Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

What Are CPMs? The Gas Mileage of Your Marketing

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CPMs are the great equalizer of marketing media. To make great decisions, you need to know how to calculate them and when to use them.


In this episode of the Maven Marketing Podcast, Brandon Welch and Caleb Agee break down one of the most misunderstood metrics in all of advertising: CPM, or Cost Per Thousand (impressions). The “M” is from the Latin word “Mille” meaning thousand. Marketers love to talk about targeting and impressions, but without understanding what CPM tells you, you might be overspending without realizing it.


Learn how to calculate CPMs accurately, what counts as a good CPM across different platforms, and—most importantly—how to compare medias with each other.
You’ll learn:

  • The real definition of CPM and how to use it
  • Why CPMs are crucial in Tomorrow Marketing
  • Average CPM benchmarks across digital, TV, streaming, and out-of-home
  • The danger of random impressions and why repetition wins
  • How to ask the right questions when buying media

If you’re running any kind of advertising campaign—this is the marketing math that can make or break your ROI.


Subscribe for new episodes every Monday, and email us your marketing questions at MavenMonday@frankandmaven.com


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Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

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Caleb Agee:

If you can't understand how many people you're reaching and how far your budget's going to go, you're missing a major factor in the efficiency of your media.

Brandon Welch:

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I am your host, Brandon Welch, and I am joined by Caleb, Pogo Stick, Agee.

Caleb Agee:

in the world, oh.

Brandon Welch:

Caleb lives below a pogo stick factory.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, we have. We're in the bottom floor of a building and our upstairs neighbors have a lot of kids who visit.

Brandon Welch:

You make it sound like we're, like, crammed in a basement. It's a nice building. It's a nice building, but there is an upstairs.

Caleb Agee:

There's an upstairs and actually when we were looking for this office, I thought we were going to be the noisy neighbors. You know, in our last office we had a drum set which we didn't bring in here for everybody.

Brandon Welch:

We do have a gong, though.

Caleb Agee:

Yes, we make some noise, we bump the music, but our upstairs neighbors- the kids up there, give us a run for their money.

Brandon Welch:

Well, it's a pogo stick school, it's a pogo stick gym they call that.

Caleb Agee:

I mean sure Training for the Olympics is what it sounds like today, directly above my office is the playroom, I think, and so we were prepping this episode and it was thumping.

Brandon Welch:

It was thumping. It was thumping, thumping as you do on a pogo stick. Hey, this is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And today we're going to give you a little nerd hack called CPM, and if you've never heard of it, this is going to be really helpful for you.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, if you've ever thought about buying advertising or any sort of media, or sizing up just how loud you have to make noise to really get attention, and so it is going to go nerd territory. So you've been warned. But we're going to take the complex thing and make it simple so that you can put it to use today.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, Anybody who's spending money on marketing should understand this concept though. Absolutely. I don't think it's. We're going to keep it simple, right at some level, well enough that you can understand it.

Brandon Welch:

I'll take that back. We're actually de-nerding this because nerds will kind of use it and throw this term around and you're like, oh cool.

Caleb Agee:

Is that good or bad or what Great? I got a CPM of whatever.

Brandon Welch:

So you've probably heard of CPM if you've spent dollars on advertising. If you haven't, I would take a really strong look at who's selling you advertising and ask them why in the heck they haven't talked to you about CPM. Because it's very important. We're calling it the gas mileage of your marketing because it is the quickest number that just expresses how far your dollar is going in terms of times your ad is seen.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Some advertising platforms have much, much, much higher CPMs than others. Some are really efficient. Have low CPMs Doesn't mean it's the only metric that matters, but it is very quickly one you want to understand.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, dollar per person or thousands of people Dollar per time you're at is CPM.

Brandon Welch:

CPM, that's a Latin acronym. It's cost per milli. Milli being the Latin part Sounds fancy, but it just means thousand. Milli means 1,000. And so, literally interpreted, it's cost per thousand times your ad is seen. Why should you care, Caleb?

