CPM Benchmarks for Planning a Branding Campaign in India

Why does the planning CPM matter so much on a brand plan?

Because it decides how many impressions, and so how many people, the budget buys. A ₹20 lakh budget planned at a ₹200 CPM buys 1 crore impressions. At ₹300 it buys about 66.7 lakh, a third fewer. Pick the wrong point and the reach in the plan never turns up.

A branding plan leans on video, the big screen and premium deals, so its CPMs sit higher than a plan built mostly on open auction display. What you need is a range for each format, and a point inside it that you can defend to a client.

Below are the benchmarks we use for brand work and a simple way to choose that point. For the arithmetic itself, including turning a CPV price into a CPM and working out a blended CPM across lines, use our CPM calculator post. For the fees that sit on top of media, see our guide to programmatic advertising cost in India.

What CPM benchmarks should a brand plan start from?

The ranges below come from our rate card and channel guides, before GST. Our default is the rate each line starts at when our team builds a free media plan, before it moves up or down for your brief. Final rates for your dates are confirmed before launch.

YouTube skippable in-stream sits outside the table because it is usually bought per view, at ₹0.50–1.60 with a default of ₹0.90. Convert it before you set it beside the CPM lines; the calculator post shows how. Our YouTube ads and connected TV and OTT guides break these ranges down by format and by app.

Every default sits in the lower half of its range, which suits broad targeting in an ordinary month. Most brand briefs are not that.

Where in its range should each brand line sit?

Five things decide where a brand line lands inside its range. Most briefs trigger at least two of them.

The cricket and festive calendar

Peak weeks move a line up its range. Live sport is the exception, because it is not an uplift on JioHotstar's entertainment rates but a separate range of ₹600–950. For every other line, plan cricket and festive weeks in the upper half of the range, and near the top when the line also carries narrow targeting or a language filter.

A regional festival lifts rates mainly in its own market, which is why the Navratri example further down moves the CPM for a Gujarat buy and nothing else. A quiet month such as February is where our default is most likely to hold. For the calendar itself, with the peak dates to plan around, see our guide to planning an OTT campaign around cricket and festive peaks.

Targeting layers

A brand campaign targeted like a performance campaign pays for it, because each layer shrinks the pool of impressions you are bidding for. YouTube on connected TV, at ₹250–500, bought nationally with broad targeting sits near the ₹350 default. Add an in-market audience, limit it to six metros and run it in the festive weeks, and it should be planned near ₹500.

Precision the brief needs is worth paying for. Layers added out of habit just cost reach.

Guaranteed deals or auction

On a PG deal, the CPM and the volume are agreed before launch, so once the deal is booked your planning CPM is simply the deal rate. Auction lines, which include every YouTube format in our rate card, move with demand from day to day and need headroom. A plan weighted towards PG is easier to predict, though its rates are higher. Our comparison of PG, PMP and open auction covers the trade-offs.

Viewability and completion goals

A brief that sets a high viewability threshold, or makes video completion a KPI, cuts the inventory that qualifies, and the CPM rises to match. That is partly why non-skippable in-stream costs more per thousand than Shorts. Nearly everyone who starts a non-skippable ad sees it to the end, while far fewer watch a Shorts ad through. Where completion is a KPI, compare formats on cost per completed view rather than on the headline CPM.

Language and region

How you buy a language decides which way it moves the CPM. A language or state filter added to a national buy, such as YouTube or JioHotstar, narrows the pool and pushes the line towards the top of its range. Buying regional-language publishers directly often works out cheaper per thousand on news, because their pages tend to cost less than English metro pages. Dainik Bhaskar, Eenadu and Manorama run at ₹150–400 for private and PG deals, with about ₹5 lakh per publisher.

Regional OTT apps price at or above JioHotstar entertainment: Sun NXT and aha at ₹250–500, and hoichoi, ShemarooMe and Chaupal at ₹300–750. What they offer is a lower entry point, from about ₹2 lakh on Chaupal and ₹3 lakh on hoichoi, against ₹10 lakh for JioHotstar entertainment.

Bringing the CPM down, rather than planning around it, is a separate job. Our guide on how to reduce CPM in programmatic advertising lists the levers.

How do you pick a planning CPM with a safety margin?

Work line by line, and treat the safety margin as a test you run, not a number you guess.

1. Start from your own past CPM for the same format, audience and season. With no history, use our default.
2. Move the point for each factor above that applies. With none, stay at the default. With one, such as festive dates or a language filter, plan in the upper half of the range. With two or more, plan near the top.
3. For PG lines, use the deal rate once the publisher confirms it for your dates, and check that the line clears the deal minimum.
4. For auction lines, also run the plan at the top of the range. That is your high case.
5. Compare the high case with the reach the brief asks for. Where it still delivers, the plan is safe. Where it falls short, drop a market, a language or a line now, instead of hoping the auction is kind.

Here is how that plays out for an illustrative ethnic wear brand putting ₹8 lakh into YouTube non-skippable in-stream across Gujarat, in Gujarati, during Navratri. Festive dates and a language filter are two factors, so the planning point moves close to the top.

Planning at the default would have promised about 9.7 lakh more impressions than a Navratri auction was ever likely to deliver. Planned at ₹300, the brand can commit to about 6.7 lakh people, and the high case shows the floor.

What does the planning CPM mean for reach on a branding budget?

Divide impressions by the average frequency and you get the number of people a line reaches, so every rupee added to the CPM comes straight off reach. The table shows what ₹10 lakh on a single line reaches at an average frequency of 4, at three points in each range.

₹10 lakh is also the indicative minimum for JioHotstar entertainment, so that last row is the smallest line the app takes.

These figures assume the line really averages a frequency of 4. Narrow audiences and long flights tend to push frequency up, which brings reach down. Don't add reach across lines either, because the same people watch YouTube and OTT. Our reach and frequency calculator shows how to combine reach across channels without double counting.

The planning CPM sets how big a reach goal can honestly be, and a fixed goal shows how hard the CPM moves the budget. Take 30 lakh people at a frequency of 4 on non-skippable in-stream. That is 1.2 crore impressions: ₹26.4 lakh at the ₹220 default, or ₹38.4 lakh at the ₹320 top. The ₹12 lakh gap comes from the CPM alone, so agree the planning point before you agree the reach number. Setting the reach goal itself, and building the channel mix around it, is covered in our guide on how to create a digital branding campaign.

How do you check a planning CPM before you commit?

Three checks catch most bad estimates.

First, run a forecast. Self-serve, co-managed and advertiser account holders can do this in DV360 themselves: build a plan with the same audience, dates and formats, read the forecast CPM, then enter your planning CPM as a custom CPM to see the reach at your number. Our guide on how to forecast impressions in DV360 walks through it. When we run the campaign for you, our team does this while building the plan.

Second, get deal rates for your actual dates. PG inventory around Diwali and big cricket matches sells first, and late buyers pay more or miss out. Ask for rates against your flight dates, not a generic month.

Third, keep your own benchmarks. After every flight, note the actual CPM by format, audience, language and month. When we run campaigns through our DV360 Managed Service or a Campaign-Based Engagement, the DV360 Reports Section shows CPM by channel and placement, so that history builds up without a DV360 login. After a few campaigns, your own numbers will be a better guide than any rate card.

Next step

Ask for a free media plan with the awareness objective and your real flight dates. Each line starts at our default, and you can ask us to move any rate within its range to see your planning case and your high case. The plan applies its own frequency for each format and removes overlap between lines, so its reach will differ from the frequency-4 examples above; compare the CPM and impressions, not the reach. For deal rates and minimums on named OTT apps and publishers, see our premium publishers inventory page.