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What Is YouTube CPM? [+ Why It Matters]
YouTube is a powerful advertising platform with over two billion monthly active users. As a creator, this means you have numerous opportunities to earn money. Understanding YouTube CPM is key to unlocking its potential.
CPM, Cost per 1,000 Impressions, is a vital metric that determines how much advertisers pay to reach viewers through your videos.
It’s commonly used across various paid media platforms to describe the advertising expenditure per 1,000 individuals reached by the ad.
By maximizing your YouTube CPM, you increase your earnings and demonstrate the value of your content. In this article, we‘ll explore what CPM is, how it’s calculated, what makes a “good CPM,” and more.
Table of Contents
What is CPM, and how is it calculated?
Why is CPM important?
The Average CPM on YouTube
The Highest CPM on Youtube
What is CPM, and how is it calculated?
CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions, is the cost an advertiser needs to pay on YouTube for every 1,000 impressions their ads receive on your video.
CPM varies depending on how much an advertiser pays to display the ad. Advertising costs on YouTube depend on a range of factors, including bidding price, ad type, and consistency.
To calculate CPM, divide the amount the advertiser paid for an ad by the number of views a video has. Then, multiply by 1,000.
For instance, let‘s assume an advertiser is paying $9 for an ad seen 5,000 times on your video. To calculate CPM, you’d divide nine by 5,000 = $0.0018, then multiply $0.0018 by 1,000.
This gives you a CPM of $1.80. YouTube takes 45% of your CPM, meaning you‘ll receive 55% of that $1.80. So, if you make $1.80 CPM off an ad, you’ll only keep $0.99.
Additionally, there’s another type of CPM: playback-based CPM.
Rather than calculating the cost the advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions, playback-based CPM calculates the cost an advertiser pays for 1,000 video playbacks where an ad is displayed.
There are free calculators available online if you don’t want to calculate your CPM manually.
And while individual videos’ CPMs might seem small (like the $0.99 made above), it can add up to a hefty monthly earning if plenty of businesses see your videos as consistently worthwhile platforms for their promotions.
Why is CPM important?
As a YouTube creator, CPM is an important metric for analyzing which of your videos are most valuable to advertisers.
Since advertising is the primary method for monetization on YouTube, it’s essential to understand how CPM works to ensure you’re maximizing revenue.
To make a full-time career out of YouTube, it’s critical to know which videos can be monetized so you can create a more efficient, long-term strategy to target those types of topics.
For instance, perhaps you create YouTube videos for beauty, health, and wellness. But you find “Drugstore Makeup Tutorials” receive the highest CPMs. This suggests you should make more content that aligns with that topic.
One of the best ways to increase your CPM is to make your channel an ideal space for advertisers to place their ads.
YouTube research has found that ad exposure (ensuring their ads reach people multiple times per week) significantly improves advertising ROI.
Advertisers consistently placing ads on your videos benefits them, earning you higher CPM and increased revenue.
Additionally, if you find one business in particular consistently advertises on your videos.
If the brand aligns with your values, you might reach out directly to discuss other YouTube monetization opportunities, like affiliate marketing or brand partnerships.
The Average CPM on YouTube
CPM varies greatly depending on how much an advertiser pays to distribute an ad on your video.
Let‘s say an advertiser pays $10 for an ad that plays on your video with 1,000 views. If that’s the case, you‘d make $10 CPM (10/1,000 x 1,000). Of course, you’ll need to take 45% off that total — making your earnings around $5.
However, in most cases, the videos on which businesses choose to advertise will have more than 1,000 views, making your earnings closer to $7-$10.
Jillian Hope, HubSpot’s Senior Manager of Brand Advertising, agrees, telling me her team typically sees an average of $7 to $10 from past campaigns.
It’s important to note that CPM is just one metric that you can use to analyze and improve your YouTube performance.
For example, YouTube analytics provide metrics like revenue per mille (RPM), which shows how much you’re earning per 1,000 video views across multiple revenue sources.