Caleb Agee:

You know it's really easy to get caught up in nerd talk. I talk to a lot of businesses that maybe aren't our clients yet.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

And these people. They get stuck and get sold by impressions and they get sold by clicks and CPMs, that and they're all just big numbers that kind of shoot over the advertiser's head, the business owner's head, and it's really easy to get lost in that and be like, wow, that sounds good, but what does it actually mean for the business at the end of the day? And that's a big miss. The biggest thing is understanding how many people and how often you can afford to reach them. If you can't understand how many people you're reaching and where, how far your budget's going to go, then you you're missing a major factor in the efficiency of your media. So yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So it's yeah, take out, take out all the the targeting and all this the hype that somebody is trying to sell you about their platform, and then you just go cool, uh, sounds awesome, what's the CPM? And then you just go cool, sounds awesome, what's the CPM? And we're going to get to this. My mind goes immediately to a lot of the streaming conversations and the OTT. Yes, because it sounds awesome. Why wouldn't you want targeted to the exact zip codes that you believe that your customers live in? Why wouldn't you want behavioral targeting, like they go to Target and they would be a good customer for you too.

Caleb Agee:

Why wouldn't.

Brandon Welch:

You want to target specific brands, owners of brand vehicles? Well, the reason you wouldn't is because it's like 50 times more expensive per time your ad is seen and at some point that extra premium you're paying versus a very non-targeted, non-fancy media. You could have gotten them anyway just by buying a bunch of the non-targeted, non-fancy media. You could have gotten them anyway just by buying a bunch of the non-targeted media right, exactly. Just by buying the billboard or sometimes the broadcast, or sometimes even some digital, some digital.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, even like Facebook, and it's like people tend to think, ooh, I only watch Hulu now, so I'm going to go to Hulu and it's like a lot of platforms because of what it takes to, what it costs to maintain them and pay for the premium content and, frankly, how greedy the shareholders are, they have to charge a supply and demand factor that is way, way, way more expensive per person. Seeing your ad.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So did I leave anything out there so far? I don't, I don't think so.

Caleb Agee:

Fun fact mille influenced the word mile in the english language. The english mile means it was from mille passes, which is latin for uh one, sorry 1000 paces. So our mile used to be influenced by how long it took. You know, a thousand paces would go. Fun fact. What's a pace? Well, they standardized it later, but in the Roman thing it was like how long your stride was.

Brandon Welch:

So probably four feet, Three, four feet yeah something like that.

Caleb Agee:

Anyways, eventually they used rods and poles in the old English system when they formalized it. So that's some actual nerd stuff. But I found that while I was doing some research and I thought it was fun.

Brandon Welch:

Well, it's your cost per mile.

Caleb Agee:

Your cost per mile and back to the it just comes full circle.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, back to the gas analogy, the gas allergy. Okay, so let's do some math. Since Professor Agee is here, take us from history to math there.

Caleb Agee:

Okay, so we're going to just really quickly calculate a CPM together.

Brandon Welch:

You don't need a calculator.

Caleb Agee:

You don't need a calculator. Don't pull over your car right now. I'm going to keep it really round numbers so that you can keep this going. But let's say you spent $1,000 on any media I'm not going to name it because I don't really want you to be biased by that $1,000 on any media and you got 50,000 impressions. Okay, what's an impression?

Brandon Welch:

Brandon, why didn't we go here yet?

Caleb Agee:

Yes.

Brandon Welch:

An impression is. Your ad was seen. Yes, well, theoretically it was seen, it was displayed, you paid for it to be delivered.

Caleb Agee:

On a screen or something or somewhere.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, let's get really clear about that. So if there's 12,000 magazines printed and you have an ad on one of those pages in the magazine, that's 12,000 impressions, except for the print. Folks tend to jack that up by four because they say, ooh, you know, four to five people.

Caleb Agee:

It's set on the coffee table.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, four people watch that, so they'll say that's four impressions. But you know what did you pay for? The print ad?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, make sure you ask that question, by the way.

