CPV (Cost per view)
CPV is how much you spent on ads for one counted watch of a video ad. CPV stands for cost per view. A view is usually a few seconds on screen, not the whole ad. If you spend $100 and get 2,000 of those watches, CPV is $0.05. It is the price of a counted glance, not proof anyone watched to the end.
Theodor Lindfors, Founding Marketer ·
Formula
CPV = ad spend / counted views
How to calculate CPV
Let's take a drink brand as an example. They sell a low-sugar sports drink for active women over 50, mostly from their own website, and they run ads on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. This month the drink brand ran a 20-second YouTube ad: a woman on a morning walk, bottle in hand, with the product name at the end.
A view is not an impression. An impression is one time the ad was served (it was sent to a screen). A view is a counted watch under a platform rule. YouTube TrueView typically charges when someone watches 30 seconds, watches the whole ad if it is shorter, or clicks. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) might count 3 seconds. TikTok often counts 2 seconds or 6 seconds, depending on the setting. Name the rule before you divide spend by views.
The drink brand spent $1,000. YouTube counted 20,000 TrueView views on that 20-second morning-walk ad. 1,000 divided by 20,000 is $0.05. That is the drink brand's cost per view (CPV) on YouTube. The same $1,000 on Instagram, with a 3-second view definition, might count 50,000 views and a $0.02 cost per view. It looks cheaper. It measured a shorter glance.
Why CPV matters
Video buying often auctions on views, not clicks. A view is a counted watch under a platform rule. A click is a tap on the ad. CPM (cost per mille) is what you pay per thousand times the ad is shown. Cost per view (CPV) tells you what you paid for a counted moment of attention. Let's take a drink brand as an example. They sell a low-sugar sports drink for active women over 50. Cost per view does not tell you if anyone stayed for the product name at the end of the drink brand's 20-second morning-walk ad.
Pair cost per view (CPV) with video completion rate (the share of viewers who watched to the end) and cost per completed view (what you paid for people who actually finished). A cheap cost per view with almost nobody reaching the last five seconds of the drink brand's morning-walk ad did not deliver the message.
How to read CPV
A cheap cost per view (CPV) on a 2-second definition can look better than a ThruPlay cost per view (Meta's 15-second-or-completion view on Facebook and Instagram) and still be worse attention. Compare like with like. Do not average YouTube and TikTok into one view cost. Let's take a drink brand as an example. They sell a low-sugar sports drink for active women over 50. The drink brand reports the $0.05 YouTube cost per view and the $0.02 Instagram cost per view as two rows, never one blended 'video CPV.'
Common CPV mistakes
These mistakes show up when a drink brand that sells a low-sugar sports drink treats every platform's counted view as the same unit of attention.
- Treating every platform's view as the same unit. A view is a counted watch under a platform rule, often a few seconds. The drink brand's $0.05 YouTube cost per view (CPV) on the 20-second morning-walk ad and $0.02 Instagram cost per view on a 3-second definition are not competing with each other.
- Optimizing cost per view (CPV) so hard the video never asks for the click. A counted view that never visits the drink brand's shop does not restock the warehouse.
Lemonado
How Lemonado helps with cost per view
YouTube, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and TikTok do not mean the same thing by a view. A view is a counted watch under a platform rule, often a few seconds, not necessarily the whole ad. Lemonado keeps each platform's definition next to the spend, so you do not blend two different view products into one cost per view (CPV).