The Highest CPM on YouTube
The highest CPM varies by country, but here’s a list of the five highest YouTube CPM rates by country from 2022-2023:
Norway: $43.15
Germany: $38.85
Moldova: $29.50
Algeria: $24.50
South Korea: $17.00
Higher CPM rates also relate to the content of your videos. Some categories earn higher CPMs than others. Some popular content niches on YouTube that earn high CPMs include:
Makeup
Retail
Health
Finance
Technology
But video topics aren’t the only factor that can make your CPM fluctuate. Many creators report peaks and troughs in their CPM throughout the year.
For example, seasonal shopping around the holidays throughout November and December can temporarily drive up YouTube earnings in certain niches.
Getting Started
As a creator, you should use CPM as a metric to help you identify which topics seem most valuable to advertisers, as those topics likely provide the most opportunity for monetization.
Rather than looking for “quick tricks” to increase your CPM, however, you’ll want to play the long game by creating a comprehensive YouTube strategy that helps you increase sales, reach new audiences, and grow brand awareness.
Merge Cells in Excel in 5 Minutes or Less
Knowing the ins and outs of Excel is essential for organizing data, understanding analytics, and getting the most from your marketing efforts. The tool is great for quickly processing vast amounts of data, but it can be overwhelming if you don’t spend the majority of your workday whipping up spreadsheets.
Fortunately, a few basic skills are all you need to put together an easy-to-read spreadsheet. One is knowing how to merge cells in Excel. Whether you’re planning blog articles for the upcoming quarter, creating an email list for a targeted campaign, or designing SEO-friendly Google ads, merging cells is a handy way to organize your information.
To sharpen your skills, we’ll cover several ways to combine cells.
How to merge two cells
How to merge and center cells
How to merge multiple cells
How to merge cells without losing data
A shortcut to merge cells
Why can’t I merge cells?
Don’t want to start from scratch? Use these free Excel templates as a foundation for your own marketing spreadsheets.
How to Merge Two Cells in Excel
Merging is a way to turn two small cells into one new, large cell. This is useful for organizing information and creating headers, without the need to resize individual cells. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Highlight the two adjacent cells you want to merge (I’m merging A1 and B1 in the example).
Step 2: Under the Home tab, click the ‘Merge’ icon and choose ‘Merge Cells’.
Step 3: That’s it! You’ve merged the cells.
Note: When combining cells, only the data in the upper left cell is saved. Make sure to save the information from the other cell so it’s not lost. If you happen to have data in both A1 and B1, Excel won’t simply wipe it. This alert will pop up:
Don’t want to delete the data? Click ‘Cancel,’ and copy/paste the information into a separate document or cell before merging. If you only need the information in the upper-left cell, click ‘OK’ to merge the cells.
How to Merge and Center Cells in Excel
Say you’re building a marketing report and want your titles to be centered above your data. Merge and center cells by following these steps.
Step 1: Highlight the cells you want to merge.
Step 2: Under the Home tab, click the ‘Merge’ icon and choose ‘Merge & Center.’
Step 3: Your cells will merge and the data will be centered within the cell.
How to Merge Cells in Excel Shortcut
Clicking the correct ‘Merge’ function over and over can be a drag if you need to combine a lot of cells. For fast merging, start by highlighting the cells you want to merge. Then, type the following key combinations.
Excel Shortcuts for Windows
Merge Cells: ALT H+M+M
Merge & Center: ALT H+M+C
Merge Across: ALT H+M+A
Unmerge Cells: ALT H+M+U
Excel Shortcuts for OS
The Apple operating system doesn’t have an ALT key, so you have to set up your own shortcut to merge cells.
In Excel, click ‘Tools’ under the navigation bar.
Select ‘Customize Keyboard.’
A pop-up will appear. Under the header ‘Specify a Command’ there are two columns: Categories and Commands. For Categories, select ‘Home Tab.’ For Commands, select ‘Merge Cells.’
Select the text box under ‘Press new keyboard shortcut.’ Type the key combination for your shortcut. For example: CONTROL+M.
Click ‘OK’ to set your shortcut.
You can now use CONTROL+M to merge cells in Excel.
Set up additional shortcuts for Merge Across, Merge & Center, or Unmerge.
How to Merge Multiple Cells in Excel
You know the basics, but now you want to get creative and merge more than two cells. Depending on your desired spreadsheet layout, you can use the Merge Across, Merge Cells, or Merge & Center function.
1. Merge Across
This option is used to merge cells within a single row. You can’t use ‘Merge Across’ to combine cells within a column or across multiple rows.