Brandon Welch:

By times the circulation, which is how many people saw it. That's print. If there's 50,000 people that watch the news at 6 pm and your ad is in that news program. That is 80,000 impressions, or 80,000 times your ad was seen. And, by the way, all the people that measure impressions have some sort of fancy extrapolation on it. So the TV folks will say oh well, there's an average of 1.2 people in a room.

Caleb Agee:

So that was 1.2 impressions.

Brandon Welch:

Um, it's good to be aware of that. Yeah, and I don't think one is any more loosey goosey than the other. I think they're probably all relatively extrapolated.

Caleb Agee:

I would say the print one is the one I would be the most careful of, because I've seen it 10 or 12x'd before.

Brandon Welch:

You want to ask what their multiplier is on the circulation. What's?

Caleb Agee:

their multiplier. So circulation is important If they print 10,000 copies of that magazine it's good to know that you're only in 10,000 books. Yes, and they're saying if it's a 10x, they're saying 100,000 people see it. It's like eh, I don't know, maybe but it's good to know that it was only in 10,000 books, right.

Brandon Welch:

And they are the rating folks and the measurement folks are relatively scientific. There's some respect and honor to the way they're doing it. They're statisticians by trade. So there is a method to the madness by trade. So there is a method to the madness. And then digital impressions, which, frankly, are probably the most pound for pound like-.

Caleb Agee:

Standardized.

Brandon Welch:

Standardized because with the exception of robots, they can tell you. Facebook, for example, can tell you when the ad server fired and loaded that actual image and text and that ad ID.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Or on YouTube. They can tell you that you know the video played or how long it played, or you know all that stuff. So it's just, the ad was displayed somewhere, somewhere.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, back to someone, back to the map. You got 50,000 impressions. We spent $1,000. We got 50,000 impressions. So to calculate your cost per thousand, we got fifty thousand impressions. Um, so to calculate your cost per thousand, we've got to take that fifty thousand and divide it by one thousand. So easy numbers. It's fifty, okay? Um, so we divide our one thousand dollars by the fifty, which is our fifty thousand impressions and we get a cpm of twenty dollars. That is our.

Brandon Welch:

Our cpm will be twenty dollars cost per thousand. I can imagine $1,000 going into my calculator. Divide it by $50, and it would say $20.

Caleb Agee:

Yes, does your calculator work like that? It's working.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, good, so let's talk about some standard CPMs. That's how you figure it out Divide the number of impressions by $1,000, and then divide your rate by whatever number. That is so Facebook and Instagram today. Now this has changed and it will continue to change. Frankly, it used to be higher and at times of high season demand, like where there's a lot of people, a lot of advertisers trying to advertise more, increasing their budgets, the competition goes up.

Caleb Agee:

Right before Christmas election season, all those things.

Brandon Welch:

Yep, but it's a wide range. But on the low end it's going to be in the $8 to $10 range and then on the high end it's going to be the $30 to $50 range. Yeah, within Facebook, the more you target we're going to talk about this in a second but the more you target and the smaller the area and the smaller the demographic target you get at, you generally will pay more.

Caleb Agee:

The other thing in Facebook and a couple of these other medias is they have multiple campaign types. And so if you say, hey, facebook, I want the action of somebody clicking on my ad or I want the action of somebody filling out a form, your CPM is going to be much higher. But if you're, if you say hey Facebook, um, I want, I want as many people as possible. What they're actually looking at for you is get them a low CPM. That's literally what Facebook's algorithm is going to try to do, so if you're doing a reach or broad awareness type of campaign on Facebook?

Caleb Agee:

Yep, that's what they call it. That's what they call it.

