Cost Per Mille Viewable Impressions (vCPM)

Also known as: CPVM

vCPM (or CPVM) is an ad pricing model where an advertiser pays for every 1,000 viewable impressions — that is, impressions that were actually seen by a user rather than simply served by a server.

It extends the standard CPM (cost per mille) and eCPM (effective cost per mille) models by adding a viewability requirement. Under a traditional CPM arrangement, an advertiser is billed whenever an ad is delivered to a page, regardless of whether a user ever scrolled to it or had it in their viewport. vCPM tightens that definition: only impressions that meet an agreed viewability threshold count toward billing.

This distinction matters because a meaningful share of delivered impressions on any given campaign are never actually seen. vCPM shifts some of that risk from advertiser to publisher, making it a more performance-oriented pricing structure for display and video inventory.