In this example, I’m setting up PPC ads and want to see my description copy in row 17. If I simply resize column F, my table will have too much space between column F and G. Merging multiple cells across row 17 lets me see the copy and keep the table neat.
Step 1: Highlight all the cells you want to merge within the row.
Step 2: Under the Home tab, click the ‘Merge’ icon and choose ‘Merge Across.’
Step 3: The cells merge across the entire highlighted area.
2. Merge & Center
You can merge and center multiple cells across rows and down columns. Just remember the data in the upper-left cell is the only information that will stay once merged. In the example below, I use ‘Merge & Center’ to combine rows 15, 16, and 17 with columns F, G, and H.
3. Merge Cells
The ‘Merge Cells’ function is ideal to combine multiple adjacent cells across rows and columns. It works just like the ‘Merge & Center’ function, except the data will be left-aligned instead of centered after merging.
How to Merge Cells in Excel Without Losing Data
Want to merge cells without losing information from all but the upper left cell? Easy. You can use the ampersand (&) or the CONCATENATE function to combine data from two or more cells.
In the example below, I’m creating copy for Instagram and want to combine the caption with its corresponding link.
Ampersand
Step 1: Choose the cell where you want to put the merged data. Make sure this is separate from the cells you’re merging.
Step 2: Type = in the blank cell and select the first cell to combine.
Step 3: Type & and use ” ” to leave a space between cell data.
Step 4: Type & again before choosing the next cell. Repeat for all the cells you want to combine. An example formula is =D5&” “&E5.
Step 5: Hit Enter. In the example, you can see how the text from cells D5 and E5 merged into F5.
CONCATENATE or CONCAT
The CONCATENATE function (or CONCAT) is another way to combine two or more text strings together.
The formula in Excel is =CONCATENATE (text1,text2,…). Text1 is the first cell to merge and can be a text value, number, or cell reference. Text2 is the next item to join. For this function, you can merge up to 255 items or 8,192 characters.
Step 1: Highlight a new blank cell where you want to merge the data.
Step 2: In the formula bar, type =CONCATENATE(
Step 3: A formula builder will pop up, allowing you to choose Text1, Text2, and so on. Select the cells you want to merge, in order from first to last. To include spaces between the cell data, you must include ,” “, within the formula. [i.e. =CONCATENATE(D5,” “,E5)]
Step 4: Hit Enter. The data from your selected cells will be combined in the CONCATENATE cell.
Why Can’t I Merge Cells in Excel?
A lot can go wrong if your formula or formatting isn’t set up correctly. If you’re struggling to merge cells, try these troubleshooting tips.
Ensure you’re not actively editing a cell you want to merge. The ‘Merge’ icon will be shaded out if you’re in the middle of making changes. To fix this, simply hit ‘Enter’ to stop editing or click onto another cell before clicking back to the cell you’d like to merge.
Check if one of the cells is part of an Excel table. Tables have a unique format that don’t allow merging. You can tell you’re on a Table if the ‘Chart Design’ or ‘Format’ tabs across the top of your workbook are highlighted in green and the ‘Merge’ icon is shaded out.
Look at the sharing permissions of the Excel workbook. If it’s not shared with you or is protected, you won’t be able to make any changes or merge cells.
How to Unmerge Cells
Maybe you got a little excited trying out your new skills and merged one cell too many. Don’t panic. Simply unmerge your cells by following these steps.
Highlight the cells you want to unmerge.
Under the Home tab, click the ‘Merge’ icon and choose ‘Unmerge Cells.’
Your cells will go back to the original formatting, but you will have lost the information from before the merge.
If you need that information, click ‘Command’ + Z (OS) or ‘CTRL’ +Z (Windows) to undo your actions until you see the data pop up.
Excel Shortcuts Make Life Easier
While using spreadsheets can feel intimidating at first, with the tips and shortcuts above, you’ll have it down in no time.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in May 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
How to Use Wistia: A Step-by-Step Guide
If you’re looking for ways to strengthen your video marketing strategy, you’ve come to the right place!
We’ve partnered with our friends at Wistia, the complete video marketing platform for any business, to show you how to use Wistia and HubSpot to strategically reach your goals with video.