Brandon Welch:

Yep, great, google Display Network is really the same. So Google Display, now I'm going to call these. In the $3 to $20 CPM it could be really, really low.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

When we say display, this is the ads that I think everybody would agree they gloss over a lot. Yeah, think about you're on your favorite news site. It could be CNN, it could be Fox, it could be whatever you want, and all of the news sites. See what I did. There have like these little windows that ads pop up in, and it could be for some pharmaceutical drug, it could be for some concert coming to town, it could be literally anything, and Google's just shoving the ads in to this window.

Brandon Welch:

But, they're like little banner ads.

Caleb Agee:

I see them when I look up recipes a lot. Yeah, recipes, those blog recipe websites have tons of ads on them, these kind of display ads.

Brandon Welch:

They can go really low if you just load up your budget and say put them anywhere and everywhere, but 3 to 20. Youtube has gotten really good actually 6 to 25. I would say the campaigns we're seeing are more like 6 to 15. Lately TV local broadcast can go if you have a really really strong station in like a medium-sized market and you're talking about like news and local programming, you can go down to $3 to $5. On the higher end, when you're talking about prime time, it can be $20 to $30-ish. But generally the TV campaigns and the strategies we teach on this podcast are going to be in that $3 to $10 cost per thousand.

Caleb Agee:

How comparable is radio? Oh, we didn't put radio in here.

Brandon Welch:

I would call radio like 8 to 20. So radio usually doesn't get as good as TV, but it's still very good in the grand scheme. Yeah, ott and streaming. For all of you who have been wondering why we don't talk a ton about streaming, this is why Most I work and have worked with some of the best and most capable people and the highest end platforms in streaming.

Brandon Welch:

It is really fancy and it does a really good job of like finding this really really, really, really specific person and you think, oh, that's great, because I'm selling yoga and you know 60-year-old dudes don't do yoga and it's like, probably true. However, what if I told you you were paying $55 per thousand times your ad was seen, versus five on another platform? The 60-year-old dude and the 30-year-old gal who does yoga is in that smaller or that bigger group, but for much cheaper. Yeah, so streaming can work. There's definitely some cases and there's some times we use it, but that's why, in general, we don't go to it for a branding or a tomorrow customer mechanism. It's just so dadgum expensive to be seen by the masses.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, yeah, that's important to think about. Our research shows a range of like 35 to 65. It's probably actually 40 to on up 35 to 65.

Brandon Welch:

It's probably actually 40 to on up For the people reached. We would be spending. You know we might be spending $100,000 on a local service company for a broadcast. To reach the same amount of people, we'd have to spend a million in streaming.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, isn't that wild. We're talking about 10x.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, and I'm talking about on an annual basis.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, that is why we tend to lean on broadcasts. And, by the way, it still works. Yeah, it still works. It is growing companies right and left. You can walk these halls and you'll hear stories all day long, every day.

Brandon Welch:

We have a very strong nerd, digital nerd, who's very, very savvy here and he was talking this week and he's like man. Before I came here I would have just called complete BS on broadcast On TV, on any of this traditional stuff that you guys have been talking about, and he goes and he's the guy turning the knobs on a lot of these platforms, so he's seeing in real time how well our clients are doing and there's a clear divide between the ones who are well-branded and broadcast.

Brandon Welch:

And they're getting three to four times the profitability on their marketing.

Caleb Agee:

We asked him, we were like are you a believer? Now he's like oh yeah, he goes yeah 100%.

Brandon Welch:

This is a nerd. I mean, this is your. Yeah, this is your.

Caleb Agee:

Before he was here, he was a Google nerd. Yes, running a place in Google ads.

Brandon Welch:

We say Pride, yeah, and love, yes, and the highest amount of like respect Nerd's a good thing.

Caleb Agee:

Yes. Hey billboards One of the most efficient medias, yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Billboard. Actually technically there's not one that really beats it.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

If you get a billboard in a high traffic area, I've seen them as low as $2, but I would say easily $2 to $10. Like I don't know that there's anything much higher than 10 you're going to find, even in a in a rural area. So yeah, Uh, billboards are way to reach a lot of people for cheap um streaming audio, so like Spotify and stuff, definitely 20 plus.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. Um again remember that's on the high side of even what. If you take its broadcast comparison, radio was what? 10 to 20?

