Measure cost per click, cost per thousand impressions and click-through rate from a live campaign — or plan a budget in reverse from your target rates. Instant, no signup.
These are the two ways almost every ad platform charges you. CPC (cost per click) bills you each time someone clicks. CPM (cost per mille) bills you per thousand times your ad is shown — "mille" is Latin for thousand. The formulas:
CPC = total ad spend ÷ clicks.
CPM = (total ad spend ÷ impressions) × 1000.
Spend $500 and get 250 clicks → CPC of $2.00. Spend that same $500 across 200,000 impressions → CPM of $2.50. The calculator above returns both at once, plus your click-through rate, so you can see a campaign from every angle from a single set of numbers.
CTR = (clicks ÷ impressions) × 100. It is the bridge between CPC and CPM. If you know any two of CPC, CPM and CTR, you can derive the third:
Effective CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 10).
This matters because platforms let you bid either way. On a CPM buy, a higher CTR lowers your effective cost per click for free — the same thousand impressions deliver more clicks at no extra spend. So improving ad creative (which lifts CTR) is often a bigger cost lever than negotiating the rate.
A practical rule: if your CTR is high and stable, a CPM buy is usually cheaper per click than bidding CPC, because you capture the upside of your good creative. If your CTR is low or unpredictable, CPC protects you — you stop paying when nobody clicks.
Most of the time you don't have a campaign yet — you have a goal. The second card above runs the math backwards:
Budget = target CPC × clicks you want. To buy 1,000 clicks at a $2 CPC, plan ~$2,000.
Budget = (target CPM ÷ 1000) × impressions you want. To buy 500,000 impressions at a $5 CPM, plan $2,500.
Use realistic target rates — pull them from your own past campaigns or the benchmarks below — and pad the budget 10–20% for the learning phase, when platforms charge more per result while their algorithms calibrate.
| Channel | Typical CPC | Typical CPM |
|---|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook / Instagram) | $0.50–$2.00 | $7–$15 |
| Google Search | $1–$4 (much higher in finance/legal) | — |
| Google Display | $0.50–$1.50 | $2–$5 |
| $5–$12 | $30–$60 | |
| TikTok | $0.50–$1.50 | $5–$12 |
These swing enormously by industry, audience, and season — treat them as a sanity check, not a target. Q4 retail competition can double Meta CPMs; a niche B2B audience on LinkedIn can run far above the range.
CPC and CPM are the top of the funnel; they only matter as inputs to cost per customer. A cheap click that never converts is expensive. Always trace the cost down to a customer acquisition cost and check it against lifetime value — and remember that lifting conversion rate lowers your effective ad cost just as much as lowering CPC does.
CPC = total ad spend ÷ clicks. $500 for 250 clicks = $2.00 per click.
CPM = (total ad spend ÷ impressions) × 1000. $500 over 200,000 impressions = $2.50 CPM.
CPC charges per click (performance); CPM charges per thousand impressions (awareness). Convert via effective CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 10).
Budget = target CPC × clicks needed (e.g., 1,000 clicks × $2 = $2,000). The reverse planner above does this for CPC and CPM.