YouTube Is Cheaper. Premium Streaming and FAST Usually Sell Better.

There's a chart making the rounds this month that every streaming buyer should look at twice.

It ranks what the big streaming services charge advertisers. Netflix sits at the top at about $37 per thousand impressions (it's come down into the $20s since). Max is around $32. Disney+, about $29. Peacock, about $26. Prime Video and Hulu, about $24. Then the free streaming crowd: the Roku Channel at $18, Tubi at $17, Pluto at $14.

And at the very bottom, YouTube. About $9.

So the question writes itself. YouTube is obviously cheaper. But is it more effective?

Short answer: cheaper, yes. More effective at selling your product on a TV screen? Usually not. Here's why we put the money on premium streaming and good FAST first.

First, What the Chart Actually Tells You

The numbers line up with Ad Age's 2024 analysis of agency buying data, and rates have trended down in 2025 and 2026. So treat them as industry estimates. They're directionally right, but they're not a price list. And YouTube's $9 is an all-device average. YouTube on the TV screen runs closer to $15 to $25.

What we could confirm is the trend underneath. eMarketer reported this week that FAST CPMs grew only 1.2% year over year in Q3 2026, compared with 4% for US streaming CPMs overall. The same piece forecasts 136.2 million US FAST viewers this year.

Read that one more time.

Audiences are piling into free streaming, and prices barely moved. For a smart buyer, that's not a warning sign. That's an opening.

Why $9 Isn't Apples to Apples

Here's the part the chart can't show you.

A Netflix impression is a full-screen spot on a TV, in a show someone chose to sit down and watch, with the sound on and no skip button.

A "YouTube impression" can be a lot of things. It can be that same big-screen moment. It can also be a skippable ad on a phone in a checkout line, a pre-roll on a laptop with the tab muted, or a quick slot between Shorts.

A blended average across all of that will always look cheap. It's averaging the living room with the bus stop.

Google knows this, by the way. In March it made 30-second, CTV-only non-skippable ads generally available, describing them as "built for the big screen." YouTube built a separate, TV-first product because the TV moment is different. And when you buy YouTube that way, you're no longer buying the $9 version.

So the honest comparison isn't $9 versus $37. It's the YouTube you'd actually buy for the TV versus premium streaming and good FAST on that same TV. (We dig into why YouTube on your phone and YouTube on your TV are not the same ad in a separate post.)

Let Me Be Fair to YouTube

YouTube isn't the bad guy here. Not even close.

In Nielsen's July Gauge, YouTube hit a record 14.2% of all TV viewing, the biggest share of any media distributor, as streaming climbed to 49% of TV overall. Families really are watching YouTube on the big screen.

When your ad runs on YouTube on a television, that's CTV. Full stop. It's the same couch, the same living room, the same household.

So this isn't "YouTube bad, Netflix good." It's "know which YouTube you're buying, and know what you're comparing it to."

What Is "the Open Exchange"?

This term comes up every time CPMs do, so here it is in plain English.

The open exchange is a giant automated auction. Thousands of apps and websites put their ad slots up for sale, and buyers' software bids on them in milliseconds, one impression at a time. Whoever bids highest wins.

It's fast, it's cheap and it's huge. It's also where you know the least about what you bought. Which app, which show, which screen, how many ads were around yours. Sometimes you get great inventory. Sometimes you get leftovers.

The alternatives sit on a spectrum:

Private marketplace (PMP). Still an auction, but invite-only. A publisher like a premium streamer or a good FAST service opens specific inventory to specific buyers at a set floor price.

Programmatic guaranteed and direct deals. You agree on the price, the volume and the inventory up front. Less of an auction, more of a reservation.

In general, the closer you get to "I know exactly where this ran," the more you pay. And the more you know what you're paying for. We've written about why going direct to the seller isn't the whole answer on its own. The point here is simpler: a cheap CPM from the open exchange and a premium CPM from a direct deal are two different products wearing the same label.

Cheap Is a CPM. Effective Is a Sale.

Here's the question I want every brand owner asking: what did each extra sale cost me?

Some simple, made-up math. Say you spend $10,000 at a $9 CPM and get about 1.1 million impressions. Say you spend the same $10,000 at a $30 CPM and get about 333,000.

The $9 buy looks like a steal. Three times the impressions.

But if a big chunk of those $9 impressions were skipped on a phone, muted on a laptop or squeezed between Shorts, how many actually landed with a buyer in your market? And if the $30 impressions ran full screen, sound on, start to finish, in front of the right households at the right frequency?

The cheaper buy can easily cost more per sale. Not always. But often enough that CPM should never be the deciding number.

The things that really move cost per sale are the things the chart doesn't price:

- Full screen. The ad is the only thing on the screen.
- Sound on. On a TV, the ad is heard, not just seen.
- Can't skip. Your whole story gets told, including the offer at the end.
- Household targeting. You reach the homes that can actually buy from you.
- Frequency control. Enough to remember, not so much they're sick of you.

Premium streaming delivers most of that by default. Good FAST delivers a lot of it at a much lower price.

Why Premium Plus Good FAST Is the Lead

This is how we build plans right now.

Premium streaming carries the message. Netflix, Max, Peacock, Prime Video, Disney+. Light ad loads, shows people chose on purpose, and an audience that's leaning back. It costs more per impression and usually earns it back in attention.

Good FAST carries the reach. The Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto. Real TV, on a real TV, at a fraction of premium's CPM. With prices barely rising while audiences keep growing, FAST is one of the best values in television right now. The key word is good. Not all FAST is created equal, which is why we use our two-bucket rule for telling good FAST from bad.

Together, they give you attention and scale on the biggest screen in the house.

Where YouTube Earns a Seat

YouTube still belongs in plenty of plans. Here's where we'd use it:

- On the TV screen only, bought as a TV product, not a blended "everywhere" campaign.
- As a reach extender for younger households and the families already living on YouTube in the living room.
- As a test cell, measured against premium and FAST on the same yardstick.

What we wouldn't do is let a $9 average CPM pull money away from premium and good FAST before anyone checks what each one actually sold.

The Honest Asterisk

Premium isn't automatically better. A Netflix spot shown to the wrong households is an expensive way to reach nobody. A sloppy FAST buy can be pure noise. And a well-built YouTube CTV buy can absolutely hold its own.

The CPMs in that chart are industry estimates, too. Your actual prices will depend on how you buy, who you target and when you run.

That's exactly why the answer isn't a ranking. It's a test.

How to Settle It With Your Own Sales

Split by geography. Run premium plus FAST in some areas and YouTube on the TV in others, with similar markets on each side.

Hold some areas back. A small set of areas with no ads at all tells you what would have happened anyway. That's how you separate real incremental lift from a channel taking credit.

Judge by cost per extra sale. Not CPM, not views, not clicks. Your own orders, by area, against each area's baseline.

Give it time. One flight is a read, not a verdict.

Do that, and the chart stops being an argument. It becomes a hypothesis you can check.

The Final Take

YouTube is cheaper. Nobody's arguing that.

But a TV ad isn't bought to be cheap. It's bought to sell. And on the TV screen, full screen, sound on, unskippable, in front of the right homes, premium streaming and good FAST usually do that better.

Lead with premium for attention. Add good FAST for reach. Give YouTube on the TV a fair test. Then let your sales pick the winner.

That's how we plan and prove every campaign at CS & Co. It's built into the CS Method™. Want to see what premium streaming and FAST could do for your brand? Find out if CTV is a fit.

Cory Poccia
CEO, CS & Co. Marketing Studio™