Influencer CPM: How to Price a Brand Deal by Views

Influencer CPM is the cost per 1,000 views of sponsored content. To price a deal with it, divide your typical views per post by 1,000 and multiply by a CPM for your platform and format. Karat's guide puts a sponsored Instagram Reel at $15 to $35 per 1,000 views, so a Reel that typically gets 40,000 views prices at $600 to $1,400.

CPM gives you a number you can explain to a brand, and brands run the same math on you. This guide covers the formula, the published ranges we verified, which views to count, how quoted and delivered CPM differ and where CPM pricing falls short.

What is influencer CPM?

CPM stands for cost per mille, the price per 1,000 views or impressions. For a creator, it's the price per 1,000 views of a sponsored post, and the math works in both directions:

• Your rate equals your typical views divided by 1,000, times the CPM.
• The CPM of a past deal equals the fee divided by the views in thousands.

So a $20 CPM on a video that typically gets 25,000 views prices it at $500. Going the other way, a $1,200 fee on a video that reached 60,000 views worked out to a $20 CPM.

YouTube uses the same letters for something else. Its help page on ad revenue defines RPM as what you earned per 1,000 video views after YouTube's share, and CPM as what advertisers spend per 1,000 ad impressions. A brand deal CPM is the price you set for your own sponsored content, separate from both.

What CPM should you charge?

Published guides put most sponsored formats between $5 and $80 per 1,000 views, with Stories at the low end, dedicated YouTube videos near the top and finance channels higher still. Each range below is the guide's own rule of thumb, with no sample behind it.

The ranges come from Karat's pricing guide, which carries no date (we checked it in November 2026), and mysocial.io's pricing guide, updated March 2026.

The guides disagree most on TikTok, where Karat's dedicated-video range starts above mysocial.io's ceiling. Both raise the number for niche: Karat says finance, software, B2B and real estate audiences command higher CPMs, and mysocial.io doubles its YouTube range for finance, tech and B2B.

Engagement decides where you sit inside a range. Karat treats 2% to 3% engagement as average, 5% or higher as strong and 8% or higher as exceptional.

A worked example

Here's how far the published ranges can drift apart, using a made-up TikTok creator whose dedicated videos get a median of 25,000 views at 30 days.

When ranges disagree this much, your cost floor and your past deals decide where you land. Quote the higher of the CPM result and your cost floor, as our guide to pricing a brand deal explains.

Which views should go into the math?

Use what a typical post gets: the median or average of your recent posts, with outliers left out. Then check how your platform counts a view, because the definitions differ.

Karat says to use the average of your last 10 to 15 pieces of content, leaving out your best performers. mysocial.io says to use the median of your last 20 posts, since 1 viral outlier skews an average.

The median is the safer pick. If 1 of your last 20 Reels hit 2 million views, your average jumps while your typical Reel stays where it was, and a brand that scrolls your profile will see the typical one.

Count each format on its own. Reels and feed posts draw different views, and mysocial.io says to leave Shorts out of your YouTube long-form numbers.

Fix the window as well. Views keep climbing for weeks, especially on YouTube, so take views at a set point, like 30 days after posting, and compare like with like.

YouTube says Partner Program eligibility and Shorts revenue sharing are based on engaged views. When you quote a Shorts deal, say which count your number comes from, since a CPM applied to the public count produces a bigger fee than the same CPM on engaged views.

Meta's docs also mark impressions as deprecated for Instagram media created after July 2, 2024. Quote newer Instagram posts on views and reach.

How do quoted CPM and delivered CPM differ?

Quoted CPM is what you charge for the views you expect. Delivered CPM is the fee divided by the views the post went on to get, and it's the number a brand can check once the post is live.

The gap can be wide. Net Influencer reported in October 2026 on the deal log of Ames Create, a studio that negotiates brand deals for creators. In the brands' own pricing within its deals, the figure was $7 to $10 per 1,000 views, drawn from 3 brands.

The same report said 3 campaigns the studio tracked paid $1.55 to $4.72 per 1,000 delivered views, because the videos beat the view counts their fees were set against. Those are small samples from 1 studio, so read them as an example of how far the 2 numbers can drift.

When a post over-delivers, the brand's delivered CPM falls and it got more than it paid for. You can handle that in 2 ways:

• Keep the quote at your median and add a bonus for views above a set level within 30 days of posting.
• Quote a little above your median and treat over-delivery as the brand's upside, which helps the renewal pitch.

Where does CPM pricing fall short?

CPM prices views, so it misses the rights a brand buys, the cost of making the content and audiences worth more than their size suggests.

• Rights: usage, whitelisting and exclusivity each need their own line on top of the CPM result.
• UGC: content that runs only on the brand's channels has no views on your account to price, so quote the work and the license.
• Specialist audiences: a video that reaches 5,000 dentists can be worth more to a dental brand than any CPM suggests, and our guide to how many followers you need for brand deals covers how smaller accounts get paid.
• Long-tail content: YouTube videos and podcasts keep earning views for months, so price on a 30-day window and treat the tail as upside, or charge more for longer windows. Podcast CPMs run on downloads instead of views, as our guide to podcast sponsorship rates shows.

1DS Management represents 107 creators, athletes and entrepreneurs and has closed 2,000+ brand deals, and Brand Partnerships is 1 of our 10 services. If you'd like a team pricing your next deal, apply for representation.