Brandon Welch:

yeah streaming audio starts at 20, probably goes up from there so here's the kicker what is the most expensive type of advertising? Google search ads, holy smokes, anybody want to take a guess wait, wait, yeah, say your guess, think of your guess. Say it out loud In the car.

Caleb Agee:

Right now. Right now I can pull up.

Brandon Welch:

We have hundreds of thousands of Google ads dollars running right now, and if I averaged out the highest and the lowest, it would be somewhere in the $600 to $700 CPM range Okay, to $700 CPM range, okay. There are a few that are lower on the $500 range, but they're most of them are in like the 800 to 1200 range per thousand people reached. Why is that? Well, obviously Google has to make money, but there are way, way, way, way fewer people today searching for washing machines, like this moment in time. Then there are people who are not searching for washing machines. It'd be like 1,000 to one, right, and so there's maybe in a given town there might be a few hundred people per day who need a washing machine.

Brandon Welch:

Well, that's very, very, very targeted inventory, high value, because they're very close to the sale if you're looking for washing machines or appliance store companies or whatever. Very close to the sale if you're looking for washing machines or appliance store companies or whatever. But it is a very, very, very poor way to reach a lot of people at once. So this is why search is almost always in the today customer category. You cannot brand yourself, you cannot become known among the masses, because the masses will never Google your thing enough unless they already know what it is.

Caleb Agee:

And at that point.

Brandon Welch:

You don't need to be well-branded, you don't need to be in the Google search masses will never Google your thing enough unless they already know what it is.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, and that at that point you don't need to be, you don't need to be in the Google.

Brandon Welch:

But yeah, google ads are a hundred times more expensive to reach people at a bare minimum than than their broadcast component or or even Facebook right, even Facebook and YouTube and stuff.

Caleb Agee:

And don't hear us say that Google ads don't work. Yeah, they do work and you should probably be there, depending on what your industry and market is. But, um, we, we help make millions of dollars on google ads every day, every day. Um, that's right, but you need to be aware that if you live in google ads, if that's the only place you're trying to build your company, you are doing it at the cost of 100 times the efficiency, or 100 times less the efficiency, as another media.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

And so that is a dangerous place to only be.

Brandon Welch:

So the rule of thumb is that the more targeted the media is, the more expensive it's going to be in the CPM land, going back to the CPM factor. So that's why we call it the gas mileage.

Caleb Agee:

And it's really just the old supply and demand. You remember economics class?

Brandon Welch:

Yes.

Caleb Agee:

Less supply, more demand. Yes, you're going to pay more.

Brandon Welch:

And really this is going off topic for a second. And then Caleb says then why are you even doing it? But also the targeting of your message can make that that that happen. So even if I'm on a really low cpm media, let's just say it was broadcast and I'm talking about something that only a small amount of people care about, say washing machines well again, only a couple hundred of those people.

Brandon Welch:

If I were advertising the entire market at once, could potentially care. But if I make you laugh and I entertain you, then everybody cares. And then I can sneak in the washing machine ad and I get the people who wanted washing machines and I also get the people who didn't give a flip about washing machines today to at least finish that ad, liking me, feeling good about me and one day preferring me, right, yep, and that's what we call tomorrow marketing.

Caleb Agee:

Tomorrow marketing. And just kind of to wrap all that up, is usually you'll be focused on CPMs as one of your main metrics when you're doing tomorrow marketing, when that is the business objective of that marketing effort you're reaching.

Caleb Agee:

tomorrow customers, your goal will be to get the largest amount of people daily and in parentheses, behind that is for the least amount of money right, and so what we're going to do is we're going to try to get that CPM cranked down as low as we can, while we keep our frequency as consistent as we can.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, which brings us to the very important distinctions, disclaimers, if you like. So CPM is important because it tells you about the impressions delivered, but it doesn't necessarily tell you about the unique amount of people reached. Meaning CPM is an expression of impressions, not people, and that is. Those terms are interchanged too often in advertising. They think I'm reaching a thousand people. No, no.

