vCPM

vCPM, or viewable cost per mille, is the price an advertiser pays per 1,000 viewable impressions, so impressions that never had a chance to be seen are not charged.

A standard CPM counts every served impression, including ads that load below the fold and never scroll into view. By contrast, vCPM counts only those that pass a viewability test. That test is normally the Media Rating Council rule: at least 50% of pixels in view for one continuous second for display, or two seconds for video (MRC, 30 June 2014).

Google Ads offers viewable CPM bidding for Display Network campaigns. Advertisers bid per 1,000 viewable impressions and pay only for impressions measured as viewable. Google notes that a vCPM bid usually needs to be higher than a CPM bid to win the same placements (Google Ads Help, accessed 9 November 2026).

To convert, divide the CPM by the viewability rate. A vCPM buyer pays nothing for non-viewable impressions, which moves measurement risk to the seller, so sellers price vCPM higher. A planned CPM, CPC, CPA and vCPM converter will run the conversion with viewability and invalid-traffic adjustments.

Example: A campaign buys 1,000,000 impressions at a $5.00 CPM, for $5,000. If 62.5% are viewable, the effective vCPM is $8.00, that is $5,000 divided by 625,000 viewable impressions, times 1,000. A direct $8.00 vCPM buy costs the same here but charges nothing for the 375,000 impressions nobody could see.

Related terms: viewability, eCPM, CPC, CPA, IVT.

Authoritative source: Google Ads Help, "Bid on viewable impressions using viewable CPM" (accessed 9 November 2026).