Buy side · what advertisers pay
YouTube CPM (buy side)
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated July 2026
Benchmarks reviewed July 2026 · next review October 2026
The short answer
YouTube publishes no CPM or CPV rates: its former pricing pages are gone and buying runs through the Google Ads auction. What is documented is the billing model per format, and the split matters, because some YouTube formats charge you per impression and others only when someone actually watches.
Which formats bill CPM vs CPV
Per Google's video campaign documentation: skippable in-stream ads can bill CPV, where you pay when a viewer watches 30 seconds (or the whole ad if shorter) or interacts; with impression-based strategies they bill per thousand. Non-skippable and bumper ads bill CPM by nature, since there is no skip to survive. The conversion between the two pricing frames is worked at CPM vs CPV.
What moves YouTube pricing
- Format scarcity. Non-skippable completion is scarcer than a skippable start; scarcer attention clears higher in any auction.
- Targeting.Same rule as everywhere: contested audiences cost more. Google's auction prices by bid, quality and expected impact.
- Objective. Awareness strategies buy impressions; action strategies buy predicted actions and pay the prediction premium.
Third-party YouTube CPM figures exist only on aggregator blogs without dated methodology, so this site carries none. The honest comparison available today is structural: video attention prices above display, below nothing universal. See it worked against audio at YouTube vs podcast.
The money's other end: creators receive 55% of watch-page ad revenue, and the full waterfall from your CPM to their RPM is worked at the YouTube flip side. Full table: /rates.