PR Activity CPM Calculator

Calculate the efficiency of PR activity using Estimated Views.

The total cost of my PR activity was…

Total cost

It generated Estimated Views of…

Total Estimated Views

Note: Estimated Views is a metric from CoverageBook.

Calculate

CPM

Use this number to compare the value of PR activity to other areas of marketing. Read on to learn more about CPM and why it’s relevant for PR...

Why calculate the efficiency of your PR campaigns through ‘CPM’?

In paid advertising where the goal is to raise awareness, one of the most commonly used advertising metrics is Cost Per Mille (also known as CPM), which measures the cost of every 1000 ad or media impressions. It is a way to see the efficiency of your ad spend.

In layman’s terms – it measures how much it costs to place your ad 1000 times on a particular page(s) of a target website.

The formula for calculating CPM in advertising is:

= (Total $ spend / total impressions) * 1000

A CPM of $80 means that for every 1000 impressions of your ad on the website, you’ll pay the ad network… $80. Simple right?

The weakness of this metric is that it’s not factoring in the cost of the advertising pro to create the ad and push the buttons to get that ad live.

How to apply CPM to earned media

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to calculate a CPM $ number for your media & social coverage? Absolutely. The good news is, it’s really easy to calculate.

But first, here are some questions CPM can help you answer…

“How does the CPM for PR coverage compare to other paid channels?"

(my guess is it will look great!)

“Are we getting more or less cost-effective at driving CPM?”

“How does the CPM compare across certain territories if you’re assessing global coverage and the impact of your teams or agencies?”

How to calculate a Cost per 1000 (CPM) metric for your coverage

Step 1

Work out the total cost of all the PR inputs into the campaign or time period. This usually includes the total salaries/retainer fees of the work.

Step 2

Calculate the Estimated views of all your media or social coverage. (Ideally this should be for a specific time period or campaign.) I’m not talking about the total reach of the outlets here. I mean the actual or predicted number of views the page or post your coverage appeared on got. Luckily if you use CoverageBook we provide this number for you.

Step 3

Once you have the total, you can do a simple calculation using the CPM calculator above.

Here's an example

Total cost to generate coverage = $10,000

Total views/impressions of the coverage = 1,500,000

CPM formula = (Total $ spend / total impressions) * 1000

CPM (Cost per 1,000 Estimated Views) = $6.67

This is not AVE, but a step forward for measuring awareness and your cost efficiency of driving it is something you want to measure.

Just a few ideas anyway. Hope that was useful.

Choose Estimated Views for realistic PR impact numbers like the team at Diageo

“It's a big gripe of mine seeing PR saying potential reach is X million or even X billion people. As a brand manager and allocator of budget, you can't take a lot from 'reach data'. We like using the 'Estimated Coverage Views' metric in CoverageBook. It's more realistic which means it's easier for me to compare PR against other areas of marketing.”

James Alexander

Head of Culture & Entertainment, PR & Influencer Marketing, Diageo

Learn more about Estimated Views