DOOH CPM benchmarks for 2026, converted the right way.

What CPM means, and what it does not

CPM stands for cost per mille, mille being Latin for thousand: the price of delivering 1,000 impressions of an ad. The unit comes from print and broadcast media, where an impression was a purchased ad space or an estimated audience reach, and it carried straight over into digital out-of-home ratecards because it lets buyers compare very different media on one line.

The arithmetic is exact: divide a CPM by 1,000 and you get the cost of a single impression. A $7 CPM is about $0.007 per impression; a $20 CPM is about $0.02 per impression. That division never changes, because CPM is defined as a cost per 1,000 impressions and the units only shift by a factor of 1,000.

What the arithmetic hides is that an impression is a modelled estimate of one person seeing the ad, not a count Blindspot itself uses. On DOOH specifically, one ad appearance on one screen, a play in Blindspot's own vocabulary (see what a play is), can be seen by more than one passer-by, so a play and an impression are not the same unit and should not be swapped for one another. Every CPM figure named below is credited to the publisher that reported it, and every figure carries its own per-impression conversion, so the math is visible rather than assumed.

For scale, the World Out of Home Organisation forecasts global digital out-of-home spend at about $28 billion in 2026, close to half of all out-of-home revenue (see the fuller breakdown on DOOH statistics 2026); the CPM benchmarks below are how a slice of that spend gets quoted and sold.

US DOOH CPM benchmarks, named source by named source

StackAdapt puts programmatic DOOH at roughly $2 to $20 CPM, depending on audience and context, the same range already cited on our DOOH statistics 2026 page. At the low end, $2 CPM is about $0.002 per impression; at the high end, $20 CPM is about $0.02 per impression.

Growth Channel has published two distinct DOOH CPM figures, and both are worth citing precisely because they measure different things. Its general 2025 benchmarks put common DOOH CPMs at about $2 to $7, roughly $0.002 to $0.007 per impression, and frame DOOH as undercutting connected TV while adding local reach. Separately, in its October 15, 2025 article, "2025 CPMs by Channel: CTV, DOOH & Audio Costs," Growth Channel states a blended $11.07 average CPM for DOOH in its 2025 data, again framing DOOH as undercutting CTV while providing local reach; that works out to about $0.01107, call it a little over a penny, per impression. The two are not a contradiction, one is a range from its general benchmarks and the other is a specific average from a dated article, so name the article when you cite the $11.07 figure.

AdQuick benchmarks New York directly: about $5 CPM on open-exchange programmatic inventory, rising past $75 CPM on Times Square spectaculars, with standard digital billboards at $6 to $10 CPM and marquee or programmatic placements at $15 to $25 CPM. Per impression that spans about $0.005 at the low end to $0.075 or more on a spectacular, the widest range in this guide, because a Times Square spectacular and a roadside panel are different products bought by different buyers.

UK DOOH CPM benchmarks, named source by named source

Captivate, a UK DOOH and programmatic platform, states in its own "DOOH CPM Explained" resource that typical UK programmatic DOOH CPMs run roughly £6 to £25, depending on location, dwell time and targeting layers. That is a British pound figure from a UK publisher, quoted here as published, not converted to US dollars.

The same division applies regardless of currency: £6 CPM is about £0.006 per impression, and £25 CPM is about £0.025 per impression. Dwell time and targeting layers explain most of that range: a screen where people linger, a train platform or a mall corridor, supports more precise targeting and a higher CPM than a fast-moving roadside panel.

Converting a CPM to a per-impression cost, correctly

The conversion itself never changes: take any CPM, divide by 1,000, and the result is the cost of one impression, in whatever currency the CPM was quoted. That is arithmetic, not modelling, and it holds for every figure named on this page.

Where the confusion starts is treating that per-impression figure as the same thing as a cost per play. It is not. A play, in Blindspot's own vocabulary, is one appearance of one ad on one screen; an impression is a modelled estimate of one person seeing that ad. Because more than one person can walk past a screen during a single play, one play typically delivers more than one impression, and the ratio between them, sometimes called an audience-per-play figure, varies by screen, format, dwell time and time of day. This page does not invent a specific figure for that ratio, because none of the named sources above publish one, and a guessed number would be worse than none.

The practical rule: dividing a CPM by 1,000 tells you the modelled cost per impression, not the cost per play, and the two cannot be converted cleanly without knowing that screen's average audience per play. Anyone stating "this CPM equals this per-play cost" without naming that ratio is skipping a step.

Why Blindspot prices per play instead

Blindspot avoids the CPM-to-impression gap altogether by billing the unit it can verify after the fact: the play, one real appearance of one ad on one screen, logged and shown before you book. Blindspot platform data prices per play from about $0.23 a play on urban screens, with a median near $0.52 a play across two dozen major cities (see the full per-play pricing index).

That is not a CPM, and it should not be read as one. Nothing on this page converts a Blindspot per-play price into an implied CPM, because doing that correctly would require the same audience-per-play figure this page declines to invent. The price shown on the map is the price of the play itself, not a modelled impression estimate.

If you are used to buying on CPM, the shortest way to compare is not to convert either number, it is to look at what each is verified against: an industry CPM is priced on modelled audience reach, while a Blindspot play is priced on a logged appearance, confirmed after it runs. See what a play is for the full definition, check the pricing and data hub for the wider topic, or book a billboard to see current per-play prices live on the map.