Brandon Welch:

Your ad was seen a thousand times. That could mean you reached one person 1,000 times. One person saw your ad a thousand times Unlikely, but that could be. Cpm doesn't distinguish between that or 10 people seeing it a hundred times, or a hundred people seeing it 10 times, or a thousand people seeing it only one time. All of those things were 1,000 impressions. It's just you were missing the reach component there.

Caleb Agee:

Frequency as well. Reach and frequency right yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So reach, going back to the ratings, will have an algorithm for how many unique people were reached in a program. So just do some basic math there. If a program had 50,000 people watching it and the ratings people knew that and they do 50,000 people were watching this program and you put an ad two times in the same program, only 50,000 people would be reached, but it would be 100,000 impressions. Yeah Right, that's good. And the frequency?

Brandon Welch:

would be reached, but it would be 100,000 impressions. Yeah, that's good, and the frequency would be two in that time window, right?

Caleb Agee:

So you get in big danger with this impressions mindset on digital medias, especially because of the repeat impressions right?

Brandon Welch:

You want repetition?

Brandon Welch:

You do If you were trying to become known, liked and trusted in your market and if you were trying to win over that tomorrow customer, you cannot do it by being seen and heard once in a while. Even if you have a phenomenal ad, you need some repetition to that. You need some repetition to that. You need some repetition to that. You see what I did there. So not all impressions are created equal, some things. So let's say you're looking at two different medias and let's just say it's maybe YouTube versus broadcast. That's a really real comparison. Right now you would want to think through okay, is this impression video plus audio or visual plus audio or audio only or visual only? So video or visual plus audio would be like obviously TV ads and digital video. Audio only would be obviously radio or streaming radio. One side note there I promise you we don't have time to go into this, but neuroscience says that things we hear are much, much, much easier to remember than things we see Everybody's going but what about?

Brandon Welch:

a picture is worth a thousand words. It's actually not neurologically or scientifically true.

Caleb Agee:

I think it's more interpretive. A picture is an impression but, it's not memorable Just because you can describe it in a thousand words you can't re-describe my words in a thousand words. All you have is the words I say.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, now I'm not saying that some people don't have a better learning ability when they see something visually. I'm saying, when it comes to long-term recall of names and nouns and places, that we want people to remember that our businesses exist. It is far easier to get them to do that when you use words, and particularly unpredictable words, words that aren't common, because it sticks out.

Caleb Agee:

My family quotes things all the time. My kids quote movies and shows they have not seen because my wife and I quote them all the time, yes, and what you need to do is look at your ads. Are they quotable? Yeah, are they worth repeating? Are they fun? Are they interesting? Do you say it in an unusual way that sticks in your brain?

Brandon Welch:

I met with a legendary advertiser. Today, every person in our town that is older than 20 years old could quote this guy's ads and he told me. He told me somebody made him say this line and has the end of his. All of his ads were, and I'm not kidding. And he said, somebody told me to say that and I thought it was the dumbest thing ever.

Brandon Welch:

And he goes, you don't know how many times a day and he hasn't advertised in years a day a day, people still come up to him and say that and it's the dumbest thing and it's very quotable. So back to impressions. They're not all created equal. You want, if you're doing any amount of branding, just trust me, you want an audio component somewhere, consistent and repetitive, Repetitive.

Caleb Agee:

I almost did it, you got it.

Brandon Welch:

So think audiovisual is the best. Audio only if you had to choose between that and visual, only for tomorrow customers and for repeatable, quotable, rememberable phrases. Here's something else you're going to want to consider In the world of digital ads is this skippable or non-skippable? One of the great strengths and it sounds like we're all for broadcast and we're not, it's like we do it all but one of the great strengths of broadcast is that they're very intrusive. You cannot skip an ad unless it's been recorded on DVR. But, like live news, live sports, people don't record those things. So the ad plays and everybody hears it, versus seeing six seconds of it and skipping it. So when you're comparing it to YouTube, even though the CPM may be the same of the two, if you had a really good broadcast, really good YouTube, you go eh, but the YouTube had a before the, before the skip showed up, or a six second ad non-skippable.

