When viewing your earnings on either the Union for Gamers dashboard or YouTube Analytics, the two most important statistics to watch are your CPM and eCPM.  But what are these statistics and why are they important?

CPM

CPM, or Clicks Per Mille (thousand), is the amount that an advertiser is paying for their ads per thousand views.  Because your content obviously isn't only showing a single ad, the number that you will find on your UfG or YT dashboards is an average of the various CPM amounts of each of the different ads that are played on your videos. 

For example: Your video has played 10 different ads.  Three have a CPM of $1, five with a CPM of $2.40, one with a CPM of $4, and one with a CPM of $.75.  This would make the average CPM for that video $1.98.

As you can imagine, the importance of knowing your CPM is that it allows you to get an idea of the worth of the ads that are being displayed on your channel.  In addition, CPM is constantly fluctuating based on marketing needs from advertisers.  During holidays, CPM will raise to all-time highs due to the desire to advertise, whereas times such as the first few months of the year are typically all-time lows.  Many often confuse CPM as being the amount that they are earning, however having a CPM of $1.98 doesn't mean that you are actually earning $1.98 per thousand views.  That's where eCPM comes in.

eCPM

eCPM, also referred to as RPM or Estimated Monetized Playbacks, is a number calculated for a past segment of time and tells you the EXACT amount you earned per every 1,000 views during that time. 

For example: We want to determine our eCPM for the previous month (31 days).  During this time, we gained 60,000 views and generated $300.  Using a simple formula, we can determine our eCPM.

Revenue ÷ Views x 1,000 = eCPM

So in this example our formula would look like this:

$300 ÷ 60,000 x 1,000 = $5 eCPM

This means that during the previous month, we earned $5 for every 1,000 views that our content generated during those 31 days.  You might notice that the eCPM you see on your UfG dashboard is slightly less than on YouTube (who call it Estimated Monetized Playbacks).  This is because the eCPM on your UfG dashboard is being calculated after removing the 10% cut that the network takes. 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding CPM or eCPM, please feel free to contact us here.