The short answer: For influencer marketing, a good CPM depends almost entirely on whether you are paying fees. On seeded programmes where creators receive product rather than cash, Augmentum Media has delivered verified CPMs of £2.49 (Lululemon), £3.27 (Fussy) and EUR 4.46 (Mother's Earth). On a paid mid-tier campaign with six creators averaging 235,000 followers, the CPM was £16.34, which was 18 percent better than the campaign target. So: under £5 is strong for seeded content, and £10 to £20 is a realistic band for paid mid-tier partnerships in the UK.

As of September 2026. Every CPM below comes from a published Augmentum Media case study, not from an industry estimate or a survey average.

What does CPM mean in influencer marketing?

CPM is cost per mille: what you paid for one thousand impressions. Divide total cost by total impressions, then multiply by 1,000.

The complication specific to influencer marketing is that "cost" is ambiguous in a way it never is in paid media. In a Meta ads account, cost is the money that left the account. In an influencer programme, cost can mean creator fees only, or fees plus product and shipping, or fees plus product plus the management time to run it. Those three definitions can differ by a factor of three on the same campaign, which is why published influencer CPMs are so often meaningless.

State what is in the numerator or the number is decoration. The figures in this post are campaign delivery costs against verified impressions, and the seeded programmes carry no influencer fees at all, which is precisely why they land where they do.

What is a good CPM for influencer marketing?

Here is the actual spread across four programmes, four models and three currencies. These are the numbers the rest of this post explains.

Read as bands derived from those four verified programmes, rather than as targets:

• Under £5: strong, and realistically only achievable on a seeded programme at volume.

• £5 to £10: a seeded programme carrying some fees, or a well-negotiated micro paid campaign.

• £10 to £20: normal for paid mid-tier partnerships in the UK. The Fabletics result sits here and was considered a strong outcome.

• Above £20: you are buying something other than efficiency, such as a specific face or a contracted date. That can be the right call, but do not call it a reach buy.

Why is the gap between seeded and paid CPMs so large?

Because in a seeded programme the cost of reach is product, and product is cheap relative to a creator fee. A six-to-one spread sounds implausible until you write out both sides.

Take an illustration with round numbers. Send a £25 product to 300 nano and micro creators and the fee line is zero. If 200 of them post and each reaches 8,000 people, that is 1.6 million impressions for £7,500 of product, before management time. Pay one mid-tier creator £4,000 for a post reaching 250,000 people and you have spent more than half as much for a sixth of the reach.

The other half of the answer is content volume. Lululemon produced more than 1,300 creatives at roughly 11.4 to 11.9 pieces per influencer, and Fussy produced more than 11,000. A seeded creator who genuinely likes the product does not post once; they keep posting. That is what pushes the denominator up without pushing the numerator with it, and it is the mechanism Augmentum Media designs programmes around. Our micro versus macro comparison runs the same comparison by tier.

What is a good engagement rate for influencer marketing?

The benchmark Augmentum Media measures paid campaigns against is 1.5 to 2 percent on Instagram. The Fabletics campaign averaged 5.3 percent across six mid-tier creators, roughly three times that benchmark, which is what made a £16.34 CPM a strong result rather than an expensive one.

Two cautions about engagement rate, because it is the most misused number in this field.

First, engagement rate falls as follower count rises for structural reasons. A 12 percent rate on a 4,000-follower account and a 2 percent rate on a 400,000-follower account are not comparable, and using the former to argue that small creators are better is circular. Compare tiers on CPM and on cost per acquired customer instead.

Second, engagement rate does not pay for anything. A post can carry a 9 percent engagement rate and sell nothing, which is why Augmentum Media reports engagement alongside trackable revenue rather than in place of it. Fussy's programme produced 11,500+ new customers at a 5.12x return on ad spend and a customer acquisition cost under £13.96 including fees, and £5.52 excluding them. Those are the numbers a founder can act on. Our influencer marketing KPIs post sets out which metrics belong in which report.

How do you calculate CPM for an influencer campaign?

Total cost divided by total impressions, times 1,000. The discipline is in what you count.

1. Fix the numerator. Decide whether you are reporting creator fees only, or fully loaded cost including product, shipping, commission and management. Report the same way every month or your trend line is fiction.

2. Use impressions, not reach or views. Impressions count repeat exposures, reach counts unique people, and platform view definitions differ. Mixing them inflates the denominator and flatters the CPM.

3. Collect from the creator, not from the public post. Public likes and comments are not impressions. You need the creator's own insights screen, which means asking for it as part of the brief.

4. Exclude paid amplification unless you also add its spend. If you boosted a creator's post, that spend belongs in the numerator and its impressions in the denominator. Keeping organic and amplified CPMs separate is usually more useful.

5. Report it next to earned media value, never instead of it. An EMV figure with no cost attached is a vanity number.

That last point is the one most brands get wrong, and it is covered properly in our earned media value post.

How does influencer CPM compare to paid social CPM?

This is the comparison that decides budgets, and it needs one caveat stated plainly: the two numbers do not measure the same thing.

Paid social CPMs on Meta are bought at auction, are precisely targeted and are entirely repeatable. You can spend the same amount tomorrow and get roughly the same result. Seeded influencer CPMs are cheap partly because the labour is not in the numerator and partly because the content is not guaranteed to appear at all. You cannot buy 7 million impressions of seeded content on a deadline.