In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn:
Where your business should be using video
How to upload your videos to Wistia
How to customize your videos
How to share your videos
How to generate leads from your videos
How to track your video performance in HubSpot
Let’s dive in!
Where You Should be Using Video
Video is an awesome way to connect with your potential and existing customers on a personal level, almost like meeting them face-to-face. It’s the perfect tool to showcase your product and let your brand’s personality shine through.
Businesses that ace their video marketing game have figured out how to use video at different touchpoints across their customer journey. If you want to take your video marketing strategy to the next level, here’s where you should consider using video:
Your website’s landing pages
Blog posts
Your help center
Email campaigns
Your software application
Social media channels
… the list goes on
Now, here’s where Wistia comes into play. Designed for marketers, Wistia provides all the video creation, hosting, sharing, and analytics tools your business needs to integrate video into the customer journey and attract, engage, nurture, and convert leads.
Ready to learn how to use Wistia to make your videos work harder for your business? Let’s get started!
How to Use Wistia in 6 Steps
Step 1: Upload your videos to Wistia.
It’s super easy to get your videos uploaded to Wistia. All you have to do is create a new Project in your account and choose the videos you want to upload to it. As soon as you’ve uploaded a video, it’s automatically transcribed and ready to be distributed anywhere you want your video to be seen.
Wistia’s recommended upload settings for video are:
MP4 file
H.264 codec
5,000–8,000 kbps target bitrate
Want to make the process even easier? You can seamlessly import videos straight from Descript, Zoom, and YouTube. These are just a few Wistia integrations that can help make your video workflow a breeze.
Create Videos in Wistia
Don’t have any videos to upload? No problem! You can create videos right in Wistia. Here are some of the things you can do:
Create short tutorials, video voicemails, or other talking head videos using Wistia’s screen and webcam recording feature.
Make simple edits to your videos with Wistia’s video editor: Trim out unnecessary parts, create shareable clips, add music, and more.
Host a webinar with Wistia Live, and then redistribute your recording.
Step 2: Customize your videos.
Wistia offers a variety of ways to customize your videos to not only deliver a great viewing experience, but also to help you reach your business goals.
You can customize your player color to match your branding, create a custom thumbnail to entice your audience to press the play button, add chapters to make it easy for your viewers to find the information they’re looking for, insert a Call to Action (CTA) to direct your viewers to an action you’d like them to take, and more.
You can make changes anytime, and your video will be updated wherever it’s embedded.
We also recommend making sure your videos are accessible to everyone. By enabling features like captions and audio descriptions, you can open the doors to a broader audience, allowing more people to enjoy your videos. With Wistia’s in-app accessibility checklist, it’s easier than ever to make video accessibility a seamless part of your workflow.
Step 3: Integrate HubSpot with Wistia.
Did you know that you can combine the powers of HubSpot and Wistia to seamlessly capture, track, and manage leads? You can also use this integration to embed your Wistia-hosted video into your emails and website.
If you have a HubSpot account and an Advanced or Premium Wistia software subscription plan, follow these steps to integrate both accounts:
Connect the HubSpot integration in your Wistia account. This allows Wistia to request your lists and forms and send leads and engagement data into HubSpot.
If you’re tracking a video, set up a Wistia email capture form (called Turnstile) or add a HubSpot form directly to the video. Turnstiles and HubSpot forms are how Wistia identifies users for proper tracking.
Embed your video on a page with a HubSpot tracking script. The Wistia player and HubSpot script work together to identify users and track their activity for display on HubSpot contact records.
The first step is usually a one-time thing, and thereafter you’ll only need to repeat the second and third steps for each video you want to track.
Step 4: Share your videos.
Whether you want to embed your videos somewhere, publish them on social, or send them to folks privately, Wistia makes it super simple to share your videos.
How to Display Your Wistia Videos
Embedding a Wistia-hosted video onto your website is a piece of cake.
All you need to do is open the Embed & Share window from your Media Page, choose your embed code type, fine-tune it, and then paste it onto your website.
There are two main types of Wistia embeds: inline embeds and popover embeds. Inline embeds will place the player directly on the page, in line with the rest of your content. Popover embeds display your video’s thumbnail in line, but play the video in a popover window when selected. The best part is that there’s no coding required.
