Two acronyms rule creator ad income. CPM — cost per mille — is what advertisers pay per thousand ad impressions. RPM — revenue per mille — is what the creator actually receives per thousand video views, after the platform's share and after counting the views that carried no ad at all.
Why RPM is always lower
- Not every view shows an ad (blockers, unmonetized surfaces, skipped inventory).
- The platform keeps its revenue share.
- RPM divides by all views, monetized or not — it is the honest per-view earnings figure.
What moves them
Advertiser demand by niche and season moves CPM (finance and business audiences command famously higher rates than entertainment); watch-page behaviour and audience geography move RPM. Public earnings estimates based on view counts alone — including the rough band our channel pages label as an estimate — can only ever be a wide range.