The useful comparison is therefore not organic influencer CPM against paid social CPM. It is what happens when you put the two together: take the content that already performed organically and run it as a paid ad. That is where the seeded library earns twice. The Turmeric Co. programme generated more than 4,500 content pieces from 2,700 seeded creators and cut creative testing costs by 55 percent by using them as ad creative, producing 15+ VIP creatives a month at an average under £90 per video. NOOMA produced more than 1,000 ad-ready creatives in nine months with zero paid influencer spend.

The mechanics of running creator content as paid media are in Meta partnership ads, Spark ads versus partnership ads and influencer whitelisting cost.

Does a low CPM mean the campaign worked?

No, and treating it as the scoreboard is how brands end up with cheap reach and no customers.

CPM measures efficiency of exposure. It says nothing about whether the audience was the right audience or whether anybody bought. It is entirely possible to hit a £1.50 CPM by seeding 500 creators whose audiences live in markets you do not ship to, and that campaign has failed at any price.

Read CPM as one of four numbers, never alone: CPM for efficiency, engagement rate for whether the content landed, trackable revenue and return on ad spend for whether it sold, and customer acquisition cost for whether it sold profitably. On Fussy all four moved together, which is the only configuration that justifies scaling. Mother's Earth returned EUR 120k+ in affiliate revenue at a 5.41x ROAS against that EUR 4.46 CPM. Our influencer marketing ROI post covers the four-number frame in full.

What drives your CPM up or down?

The negotiation line is worth underlining. On the Fabletics campaign, average discounts of 30 to 40 percent were negotiated against the creators' opening rates, with a four to five day content turnaround in Q4. Rate cards are an asking price, as our UK influencer pricing post sets out.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good CPM for influencers?

On seeded programmes where creators receive product rather than fees, verified campaign CPMs have landed between £2.49 and EUR 4.46, so anything under £5 is strong. For paid partnerships with mid-tier creators in the UK, £10 to £20 is realistic: one campaign with six creators averaging 235,000 followers delivered £16.34 and beat its target by 18 percent.

Is a £10 CPM good for influencer marketing?

For a paid campaign with mid-tier or larger creators, yes, that is a good result. For a seeded programme with no creator fees, £10 is high and suggests either low content volume per creator or product costs that are too high for the model to work efficiently.

How do you calculate influencer CPM?

Divide total campaign cost by total impressions, then multiply by 1,000. State clearly whether your cost figure includes only creator fees or is fully loaded with product, shipping, commission and management, because those two definitions can differ by a factor of three on the same campaign.

Is a high or low CPM better?

Lower is better for the same audience and the same outcome, but CPM alone cannot tell you a campaign worked. A very low CPM achieved by reaching people who cannot buy your product is worse than a higher CPM against the right audience. Always read it alongside conversion and acquisition cost.

Why is influencer CPM cheaper than paid social CPM?

Mainly because seeded programmes carry no creator fees, so the cost of reach is product rather than media spend. Content volume compounds the effect: a seeded creator who likes the product often posts many times, spreading one product cost across many posts. The trade-off is that seeded reach cannot be bought on a deadline.

What is a good engagement rate for influencer marketing?

Around 1.5 to 2 percent is the working Instagram benchmark. One UK mid-tier campaign averaged 5.3 percent across six creators, roughly three times that. Remember that engagement rate falls as follower count rises, so never compare tiers on it directly.

Should I report CPM or earned media value?

Both, and always together. Earned media value on its own is a vanity number because it has no cost attached; CPM on its own says nothing about whether the audience mattered. Reporting the two side by side shows what the reach cost and what it was notionally worth.

What is a good CPM for TikTok influencer content?

The same logic applies as on Instagram: the payment model matters far more than the platform. Seeded content on either platform can land under £5, while paid creator partnerships sit in the £10 to £20 band. Compare like with like by holding the payment model constant before you compare platforms.

Does CPM include product and shipping costs?

It should on a seeding programme, because product and fulfilment are the actual cost of the reach. If you report fees-only CPM on a seeded programme, the number will be near zero and completely uninformative. Decide on one definition and hold it every month.

How many impressions should I expect per creator?

It varies with tier and content volume, but the useful planning figure is pieces per creator rather than impressions per post. One programme averaged roughly 11.4 to 11.9 creatives per influencer, which is what made its CPM land at £2.49. A creator who posts once is a much worse deal than the follower count implies.

Can I lower my influencer CPM?

Yes, in order of impact: shift from paying fees to seeding product, work in the 3,000 to 50,000 follower band, brief for multiple pieces rather than one post, run the programme continuously so discovery costs amortise, and negotiate hard on any paid deals, where 30 to 40 percent off opening rates is achievable.

What CPM should I budget for a first influencer campaign?

Budget conservatively at £5 to £8 for a first seeded programme rather than the £2.49 a mature programme can reach, because early campaigns carry the full cost of discovery and have no content library yet. Programmes get cheaper per thousand as they run: the efficiency comes from duration and repeat posting.

Let's talk

If you want your current influencer CPM checked against these benchmarks, with product cost and management time counted properly, let's talk. Augmentum Media runs seeding, affiliate and paid amplification programmes for health and wellness DTC brands, and the strategy guide sets out how the three stages fit together.