There has been a surge of YouTube creators since the pandemic struck, most local entertainers, comedians, have their own YouTube channels now. This brings in another stream of revenues to creators and this is where Revenue Per Mille comes in.
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YouTube creators in the company’s Partner Program can earn money a bunch of different ways — through advertising, subscriptions, donations, live-streaming features, and YouTube Premium revenue. There are a lot of variables, and now YouTube is finally gathering all of those numbers in one place and giving that information to creators in the form of a new monetization metric called RPM.
RPM, stands for Revenue Per Mille and its a take on the standard metric YouTube creators already use referred to as CPM, or cost per mille (sometimes referred to as cost per thousand). Although the two sound similar, they do two different things. RPM is much more useful for creators who are trying to grow their channels and figure out where their monthly income is coming from.
CPM measures the cost of every 1,000 ad impressions before YouTube takes its share of revenue, but Revenue Per Mille shows a creator’s total revenue (both from ads and other monetization areas) after YouTube takes the cut. This doesn’t represent a change to how much creators are making. Rather, it helps creators better understand where they’re making their money and how the revenue share breaks down.
Most creators were getting a paycheck every month, but they were not exactly sure how it came to that number. Basically, if CPM is an advertiser-focused metric, Revenue Per Mille is tailor-made for creators.
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So what is entailed in Revenue Per Mille? It constitutes the total number of video views, including videos that weren’t monetized. This is designed to show creators how much they might be missing out on revenue-wise from videos that generate views but aren’t eligible for monetization and changes they can make to ensure future videos are monetized.
A new blog on Google’s support pages defined Revenue Per Mille as a snapshot of the rate at which you’re earning money on YouTube. Whether RPM goes up or down, it’s a good indication of things that are working or not working in your revenue strategy.
Just to be sure, YouTube’s introduction of Revenue Per Mille doesn’t mean CPM numbers are irrelevant. The higher the CPM, the more an advertiser is paying for that ad, and the more money a creator makes on a video. If a creator has a higher CPM, it can be a pretty good indicator of how valuable a specific advertiser finds that creator’s channel and its videos. YouTube’s new RPM stat won’t show that same kind of advertisement indicator.
YouTube is making other changes to seemingly try to make it easier for creators to earn more ad revenue, including giving creators access to mid-roll ads on eight-minute videos starting later this month.
