Benchmarks
What is a good CPM?
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated July 2026
Benchmarks reviewed July 2026 · next review October 2026
The short answer
There is no universal good CPM. There is only your CPM against your channel's median for your region and objective. Against sourced July 2026 medians: below $13.48 is cheap for Meta globally, below $8.96 cheap for Instagram, and $33.80 is simply what LinkedIn costs.
Good relative to what
Three comparisons matter, in order: your channel's median (a $20 CPM is high for Instagram, low for LinkedIn), your region (Gupta Media puts US-targeted Meta CPMs near $23 against a $13.48 global average), and your objective (conversion-optimized campaigns chase a smaller, more contested slice of the auction and pay more per impression by design).
The verdict logic here is the same as the calculator's DeltaPip: more than 5% below the sourced median reads as below, within 5% reads as at, more than 5% above reads as above. Run yours through the calculator with a preset loaded and the verdict renders automatically.
Why objective changes the answer
An awareness campaign buys the cheapest eligible impressions; a conversion campaign buys impressions Meta predicts will convert, which are scarcer. Meta's own auction documentation describes price as bid times estimated action rate times quality: optimize for action and you are bidding into a thinner pool. A higher CPM with a lower cost per result is a win, not a problem. The funnel math is worked at CPM vs CPA.
When a high CPM is fine
- Narrow B2B audiences.LinkedIn's $33.80 aggregate is 2.5x Meta's global average, and still cheap per qualified decision-maker reached. Worked at LinkedIn vs Facebook.
- High-LTV niches. If a customer is worth $5,000, the difference between a $10 and $25 CPM disappears three decimal places into your unit economics.
- Premium formats. CTV and podcast host-reads price attention, not just delivery. A podcast 30s at $18 per 1,000 downloads buys a listener mid-episode, not a pixel at the bottom of a page.
At Meta's $13.48 median, $1,000 buys about 74,184impressions; at LinkedIn's $33.80 it buys about 29,586. Whether the second number is worse depends entirely on who those 29,586 people are.
If your number is above median and you did not choose that on purpose, start at why is my CPM so high, then how to lower CPM. Full channel table: average CPM rates.