What is CPVH (cost per viewer-hour)?
CPVH stands for cost per 1,000 viewer-hours: how much an advertiser pays for a thousand hours of real, on-screen audience attention. It is the efficiency metric Publsh leads with for live-stream ads, because it derives straight from Publsh's own delivery data and is comparable across creators of any size and across platforms. Where CPM counts a guessed impression, CPVH prices the attention that was actually delivered.
What CPVH measures
CPVH answers the question every buyer really has: what did the attention actually cost. A viewer-hour is one person watching for one hour while your ad is on screen, so CPVH is the price of a thousand of those. Because it is built from delivered exposure rather than a modeled estimate, it tells you the efficiency of a buy in a single honest number, instead of a raw price with no sense of what it bought.
How CPVH is calculated
The math is simple: spend divided by viewer-hours, in thousands. Viewer-hours come from viewer-seconds (the live audience multiplied by the seconds your ad rendered) divided by 3,600. So if a flight cost 900 dollars and delivered 6,000 viewer-hours, that is 150 dollars per 1,000 viewer-hours. (Illustrative math, not a market rate.) Every input traces back to Publsh's own delivery figures, which is what makes the result something you can check rather than take on faith.
Why CPVH beats CPM for live streams
CPM, cost per thousand impressions, is the habit of the ad world, but a persistent on-screen banner has no natural impression boundary, so any impression count for it is a convention rather than a fact. CPVH sidesteps that entirely by pricing time-on-screen against a real audience. The contrast is the same one behind impressions vs viewer-seconds: one is a modeled guess, the other is a measurement. Publsh can still translate to an effective CPM for comparison, but it leads with CPVH because that is the number that reflects what was actually delivered.
CPVH is comparable across creators and platforms
The reason CPVH is so useful is that it does not care how big a creator is or which platform they stream on. A small, engaged creator and a large one can be lined up on the same CPVH, and so can a Kick flight and a Twitch flight, because dollars per 1,000 viewer-hours is platform-neutral by construction. That makes it the honest common unit for planning a buy across very different creators, where a raw price or a follower count would tell you almost nothing.
A rate means more with a benchmark
A CPVH on its own is a number; a CPVH next to a comparison is information. Where there is a real sample behind it, Publsh shows CPVH against a category benchmark, pooled per platform and anonymized, so you can see whether a rate is strong or soft for that kind of creator. Below a genuine sample it says insufficient data rather than a figure that would mislead you. That restraint is the point: a benchmark you can trust beats a benchmark that is invented.
What CPVH means for your buy
For an advertiser, CPVH is how you compare efficiency honestly and know what you are paying for attention rather than for a promise. For a creator, expressing your rate as a CPVH is what lets a brand line you up fairly against anyone else. Either way the number rests on Publsh's own delivery data: measured on Kick from the serving side that draws the ad, and estimated on Twitch as metering rolls out. It is the same efficiency language on both sides of the deal.
CPM prices a guess. CPVH prices the attention that actually showed up.
Frequently asked
What is CPVH?
CPVH is cost per 1,000 viewer-hours: what an advertiser pays for a thousand hours of on-screen audience attention. It is the efficiency metric Publsh leads with, derived from Publsh's own delivery data rather than a modeled impression count.
How is CPVH calculated?
Spend divided by viewer-hours in thousands. Viewer-hours come from viewer-seconds (the live audience times the seconds your ad rendered) divided by 3,600. For example, 900 dollars over 6,000 viewer-hours is 150 dollars per 1,000 viewer-hours (illustrative, not a market rate).
What is the difference between CPVH and CPM?
CPM counts impressions, which are a modeled guess and have no natural boundary for a persistent overlay. CPVH prices real time-on-screen against a real audience. Publsh leads with CPVH and can translate to an effective CPM only for comparison.
Why does Publsh use CPVH?
Because it derives straight from Publsh's own delivery data and is comparable across creators of any size and across platforms, so a buyer can judge efficiency honestly rather than on a raw price or a guessed impression count.
Is CPVH the same on Twitch and Kick?
Yes, CPVH is platform-neutral, so a Kick flight and a Twitch flight are directly comparable on it. The difference is only in the delivery it is built from: measured on Kick from the serving side, and estimated on Twitch as metering rolls out.