Assessing cost reporting metrics is an essential step to optimize advertising costs and increase margin. While you’ll likely be willing to pay a higher CPM, CPC, or CPCV for certain products and services, ad placements, and audiences, you can determine whether a particular campaign’s cost metrics make sense for your specific goals. For example, you might optimize to CPM to expand the number of users you can reach via upper-funnel awareness campaigns.

Cost reporting metrics feature the same or similar names to certain buying models in programmatic advertising. Note that cost reporting metrics are different from those buying models. The IQM platform uses a CPM-based buying model, and the cost metrics you’ll encounter in the Reports app are for reporting purposes only.

You can review data and analytics related to four cost metrics in the IQM platform:

CPM represents the estimated cost of serving every 1,000 ad impressions. We arrive at this metric by dividing the total cost of a campaign by its total number of impressions, and multiplying that value by 1,000.

While CPM is useful for advertisers to determine how much they’d like to spend in advertising costs, eCPM measures the actual amount spent per thousand impressions. We arrive at this metric by dividing total ad revenue by the total number of impressions, and multiplying that value by 1,000.

While CPC is useful for advertisers to determine how much they’d like to spend to earn one click on their ad, eCPC measures the actual amount spent per thousand clicks. We arrive at this metric by dividing a campaign’s total cost by the total number of clicks it earned. For example, if you paid $100 and the ads earned 1,000 clicks, the eCPC would total $0.10.

CPCV represents the cost associated with earning a full-duration play on a video creative. We arrive at this metric by dividing the total advertising cost by the total number of video completions. Refer to Video completion rate (VCR) reporting metrics overview for more information on how completes are calculated.

Like CPM and CPC, CPCV is used as a pricing model by certain ad networks and publishers. Reviewing CPCV data can help you anticipate future costs and assess which pricing method is the most effective for your specific ad strategy and target audiences.