Wistia Channels
Wistia Channels enables you to turn a collection of videos into a video gallery without a developer’s help. With just a simple embed code, you can take your recent webinars, a library of product videos, or a branded series (like a podcast) and display them as a beautiful, binge-able collection.
Embedding a Channel on your website is as simple as embedding a single video. Use an inline code when you want your Channel to show within the flow of your website, or use a popover code when you want to give your viewer a more immersive, full-window viewing experience.
More Ways to Share Your Videos
With Wistia’s Email Campaign Link feature, you can include your videos in your marketing emails and even track their success. Just grab the email merge tag Wistia generated specifically for your favorite email marketing provider and then paste it into the body of your email.
The Wistia + HubSpot integration makes embedding videos into your emails even easier. When you connect both accounts, you can access your Wistia video library in HubSpot using Media Bridge, select a Wistia video, and then embed it in a HubSpot email or web page.
Want to share your videos on social media? Use Wistia’s Publish to Social feature to connect Wistia to your Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn accounts and then directly upload your video content to these social networks.
Wistia’s integration with Hootsuite also lets you access your Wistia library from within the Hootsuite platform. It’s easy for you to find, schedule, and publish your Wistia-hosted video content to any social media channel via Hootsuite.
If you just want to share a video without making it available to everyone on the internet, no problem — simply grab a direct link to the video. The link will take folks to a media page you can customize to provide a branded viewing experience.
No matter how you share your Wistia videos, it’s easy to keep your content secure with privacy and security options. You can control access to your videos by password-protecting your video, sharing a private video link, or adding an email gate to your video or Channel.
Step 5: Generate leads.
Videos are a great way to generate leads for your business, and Wistia makes it easy to do so. With Turnstile, you can capture email addresses at any point in your video’s timeline.
If you’ve integrated HubSpot with Wistia, you can access your existing HubSpot forms in Wistia and add them to your videos. You can capture leads with your videos and pass detailed viewing data into your HubSpot customer relationship management system (CRM). Then score, segment, and assign leads in a flash based on video triggers.
Generating Leads with Wistia’s Live Event Registration
If you set up a webinar or a live-streamed event with Wistia, it’s easy to see who registered, who attended, and who was the most engaged.
When you enable registration, Wistia automatically creates a landing page for your event so you can collect sign-up information like names and email addresses. If you’ve integrated HubSpot with Wistia, those contacts get passed right from your registration page to HubSpot. Now, you can also use HubSpot forms right on your registration page.
As soon as your webinar or live stream is over, your audience can watch it on demand. Whether you include a link to your webinar recording in an email blast or create a landing page to host your on-demand webinars, the leads can keep flowing in.
Step 6: Track your videos’ performance.
Lastly, Wistia’s detailed analytics can help you strengthen your video marketing strategy over time. You’ll get insights into who’s watching your videos, how much they’re watching, and which ones provide the most value for your business.
Engagement Graphs
Wistia’s engagement graphs show how your audience consumes your content. You can see which sections of your media your audience replayed multiple times and where they stopped playing, with drop-offs indicating when attention waned and big spikes revealing sections that people found compelling enough to replay.
Analytics by Embed Location
To understand how your video is performing based on where it lives on your site, you can view media analytics by embed location.
All you need to do is head to the Media Analytics Overview page and scroll down. From there, you’ll see metrics like plays, play rate, time played, engagement, unique visitors, and conversion rate for each embed location during the date range you’ve selected at the top of the page.
Heatmaps
Wistia heatmaps show precisely which parts of your video each individual viewer has watched, skipped, and rewatched.
With the Wistia + HubSpot integration, Wistia heatmaps will appear in your contact timeline. You can also see how many videos a HubSpot contact has watched. Once a contact has filled out a HubSpot form anywhere on your website, all their viewing data for any video on your site is added to their contact card in HubSpot.
With these insights, you can build email workflows that automatically contact your most engaged viewers. What’s more, your sales team will get a complete view of their leads’ interactions and the integration will proactively alert them when their leads are watching key videos so they can reach out at optimal times.
Make Your Videos Work Harder for You
If you’ve made it to the end of this article, congrats! You’ve just upped your video marketing game. We hope you’re inspired to start doing more with video for your business. And when you’re cooking with HubSpot and Wistia, you’ve got the perfect recipe for video success!