Creative CPM

How We Price Creative Outcomes

Market-based CPMs for creative outcomes — proving your creative work's financial value

The Problem

For 30 years, the advertising industry has had CPMs (Cost Per Mille) for media — standardized pricing for impressions, clicks, and conversions. But creative communication has never had its own CPMs.

This creates a fundamental misalignment: media teams speak in CPMs, CTRs, and ROAS. Creative teams speak in brand lift, engagement, and awards. Neither speaks the other's language, and CFOs can't model creative's contribution to business outcomes.

The result? Creative gets treated as overhead, not investment. Budgets get cut. Value goes unproven.

Creative CPM exists to fix this by establishing market-based CPMs for creative outcomes.

Our Approach

We measure creative-driven outcomes across paid, social, and owned channels — outcomes that exist beyond what you paid media platforms to deliver.

The Outcome Types We Measure:

Paid Media Outcomes

  • Video Views
  • Impressions
  • Interactions (likes, shares, comments)

Social (Earned) Outcomes

  • Impressions above paid
  • Video views above paid
  • Interactions above paid

Owned Outcomes

  • Campaign site visits
  • Corporate site visits

Each outcome type is assigned a market-based CPM — a financial value per thousand outcomes. These CPMs are:

  • Benchmarked against media CPMs as the baseline pricing reference
  • Adjusted for engagement depth (a video view is more valuable than an impression)
  • Weighted by conversion contribution based on how each outcome drives business results
  • Calibrated by geography and category to reflect market conditions

How It Works

1. You Enter Campaign Outcomes

Input your campaign's actual performance across all channels: paid video views, earned impressions, social interactions, site visits, etc.

2. We Calculate Outcome Value

Each outcome is multiplied by its market-based CPM to calculate the financial value. For example:

90,121,951 social video views × $0.01307 CPM = $1,177,714 in valued outcomes

3. You Get Your Creative Multiplier

We compare the total financial value of all creative outcomes against your total campaign investment (media + creative fees + production):

Creative Multiplier = Total Outcome Value ÷ Total Campaign Cost

Example: $3,369,745 ÷ $2,398,213 = 1.41x

A 1.41x multiplier means your creative generated $1.41 in valued outcomes for every $1 invested in the campaign.

4. Get Comprehensive Reports

Your report shows the complete breakdown: costs, outcome values, CPMs, Creative Multiplier, and how creative outcomes compare to paid media spend alone.

Our Commitment to Transparency

Creative CPM's CPM pricing for creative outcomes is based on market data, industry benchmarks, and aggregate performance trends across campaigns.

Our methodology is:

  • Reviewed quarterly to ensure pricing reflects current market conditions
  • Updated based on aggregate data as more campaigns use Creative CPM
  • Benchmarked against established media CPMs to maintain market relevance
  • Calibrated by geography and category to account for regional and industry differences

We publish this methodology to build trust and credibility. Our goal is to establish Creative CPM as the industry standard for creative outcome valuation — just as CPMs became the standard for media pricing.

Ready to See Your Creative Multiplier?

Get financial proof of your creative work's value. Calculate your Creative Multiplier and see how your creative outcomes compare to your campaign investment.

Try the ToolWatch Demo