Playback-Based CPM

Studio reports two CPM figures and they count different things. CPM divides revenue by every ad impression, so a watch that carried 3 ads counts 3 times over. Playback-based CPM divides the same revenue by monetised playbacks, counting that watch once, so the playback figure is nearly always the larger of the pair. Both are gross, measured before YouTube takes its share. Neither one is money that reached your account. RPM is the figure reflecting your actual payout across all views, and anybody holding a friend's playback-based CPM against their own RPM is comparing two unrelated numbers.