Ad revenue math
CPM & RPM Calculator
Convert between CPM, RPM, views, and revenue. Work out what you earn from a given CPM, what your real RPM is, or how many views you need to hit a revenue goal.
Gross ad revenue
$3,000
What advertisers pay in total
Your earnings
$1,650
After the platform keeps 45%
Your effective RPM
$3.30
Earnings per 1,000 views
Quick answer
CPM is what advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions. RPM is what you keep per 1,000 views after the platform’s share. Revenue = views ÷ 1,000 × RPM, so 250,000 views at a $4 RPM earns $1,000.
About the CPM & RPM Calculator
CPM and RPM get used interchangeably in creator forums and they are not the same thing, which causes a great deal of confused disappointment on payout day. CPM — cost per mille — is a buy-side number: what an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions. RPM is a sell-side number: what you actually keep per 1,000 views of your content, after the platform takes its share, and counted across every view including the many that never served an ad at all. A creator reporting a $12 CPM and a $3.40 RPM on the same video is not contradicting themselves. This calculator works in three directions: give it views and a CPM to find revenue, give it views and revenue to find your effective CPM and RPM, or give it a revenue goal to find the views you need. The revenue-share field defaults to 55 percent for YouTube long-form, and you can set it to 45 percent for Shorts or 100 percent if you sell sponsorships directly.
What people use it for
- Translate a CPM figure from YouTube Studio into an actual payout
- Work out your effective RPM from last month's revenue and views
- Find how many views you need to reach a monthly income target
- Compare an ad-supported model against selling sponsorships directly
- Price display inventory on a newsletter, podcast, or website
Private by design
Everything you type here is processed inside your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, logged or stored, so it is safe to use with real numbers, drafts and anything you would not paste into a hosted tool.
Try these next
- YouTube Money Calculator How much does YouTube pay? Most channels earn $1.20–$8 per 1,000 views. Enter your views, niche and audience country for a free earnings estimate.
- YouTube Shorts Money Calculator YouTube Shorts pay about $0.02–$0.15 per 1,000 views, so 1M views earns $20–$150. Estimate your Shorts revenue, brand deals and affiliate income.
- TikTok Money Calculator TikTok Creator Rewards pays about $0.40–$1.00 per 1,000 qualified views on videos over a minute. Enter your views to estimate your TikTok earnings free.
- Percentage Calculator Calculate percentages with three common formulas. Find percentages, percentage of a number, and percentage change.
Browse every tool or read the creator guides.
Questions people ask
How do you calculate CPM?
Divide total revenue by total impressions, then multiply by 1,000. So $1,650 from 500,000 impressions gives a CPM of $3.30. The formula is the same whether you are buying ads or selling them.
What is the difference between CPM and RPM?
CPM is what advertisers pay per 1,000 impressions. RPM is what the creator keeps per 1,000 content views, after the platform's revenue share, and it counts all views rather than only those that showed an ad. RPM is always lower and is the number that predicts your payout.
What is a good CPM for a creator?
On YouTube, $4 to $12 is a normal range for long-form video. Finance, insurance, and B2B software channels regularly exceed $20, while gaming and entertainment often sit between $2 and $5. Seasonality matters too — CPMs spike in Q4 and drop hard in January.
Why is my RPM lower than my CPM?
Two reasons compound. First, the platform keeps a share — 45 percent on YouTube long-form. Second, RPM is divided across all your views, but only a fraction of views serve an ad, because of ad blockers, viewers without ads shown, and non-monetisable content.
How do I increase my RPM?
Shift toward higher-value topics, grow the share of your audience in Tier 1 countries, make videos long enough to carry mid-roll ads, and improve watch time so more ad slots are served per view. Niche and audience geography move RPM far more than upload frequency.
Does this calculator work for websites and newsletters?
Yes. Set the revenue share to 100 percent if you sell inventory directly, or to your network's share if you use an ad network. The impressions-to-revenue arithmetic is identical across every medium.