Brandon Welch:

YouTube will almost never be the full 30 seconds, and that is worth something. Now you can actually go into the YouTube platform and say on average how much of my commercial was watched. I'm proud to say one of our really good YouTube advertisers has an 85% view through rate, so it's almost as good as TV. But that is not common and it's very, very rare for you to for anybody to be able to say that.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

So let me see here I was talking about skippable versus non-skippable. Yeah, think about thumbable like a Facebook ad.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. It's even worse than skippable, because you don't even really have to watch any of it, you just flip past it. Yeah, and your, you know, survivor, thrive. Brain is flying by and that impression of the image, or the first screen of the video that you're showing me, or the first word, I'm instantly, whether I realize or not, subconsciously flying past it and determining whether it's worth stopping for.

Brandon Welch:

Yes.

Caleb Agee:

And, but that still counts as an impression. Caleb the scroller yeah, you know me If Caleb scrolled.

Brandon Welch:

That's what he would do.

Caleb Agee:

He doesn't scroll, not really.

Brandon Welch:

He, he's a, he's a, he's a man slave to his habits, and they are very good quality habits, unlike the rest of us.

Brandon Welch:

So hey, think about this. You can go and look at on any of these video creatives you can. It will say how many times the ad was delivered. That's the impression. That's the cost per thousand impressions. But if your YouTube video playthrough rate was only 50% and you're comparing it to TV, say, and it was like, oh, youtube got $8, and so did TV, you would divide that by 50%. And you're comparing it to TV, say, and it was like, oh, youtube got $8, and so did TV, you would divide that by 50%.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

And it would be like oh, YouTube was $16, cost $1,000, because that's the amount of people.

Caleb Agee:

You can compare to the TV that watched the dang thing Because they never got to the end of your ad on.

Brandon Welch:

YouTube, youtube. If your media rep cannot find these numbers for you, tell them to go get some dadgum training. Tell them to come to the Maven. Marketing Podcast or watch some YouTube videos, and I love you guys, but if they can't tell you this stuff, that's their job and they need to be able to measure and pull this up. If your agency can't do it, fire them, because they shouldn't be an agency. Send them to the Maven Marketing Podcast.

Caleb Agee:

Okay, send them this video.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, so all that stuff is easily findable in the ad dashboard if it's digital, or the ratings platform of any TV or radio station that you're working with. Last thing, Last thing about important distinctions that impression is only worth a branding impression if you know it's going to have a repetitive audience. We use the math of we want as many people to see it four times in a week as possible. So we're saying in radio there's a formula that we basically if you've got 40 ads a week, you're going to get a four frequency on most stations between the hours of 6 am and 7 pm. Tv it's a little more fluid, you kind of have to let the program tell you. But if it's news or something that people watch every day, you're going to need an ad on in that program every day to score that four frequency right.

Brandon Welch:

Because not every person watches every day, but on average they come back multiple times per week. It's a little less straightforward with Facebook and YouTube. Sometimes you have to put a budget out there and then let it, after a week or two, tell you how many people it's delivering to. The frequency is the number they'll call that. Let it, after a week or two, tell you how many people it's delivering to. Um and what I'm.

Caleb Agee:

the frequency is the number, though They'll call that.

Brandon Welch:

Yep.

Caleb Agee:

And so you'll look for a three frequency and they'll say three people or people have seen an average of three times inside of the timeframe that you've given it. So you also have to pay attention to that, because if you're looking at last 30 days or if you're looking at year two date right, if you have a 90 day thing, you need to pay attention to that frequency because three times in in 90 days not good, not great, not good.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, you would in 90 days. You literally want it to be like 20 or 30 yeah, yeah, that's pretty rough excuse me, um, so think like the, the, the hack and like the best.

