Buy side · what advertisers pay

Google Display CPM

By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated July 2026

Benchmarks reviewed July 2026 · next review October 2026

The short answer

Google publishes no CPM for the Display Network. Its bidding page says bidding amounts are ultimately up to you, and that is the entire official rate card. Most benchmark figures circulating for GDN trace back to a 2016 WordStream study; a decade-old number presented as current is worse than no number.

Official positionno published rateGoogle publishes no rates, minimums or CPM figures; bidding amounts are up to youGoogle Ads bidding pageretrieved July 2026

The stale-benchmark problem, named

Search for google display cpm and the top results still lean on WordStream's industry benchmarks, published in 2016 for a network that has since changed its bidding systems, inventory and privacy plumbing. We checked whether a current, citable GDN average exists from Google or a dated tracker we would stand behind: it does not, so this page carries a no-published-rate entry rather than a figure. When that changes, the source ledger changes first.

What Google does publish: the mechanics

Auction, not menu.Google's auction documentation describes pricing by bid, quality and expected impact. Same story as Meta: CPM is an output.
vCPM bidding. For display campaigns you can bid per viewable thousand: Google charges for impressions measured viewable rather than merely served. The measurement standard and conversion math live at vCPM.
No minimum spend. There is no published entry floor; budgets are advertiser-set.

AuctionauctionGoogle's ad auction prices ads by bid, quality and expected impact, not a rate cardAbout the Google Ads auctionretrieved July 2026

vCPM optionvCPMGoogle Ads viewable CPM bidding: you pay only for impressions measured viewableGoogle Ads viewable CPM biddingretrieved July 2026

Why display runs cheaper than social

Banner inventory is abundant: the open web mints billions of below-the-fold slots that nobody fights over. Scarce, high-attention formats clear higher; plentiful, glanceable formats clear lower. That is also why the display conversation leads so quickly to viewability: a cheap impression nobody could have seen is not cheap. The premium question is worked at display vs CTV, and the open-exchange fee chain at programmatic CPM.

Full table: /rates.