What are vCPM Campaigns?
Most Amazon campaigns are CPC (cost per click) campaigns, meaning you pay for every click your ads receive. However, some Sponsored Display campaigns have the option to be run on a vCPM cost structure, which stands for cost per thousand viewable impressions. For these campaigns, you pay for every thousand “viewable” impressions your ad gets.
A “viewable” impression can mean different things on different platforms. Amazon follows the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) and Media Rating Council’s (MRC) standards of viewability. They state that for a view on an ad to count as part of a vCPM’s costs, 50% of the ad must be displayed on a customer’s screen for at least 1 second for image ads, and 2 seconds for video ads. Because the standards for viewability are stricter, this metric is often different (and usually lower), than the “Impressions” metrics Amazon campaigns also have in their reporting.
Where Are These Metrics in Perpetua?
vCPM campaign metrics are included as part of the combined metrics in the Account Overview page. These metrics include:
Attributed Sales: Views and Clicks. This combines sales from CPC campaign clicks, and sales from vCPM viewable impressions.
Conversions: Views and Clicks. This combines conversions from CPC campaign clicks, and sales from vCPM viewable impressions.
Spend: Our account overview spend includes CPC and vCPM spend.
ACoS: Measures Ad spend as a percentage of ad sale. ACoS will take vCPM spend and sales into account if your account has any of these campaigns running.
For Attributed Sales and Conversions, we have ‘Click Only’ versions of these metrics to show the isolated CPC campaign performance for these metrics as well.
vCPM Attribution
Our regular reporting data uses a 30-day attribution window, however vCPM campaigns only have 14-day attribution data available, so we use the 14-day attribution data only for the vCPM campaigns.
Article last updated March 2023. If you find this information to be out of date, please contact hello@perpetua.io.