What is RPM on YouTube?

Revenue per mille — what you actually receive per thousand views, after YouTube's share.

The distinction people trip on is RPM versus CPM. CPM is what advertisers pay per thousand ad impressions. RPM is what lands in your account, divided across all your views including the ones that carried no ad. RPM is always the lower and more useful number.

It varies enormously by niche because advertiser demand does. Finance, business and software attract bidders with high customer values, so those channels commonly see $15-40. Entertainment, gaming and general facts often sit under $4 for identical view counts.

Other things that move it: audience country, video length, whether mid-roll ads are enabled, and season — Q4 RPMs are reliably higher than January.

What does not move it much: subscriber count. Two channels with the same views in the same niche earn roughly the same regardless of how many subscribers each has.