What Is a Good CPM for Influencer Marketing in 2026

CPM is the line on a media buyer's dashboard where influencer marketing has to compete with paid display, social ads, and TV.

Get it right and creator spend shows up on the planner next to every other channel, get it wrong and the whole creator program looks overpriced.

We hold a CPM for 552 YouTube creators and a fee for 766, and every number below comes from those rows.

Across 552 YouTube creators with a CPM on file, the median falls from $141 per 1,000 views under 50K subs to $40 at 1M+ subs.

How brands actually do the math

The math runs in three steps, each one tightening the view count before the division.

The whole calculation hinges on using expected views, not the lifetime number on the channel.

1. Pull the creator's average views in the most recent 10 videos, strip outliers (top 1 and bottom 1), and the trimmed mean is the planning view count.
2. Pick a discount for the sponsored post before you see the quote, so the view count is never bent to fit the fee.
3. Divide creator fee by the discounted view count, then multiply by 1,000.

Worked example: a channel of 50K to 250K subs with a 60,000 trimmed-mean view count and a 20 percent discount gives 48,000 expected views.

At the $1,715 median fee for that size in our data, that is $1,715 / 48 = about $36 CPM, the way we figure fair rates.

What CPM costs by channel size

These are the fees and CPMs on file in our YouTube creator table, one sponsored video each:

The fee column comes from a wider set of 766 creators with a fee on file, so the two columns are close but they are not the exact same people.

CPM falls as the channel grows, because a small channel charges a floor fee whatever its views, and that fee gets split over far fewer views than a big channel's.

A channel under 50K subs costs about three and a half times more per 1,000 views than a channel over 1M subs, even though its fee is far smaller.

How CPMs got here

Marianna Hewitt started on YouTube back in 2012, when brands could barely be convinced to send a creator a free product, and that free product worked most of the time. In 2017, Ridge started sponsoring YouTube creators when a read cost somewhere between five and ten dollars on a CPM basis. By 2024, the marketer at HexClad was saying that YouTube deals were running fifty to a hundred dollars CPM. And here in 2026, more than forty percent of YouTubers are reporting that they are asking for more than a hundred.

Meanwhile, per 1,000 long YouTube videos we checked, 30.6 carried a paid sponsor in 2021 and 27.7 did in 2025, a rate that did not rise.

So the price of a read went up while the share of videos carrying a sponsor stayed flat, which is why a quote from 2021 is no guide to a quote today.

How CPM compares to paid media

Your own ad account already holds the number to compare against, so pull your Meta CPM from there before you price a creator.

Takeaway: Set your influencer program's CPM goal at half of your current Meta CPM, then aim to beat that.

What changes CPM at signing

Exclusivity, whitelisting and a bundle across platforms each change the fee, so each one changes the CPM, and each one should be priced as its own line.

The audience matters as much as the terms.

Takeaway: Before agreeing a creator's rate, check what share of their audience is outside your target market and cut the CPM by that same percentage.

Plan all three terms at signing, since each one is harder to add once the contract is signed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should small brands negotiate creator deals on CPM?

Use CPM as a sanity check.

Lead with flat fee, confirm the implied CPM is inside your benchmark, and walk if it isn't.

How does CPM differ for short-form versus long-form?

The numbers above are YouTube sponsored videos, so they do not give you a Shorts or TikTok price.

Brands buying both should price each format separately on the rate card.

What's a CPM red flag?

In our data, three in four channels over 1M subs charge $18 or more per 1,000 views, so a quote far below that is worth a second look at the view count.

At the top end, Connor MacDonald says certain content categories will never pencil at their CPM and a 60 dollar CPM failing is unsurprising.

Are TikTok CPMs different from YouTube?

We cannot say from our own data, because every CPM above is a YouTube video.

Whatever the platform, cross-check with promo-code redemptions instead of relying on view counts.

How do I report CPM to a finance team?

Two lines: CPM, and dollar-per-conversion (using promo codes plus tracked URLs).

The dollar-per-conversion figure is the one that ties the spend back to sales.

Related reading: Micro and Nano Influencer Marketing in 2026 · How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost in 2026? Real Rate Cards, ROI Benchmarks, and Budget Tiers · The 2026 FTC Disclosure Playbook for Brands · Nano Influencer Marketing.