Here is a list of the more important media elements related to circulation, and represents the criteria that an advertiser uses to make media purchase decisions:
- Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
The cost to disseminate an advertising message per 1,000 copies:
CPM = (unit advertising cost – i.e. 1/1 page)/(number of copies distributed/1,000).
- Penetration Rate
The percentage of distributed copies in a market sector:
Penetration = (number of copies)/(number of households) [%], for the consumer press.
or
Penetration = (number of copies)/(number of businesses) [%], for the B2B press.
- Costs of Insertion
The number of insertions to be run in one issue is directly related to the number of copies printed/distributed.
- Readership per copy (RPC)
The number of readers of one issue of a publication related to the size of the distribution of the given issue:
RPC = (number of readers)/(number of distributed copies)
This is a quite disputed index (many analysts are challenging the comparison of number of readers to number of copies); nonetheless, it is widely used in the industry. In any case, this is a benchmark index, showing the total readership circulation within a given market.