What is a CPM?

Generate revenue through impressions

So you want to sell advertising on your site? The basis for pricing your Web site's advertising space is the CPM. CPM stands for cost per thousand (the "M" is for the French word for "thousand," which is "millier"). When a visitor comes to your site and downloads a page with a banner ad, that generates what's called a "page view" or "impression."

You can set a price for each impression, meaning the number of times a visitor sees your advertiser's ads, but the common method of selling impressions is in lumps of 1,000. So if you value each impression at 2 cents, then 1,000 impressions would cost $20 (a fair price). If your visitors generate 5,000 impressions per month, you can make $100 per month on advertising and so on.
