CPM, cost per mille, is the price an advertiser pays for one thousand impressions of an ad, whether or not anyone clicks. It is the billing model behind banner and display placements on Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Myntra and Amazon DSP, while search ads on Amazon and Flipkart are billed per click instead.
Divide the spend by the number of impressions and multiply by one thousand. If a Blinkit banner cost ₹15,000 and was shown 1,00,000 times, the CPM is ₹15,000 / 1,00,000 x 1,000 = ₹150. Turned around, a quoted CPM tells you what a budget buys: at ₹150 CPM, ₹15,000 buys one lakh impressions, and ₹1,50,000 buys ten lakh.
To compare a CPM placement with a CPC one, work through to cost per order. If those 1,00,000 impressions produce 1,000 clicks (1% CTR) and 50 orders (5% CVR), the effective CPC is ₹15 and the cost per order is ₹300. That number sits next to a search campaign's cost per order and decides which deserves the budget.
Myntra quotes list banners at a CPM figure in its rate card and PLA at a per-click bid, so a fashion seller running both sees the two models side by side on one invoice.
Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart apps have a short session: the shopper opens the app, searches, adds to cart and pays in a few minutes. Banner slots on the home screen, category pages and cart are sold on impressions because their job is to put a brand in front of a shopper who was not searching for it. Search-result product ads on the same apps are increasingly sold per click, so a single account can carry both models.
Agencies report homepage CPMs on Zepto of roughly ₹40 to ₹90 and on Instamart of ₹80 to ₹250, with minimum banner commitments running into lakhs (reported by agency rate pages, not the platforms). Treat those as a starting range and ask the platform's brand team for the current rate card before planning.
One trap: quick commerce dashboards may report ROAS on MRP rather than selling price, which flatters a CPM campaign. Recompute on net realised value before comparing it with Amazon or Flipkart.
CPM stands for cost per mille, the Latin for thousand. It is the cost of one thousand ad impressions, used to price display and banner placements.
CPM = ad spend / impressions x 1,000. A ₹15,000 banner shown 1,00,000 times has a CPM of ₹150.
Both. Banner and brand placements are sold per thousand impressions, while search product ads on these apps are typically billed per click. The exact mix depends on the format you buy.
vCPM counts only viewable impressions, ones that actually appeared on screen for a minimum time. It is a fairer price for display ads because unseen impressions are excluded.
No. A low CPM on a placement nobody clicks costs more per order than a high CPM on the right screen. Compare placements by cost per order.
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