Paid social math, five calculators in one.

Healthy CPMs: Meta prospecting $9–$14, Meta retargeting $18–$28, TikTok $6–$10, LinkedIn $28–$60 (B2B premium), X $4–$9, YouTube $15–$25. CPMs vary heavily by audience and creative — these are starting benchmarks, not targets.

CPM if you are doing top-funnel awareness — you want cheap eyeballs. CPC if you are doing mid-funnel traffic — you want cheap clicks. CPA (cost per acquisition) if you are doing direct response — you want cheap conversions.

Direct-response: 3× breakeven, 4× target, 6×+ excellent. Brand-building campaigns should not be measured by ROAS alone — track lift over a control region instead. Subscription products often run on lifetime ROAS rather than first-purchase ROAS.

Three levers: (1) improve creative — better click-through rate drops cost-per-click faster than any audience tweak, (2) broaden the audience — narrow audiences exhaust fast, (3) shift to better-performing placements within the same campaign.

Just media spend — what you pay the platform. ROAS does not include production, creative, agency, or salaries. For a fuller picture, use MER (marketing efficiency ratio) which divides total revenue by total marketing spend.

B2B audiences are smaller and more valuable. A LinkedIn click that lands a $50 k deal is worth a lot more than a TikTok click that sells a $30 t-shirt. The CPM premium reflects the lifetime value math.