You can check your YouTube revenue and channel performance with metrics in YouTube Analytics. Some metrics seem similar, but their differences are important for understanding your YouTube ad revenue.
RPM
Revenue Per Mille (RPM) is a metric that represents how much money you've earned per 1,000 video views. RPM is based on several revenue sources, including: ads, channel memberships, YouTube Premium revenue, Super Chat, and Super Stickers.
For Shorts, RPM is calculated per 1,000 engaged views, which is the metric used for Shorts ad revenue sharing. Learn about Shorts view count changes.
Why is my RPM lower than my CPM?
What’s the difference between RPM and CPM?
Why is RPM important?
How can I increase my RPM?
If my RPM is going up or going down, what does it mean?
What doesn't RPM tell me about my revenue?
CPM
Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) is a metric that represents how much money advertisers are spending to show ads on YouTube. You’ll see a few different CPM metrics in YouTube Analytics:
- CPM: The cost an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions. An ad impression is counted anytime an ad is displayed.
- Playback-based CPM: The cost an advertiser pays for 1,000 video playbacks where an ad is displayed.
What’s the difference between CPM and playback-based CPM?
Why is CPM important?
Why is my CPM changing?
Estimated revenue vs. ad revenue
- Estimated revenue: Revenue from all revenue types including channel memberships, YouTube Premium revenue, and Super Chat. You’ll see this metric on the Revenue tab.
- Estimated ad revenue: Revenue just from ads on your videos. You’ll see this metric in the revenue sources report.
Views, ad impressions, & estimated monetized playbacks
- Views: The number of times your video was watched.
- Ad impressions: The number of times individual ads were viewed on your videos.
- Estimated monetized playbacks: The number of times your video was watched with ads.
If your video is viewed 10 times, and 8 of those views contained ads, you would have 10 views and 8 estimated monetized playbacks. If one of those estimated monetized playbacks actually had 2 ads, you would have 9 ad impressions.
Not all views on YouTube have an ad. A view may not have an ad if:
- The video is not advertiser-friendly.
- Ads are turned off for that video.
- There isn’t an ad available to show to that particular viewer. Advertisers can choose to target specific devices, demographics, and interests. Your viewer may not match this targeting. Learn more about available targeting methods for video ads.
- A range of other factors, including the viewer’s geography, how recently they’ve seen an ad, whether they have a Premium subscription, and so on.
Because of these different views, you’ll likely have more views than estimated monetized playbacks.