YouTube channel. This figure tells you how much revenue you earned per 1,000 views.
RPM is calculated by dividing the amount of your estimated revenue by the total number of views during the same period.
Note that only 40-50% of all views are monetized. If you have an RPM of 2€, it doesn’t even mean that you will earn 2€ per 1000 views, only that you will generate 2€ for every 1000 monetized views.
RPM (or Effective CPM) is therefore the average revenue generated per thousand ad impressions. This is the most relevant metric for content creators on YouTube.
What is included in RPM’s estimated revenue?
Estimated revenue includes those generated by
- advertisement ;
- youtube premium;
- membership;
- Super Chat Message;
- Super Stickers.
This is the amount that comes back to you after YouTube earnings distribution. The total number of views includes all views, including non-monetized views, but does not include views recorded in the YouTube Shorts player.
Since RPM is calculated by including your revenue share and includes non-monetized views, it is usually lower than CPM, which is based on plays. However it is by working on this CPM that your RPM will automatically increase.
How to improve CPM rates on your YouTube channel?
To improve your CPM rates, you need to take care of every element of your YouTube channel that affects its monetization.
take care of metadata
Metadata is basically what will get a YouTube user to click and watch your video. They include the title, description, thumbnail, and tags used for the video.
If used correctly, they will work together to get you the most views on YouTube.
Find a Catchy Title
A catchy title may get you clicks, but it is the content of the video that will keep the user watching it. In fact, YouTube no longer only considers clicks/visits to determine search results ranking. Viewing time is also one of the most important parameters.
So make sure that the title of the video is catchy but also matches the content of the video. Otherwise, if the user does not stay on your video for a long time, then the best imaginable title may be completely useless to you.
give a good description
The description is also essential: it is often read before an Internet user launches a video on YouTube. Therefore the description of your video should fully reflect its content.
Think SEO With Your Tags
Tags, on the other hand, are useful for the task of finding and recommending related videos. For this reason, don’t hesitate to add tags to your videos. Be careful though: they should be as relevant as possible.
Don’t hesitate to use the most competitive keywords, but don’t neglect neighboring or long tail keywords. They can also have a beneficial effect of making your video appear faster on the search pages of Internet users.
Choose an attractive thumbnail
Thumbnails are miniature viewing windows, or “mini-posters,” of each video on YouTube.
An attractive thumbnail is an important part of metadata if you want your video to get as many views as possible. They need to be optimized properly in order to attract attention and make your videos stand out from the crowd in the recommendation bar.
Don’t let YouTube automatically choose this thumbnail for you: it will often be unattractive!
increase viewing time
YouTube’s algorithm takes into account two factors to increase your visibility, in search results and the frequency with which your videos will be suggested in the recommendation bar.
First, YouTube wants people to watch your channel’s content for as long as possible: if you upload a 20-minute video and someone watches it for 15 minutes, that’s good enough.
But that’s not all: YouTube measures the amount of time users spend on its platform. Imagine that you are promoting your video on social networks with a link to your video: people who click on your link will start a session. If they watch your video for 15 minutes, then come back and spend an hour on the YouTube platform, a portion of that hour will be credited to you.
So, if you increase the watch time, your videos will get more views and you will see your channel growth increase!
Place more ads!
We think that serving more ads is harmful for the channel, because we imagine that people are annoyed by these ads. In reality, the overwhelming majority of Internet users have nothing against advertising.
But above all, and this is an (open) “secret” that YouTube does not reveal to us, but that everyone who has been working on YouTube for some time understood: the more ads you put, the more you earn Money and your videos get recommended by the algorithm.
How is this possible ? The answer has actually already been given to you above: YouTube is a business. So she recommends the videos that bring her the most money, to the detriment of those she hosts “for free”, without receiving anything from them.
conclusion
You now have the key to understanding and improving your CPM on YouTube!
However, if you are having trouble driving traffic and generating revenue from your videos, you can hire a YouTube expert to audit your channel. He can then give you advice on how to improve the SEO of your videos and increase your viewership.