Gaming Creator CPM Calculator: What Should You Pay per 1,000 Views?

The calculator

There are four tabs, each answering a different question:

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere.

The calculator helps with one quote at a time. When you’ve got 40 creators, it’s a lot of tabs. INFLUENCE does this math for every creator before they reach your shortlist, and the whole campaign is billed against one per-1,000-views ceiling you choose, so the quote you plan with is the one you pay.

How to work out CPM from a creator’s quote

Use this formula:

CPM = fee ÷ expected views × 1,000

The tricky part is “expected views.” Don’t use subscriber or follower counts. Use what the creator’s recent videos actually get. A good habit is to look at their last 10 videos of a similar type, drop the single best and worst, and average the rest.

Here’s how three made-up quotes compare once you do the math:

The YouTuber with the most subscribers is, by far, the most expensive per view. That happens a lot: big channels often have big back catalogs and smaller recent audiences.

That doesn’t make the TikTok creator the “winner,” either. A 30-second clip and a 20-minute playthrough do different jobs. CPM tells you what you’re paying for attention. It doesn’t tell you how much that attention does. For that, see our breakdown of Twitch vs YouTube vs TikTok for game marketing.

Checking recent views for every creator is tedious and easy to get wrong. INFLUENCE weighs creators by their recent performance, not their follower counts, before anyone reaches your approval list, and then you only pay for the views your content actually gets.

How to compare a Twitch stream with a YouTube video

Streamers usually quote on live audience and time: a rate for each average concurrent viewer, for every hour they stream. StreamScheme’s rate card suggests most straightforward deals land between 80 cents and $1.50 for each viewer-hour. (StreamScheme)

Stream cost = average live viewers × hours × rate per viewer-hour

So a streamer averaging 400 viewers for 2 hours at $1.00 would cost about $800.

Comparing that with a video is harder, because a stream’s “views” aren’t the same thing. Two ways to do it:

• Cost per 1,000 viewer-hours. At $1.00 per viewer per hour, that’s $1,000 per 1,000 viewer-hours. It sounds expensive, but each “view” is an hour of attention, not a few seconds.

• Cost per 1,000 total views. Add up the stream’s unique viewers, plus views on the VOD and any clips. This puts the stream on the same scale as a video, but undercounts how long people watched.

Neither number is perfect. Use the first to compare streams with each other, and the second for a rough comparison with videos.

Streams and videos are hard to weigh against each other when they’re priced so differently. INFLUENCE prices the creators we run on the same unit, delivered views, which makes comparing them, and rebalancing your budget, much more straightforward.

What’s a good CPM for gaming creators?

There’s no single “good” number, but these reference points help:

A few things move CPMs up or down:

• Format. Dedicated videos and live streams cost more per view than short clips, because the attention is deeper.

• Audience location. U.S. audiences cost more than many other markets.

• Timing. October and November, plus the weeks around big showcases, tend to push rates up.

• Creator mix. Campaigns built on mid-size creators usually land at lower CPMs than ones built on a few big names.

A benchmark only means something if it’s for the audience you actually want. With INFLUENCE, you set your audience and geography when you create the campaign, and a max CPM you’re comfortable with (how pay-per-view works), so you’re not buying cheap views from the wrong places.

How to work out the most you can afford per 1,000 views

Work backward from what a view is worth to you. For a Steam game, the chain looks like this:

Max CPM = (1,000 ÷ viewers per wishlist) × sales per wishlist × your take per sale × share you’ll spend on marketing

Some real numbers to plug in:

• Sales per wishlist: In GameDiscoverCo’s data on Steam launches with at least 25,000 wishlists, the typical game converted roughly 15% of its wishlists into first-week sales, falling to about 10% once the price was above $10. (GameDev Reports)

• Your take per sale: your price, minus the store’s cut (Steam’s standard cut is 30%).

• Viewers per wishlist: you’ll only know this from your own campaigns. Run a small test wave first. We use 1 in 200 as a placeholder.

Worked through for a $20 game, with 1 in 200 viewers wishlisting, 0.15 sales per wishlist and half the revenue set aside for marketing:

Keep in mind this only counts launch week. Simon Carless’s survey data suggests a game’s first year on Steam usually brings in two to five times what its first seven days did, so each view may be worth considerably more over time. (Game Developer)

Your real numbers will change once creators start posting, and the useful thing is to adjust quickly. INFLUENCE reports delivered views for every creator and post, so you can match them against your wishlist and sales data, recalculate your max CPM, and tune the next wave.

Mistakes that make CPM look better than it is

CPM is a great way to compare creators, but it’s easy to fool yourself. Watch out for these:

• Using follower counts instead of real views. This is the big one. It can make expensive creators look cheap.

• Counting views forever. Agree on a window, like the first 30 days. Otherwise you’re comparing a two-year-old video with one posted last week.

• Ignoring extra fees. Usage rights, exclusivity and agency fees all raise your true CPM. Usage rights alone can add 25% to 200% of a post’s fee, according to Kolsquare.

• Forgetting the audience. Cheap views from the wrong country or the wrong age group aren’t cheap.

• Stopping at CPM. A low CPM that brings no wishlists or installs is worse than a higher one that does. Always check what happened after the views.

These are exactly the details that slip when a team is managing creators by hand. INFLUENCE checks creators before they reach your list, counts the views your content actually receives, and keeps everything in one place, so the CPM you see is one you can trust.

CPM won’t tell you everything, but it’s the fastest way to turn a pile of different creator quotes into one fair comparison. Use the calculator to check quotes and set a ceiling, then judge every wave on what happened after the views. If you’d rather set one max CPM and let someone else do the rest, that’s how INFLUENCE works.