Why ad space is priced per viewing
In a real-time auction the thing sold is one viewing of one slot. A single viewing costs very little, so prices are quoted per thousand of them, the way fuel is priced per gallon rather than per drop. “Mille” is simply the Latin word the industry kept; “cost per thousand” says the same thing.
CPM, CPC and CPA
Three sets of letters you will meet. CPM is the price per thousand viewings. CPC is the price per click. CPA is the price per action — a sign-up, a purchase, a booking. Some platforms let you choose which one you pay by. Underneath, every slot is still bought per viewing in an auction; a platform that charges you per click is carrying the cost of the viewings nobody clicked and pricing that into the click.
What moves the price
Nobody sets a CPM; the auction does, one viewing at a time. It rises and falls with:
- The placement. A full-screen slot inside an app is one thing; a small banner beside an article is another.
- Who is being reached. A city or a kind of app that many advertisers want to be seen in costs more than one that few do.
- The time. The weeks before a holiday are more crowded than the weeks after, and evenings differ from mornings.
- How many others are bidding for the same viewing at the same moment.
- The app or page itself — its quality, and what kinds of ads it allows.
From a price to a budget
Divide your budget by the price per thousand viewings and multiply by a thousand, and you have roughly how many times your ad can be shown. Treat it as a rough estimate: the price moves during the run, so the real count is in your report afterwards, not in the arithmetic beforehand. Our guide on how much to spend starts from the other end — from what you can afford to learn.
Why Ailumic publishes no price list
Because the price is set in the auction, not by us, and it differs by placement, area and time. A single figure on a page would read as a rate card for a service that has not run your campaign, and it would be wrong by the time you read it. What we can promise instead is how you see the price. The price is in front of you before you confirm, and nothing runs until you do. You pay only for ads that are actually shown. Start with what you have — there is no minimum.