Brandon Welch:

Um, like, just go to. If you're a local business in a local region, pick one program, fill it up. If it's radio, it's 40 spots a week. If it's tv, it's five spots a week per program that you can afford to do. If it's digital, most digital targets are going to be 200,000 or 300,000 people. If it's Facebook or YouTube, you're going to have to be spending $5,000 to $10,000 a month to be able to hit that. I'm just giving you some basic numbers. But look at it afterwards and if you're not getting that frequency per week on, say, youtube or Facebook, you need to shrink your audience target or add budget so that that money is concentrated in the right way. It's more concentrated.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, and boy, we could do a whole episode on how to adjust for that. And if you have any questions about hey, how would I find that, send them to us. We'll answer them.

Caleb Agee:

We'll do a little video for you or something.

Brandon Welch:

And then just know that if you're doing that radio or sorry, if you're doing that tomorrow, customer you're trying to win over those people as we talk about in this podcast. You want repetition and I forgot to say this earlier because liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty.

Caleb Agee:

That's repetition right Liberty, liberty, liberty.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, so you want to recap?

Caleb Agee:

Yes, all right. Number one CPM. Use it to size up the big differences between any medias. It's the great equalizer between all medias, so you should make sure you ask the person that sells it to you, and you can definitely see this transparently in the dashboards. But we talked about the nuances between how you would maybe compare these on a digital media to a broadcast media. Yeah, number two make sure you check your CPMs monthly or after the schedules deliver, just to make sure your efficiency isn't changing dramatically and it will sometimes.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, these seasonal pockets. Summer it tends to go. Cpm tends to go up because there's less people using media, but you've got the same budget but it probably reached less people. In holiday season, the audiences tend to go up because people are inside and it's winter but there's more advertisers competing so. Facebook, google, jack up the price of delivering those impressions and, by the way, so does streaming.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, and then the third just remember that not all impressions are created equal. Yeah, and there are three second impressions. There's a single graphical impression. Yeah, when you're looking at that recipe, how much of impression does? That have on you Versus somebody singing Liberty, liberty, liberty, something like that Liberty, yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, bibbidi-moochoo, we hope that that just gives you some context and some immediate math to level out all this confusion from all these people trying to sell you all these things. But we're here to help, so send us your questions, say, hey, would you do this or this or this or this? Right, we're here to help, so send us your questions, say, hey, would you do this or this?

Caleb Agee:

or this or this right.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, and soon, like next week, we will have a link for you to join the mastermind if you want to start bringing your stuff and working these problems through like real time, like some of our consultants here Saying, okay, this is great theoretical knowledge and you're teaching me the basics on the podcast, but what I want to start putting this, how would I start applying this to what I'm actually doing now?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

And we're going to pull up the dashboards with you and you're going to get, you know, live time with our people, kind of like a podcast made exactly for you. But we're working it out in front of you and you know a couple other dozen business owners and everybody's learning from each other. So we are excited to say that is here. The link will be on the next podcast. You can take that to the bank and I promise that at three o'clock on Wednesday, april 23rd, when we recorded this, okay and that, yeah, that's going to be, that's going to be a thing.

Caleb Agee:

So until then, yeah, if you do need help or if you have questions about any of this um, send us an email. Maven monday at frank and mavencom, we'd love to answer them. Uh, if they're relevant for the masses, we may answer it live on the on the podcast here, and we'd we'd love to be a part of that. Um also drop any questions you have in the comments I think there's some comments we I would love to see heat up them algos yeah, I'd love to see that it helps us out, if you would.

Caleb Agee:

It doesn't have to be anything tremendous, but a good comment here or there.

Brandon Welch:

Tell Caleb you like his haircut.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, tell Brandon his frames look great.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, that's good, let's do that. All right, we'll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions, because marketers who cannot teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.