What is CPM?

CPM, short for cost per mille ("mille" being Latin for thousand), is a media-buying rate under which an advertiser pays a fixed price for every 1,000 ad impressions served, regardless of how many clicks or conversions those impressions produce. In iGaming, operators and their affiliate or media teams buy display banners, native placements and video slots on a CPM basis, so the publisher is paid purely for showing the ad the agreed number of times. It is an upstream traffic-acquisition metric rather than a performance-based commission model like CPA or RevShare. Worked example: a casino brand buys a banner campaign at a 4 CPM (4 per thousand impressions) and runs it to 2,000,000 impressions. The cost is 2,000,000 / 1,000 x 4 = 8,000. If that campaign earns a 0.5% click-through rate, it produces 10,000 clicks, giving an effective cost per click of 0.80. Should 2% of those clicks convert into depositing players, that is 200 players at an effective 40 cost per acquisition. The advertiser carries all the risk under CPM: weak creative or poorly targeted placements can burn the full 8,000 while delivering almost no players. For affiliates and media buyers, CPM is the format most often used for pure branding and reach, where the goal is impressions rather than immediate sign-ups, so it demands tight tracking to convert an impression price into a real player cost. Because the buyer absorbs all conversion risk, CPM is generally sold on premium or highly targeted inventory and is worth benchmarking against click- and action-based rates. Compare with CPC, CPL and CPA, and with RevShare for the ongoing-revenue alternative.