Definition and location
YouTube defines RPM as total revenue per 1,000 views, after its revenue share YouTube Help2026-08. It lives in YouTube Studio under Analytics, then Revenue, for channels in the YouTube Partner Program YouTube Help2026-08. Two words in the definition carry the weight: total and after.
- Total revenue: not just ads. Per YouTube's documentation, RPM folds in Premium revenue, channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks and Shopping YouTube Help2026-08.
- Total views: the denominator is every view, including views that served no ad. That is the big divergence from CPM, whose denominator is only monetized playbacks.
- After the share: the number is post-cut. It is what you keep.
The calculation, worked
RPM = total revenue ÷ total views × 1,000
month: $412 total revenue, 96,000 views
412 ÷ 96,000 × 1,000 = $4.29 RPM
Read it as a channel-health composite: it rises when you earn more per view from any stream, and falls when views grow faster than revenue. A viral month with weak monetization typically drops RPM while raising income, which is why RPM should never be optimized in isolation.
Why it varies by niche and geography
Advertisers bid on audiences, so a finance channel watched in high-income markets commands more per monetized view than entertainment watched globally. Geography moves the blend twice: through ad rates and through Premium subscription revenue, which is distributed by watch time. YouTube publishes the mechanism, not per-niche numbers, so any specific benchmark you see quoted without a source and date was invented somewhere between the data and the blog post. The honest comparison set is your own channel, month over month; the general version of that argument is on what is a good RPM.