CPP — cost per rating point

CPP (Cost Per Point) is what one rating point costs: the placement budget divided by the GRP it earned. It is the TV market's primary basis for comparison.

How it is calculated

CPP = budget ÷ GRP

A 12-million campaign that earns 240 GRP has a CPP of 50 thousand. An offer next to it at a CPP of 42 thousand is, all else equal, the better buy — not because it costs less in absolute money, but because it costs less per unit of attention.

Why this is the measure people compare on

A channel's rate card is not comparable to anything on its own: a prime-time minute on a national channel and a late-night minute on a niche one cost differently and deliver differently. CPP puts both over one denominator. For the same reason CPP is calculated per slot rather than "on average for the channel": averaging across a channel hides exactly the difference the metric exists to show.

What CPP does not show

Who the audience is. A cheap point on a channel whose viewers are not your target is cheap precisely because it is not wanted. CPP answers "what does attention cost", not "whose attention is it".

How the platform handles it

In OpenMediaLogic, CPP is calculated per slot in real time, and buying is optimized against actual CPP rather than the rate card. That is the mechanism behind the Beeline Kazakhstan case: −32% media costs in nine months with campaign KPIs maintained. You can size the effect on your own volumes in the calculator.