Cost per useful contact, not reach

Media sellers quote prices in a way that makes options easy to compare: cost per thousand views, or CPM. The formula is cost ÷ views × 1,000.

For the September 2027 restart, Klasna's team collected six quotes. Option A, a teen study creator, offers 600,000 views for 54,000 UAH: 54,000 ÷ 600,000 × 1,000 = 90 UAH per thousand views. The others: D (broad video pre-roll) 100, C (social ads to adults) 150, B (a parenting creator) 350, E (a parents' community newsletter) 600, F (school parent chats) 1,200.

On this measure Ostap is right: A is the cheapest by far, and F costs more than thirteen times as much per thousand views.

CPM answers one question well: how much does attention cost on this option? What it never asks is whose attention it is. A view by a 14-year-old and a view by a parent who pays cost the same in CPM. For a campaign aimed at parents, that blind spot is the whole problem, and the next card fixes it.

The question CPM skips is who is behind the views. A useful contact is a view by someone you actually need to reach; for the restart, a parent of a 10–17-year-old.

Useful contacts = views × the share of the audience you need. Then divide the cost by them: cost per useful contact = cost ÷ (views × target share).

Option A: only 5% of its 600,000 views are parents. Useful contacts: 600,000 × 5% = 30,000. Cost per useful contact: 54,000 ÷ 30,000 = 1.80 UAH.

That is twenty times its cost per view (54,000 ÷ 600,000 = 0.09). The cheapest views have become expensive parents, because 95 of every 100 views reach someone Klasna isn't trying to reach.

The same calculation works for any audience: adults learning English, EU diaspora parents, people in IT. Define who counts as useful before comparing, and price that person, not the screen.

The reverse also happens: an option that looks expensive on CPM can be the cheapest way to reach the people you need.

Option B, a parenting creator, costs 42,000 UAH for 120,000 views: 350 UAH per thousand, almost four times A's CPM. But 45% of its viewers are parents of 10–17-year-olds. Useful contacts: 120,000 × 45% = 54,000. Cost per useful contact: 42,000 ÷ 54,000 = 0.78 UAH, less than half of A's 1.80.

That is the whole trick of this lesson: price the people you need, not the screen time. A small audience made mostly of the right people beats a huge audience made mostly of the wrong ones.

Two habits follow. Never reject an option on CPM alone; compute its useful contacts first. And when a seller boasts about reach, ask the question CPM never asks: what share of those views are the people we need, and where does that share come from?

Run the same calculation for all six options (cost ÷ useful contacts):

• B, parenting creator: 42,000 ÷ 54,000 = 0.78
• C, social ads to adults: 60,000 ÷ 72,000 = 0.83
• E, parents' community newsletter: 24,000 ÷ 28,000 = 0.86
• D, broad video pre-roll: 45,000 ÷ 45,000 = 1.00
• F, school parent chats: 18,000 ÷ 12,750 = 1.41
• A, teen study creator: 54,000 ÷ 30,000 = 1.80

By CPM the order was A, D, C, B, E, F. By cost per useful contact it is B, C, E, D, F, A. The teen creator goes from first to last; the parenting creator from fourth to first.

Nothing in the quotes changed. Only the question did: from "how cheap is a view?" to "how cheap is a parent?". When the two orders disagree this much, the CPM order was ranking the wrong thing.

The ranking is a comparison at one step, reaching parents. It is not yet a decision: who the audience is, and what happens after the contact, still matter.

Option A isn't only expensive per parent. 72% of its 600,000 views come from under-18s: 600,000 × 72% = 432,000 views by children. A sponsored video in a teen study channel is built for teens.

Klasna doesn't aim advertising at children; that is its house rule, and the law points the same way. So A is out whatever its price. If the creator offered the views for free, the answer would not change.

Ostap's comeback, "teens will nag their parents, so it works anyway", describes exactly what the rule forbids: using the child to pressure the parent. The teen's voice belongs in the trial lesson, where they decide whether it suits them, not in an ad.

The same rule reaches further than A. Option D, the broad video pre-roll, has 20% of its views from under-18s. Ask the seller whether minors can be excluded, and don't buy until they can. Who an option reaches is a yes-or-no question before any price comparison.

Cost per useful contact is only as good as the audience share behind it, and the shares come from different places:

• a creator's own report (A, B) and a platform estimate (C, D) are claims. Before buying, ask for the aggregate statistics behind them, not a promise; no personal data is needed for that;
• a subscriber survey (E) is better, but self-reported;
• a school's parent count (F) is the most solid.

Two more limits. Views aren't people: one parent may see a newsletter twice, so useful contacts can overstate how many different parents you reach. And a useful contact is not a family: B's 54,000 useful contacts are views by parents, most of whom will never enquire. Cost per useful contact compares options at the same step, reaching parents; it isn't a cost per family.

So the right statements are modest: A is out because of its audience; reports get checked against aggregate statistics; D is bought only if minors can be excluded. The lowest CPM doesn't mean the best buy, and no option "brings" families by itself.

Option F, the school parent chats, is fifth on cost per useful contact (1.41 UAH). Should Klasna drop it? Not so fast.

Cost per useful contact compares options at the same step: reaching a parent. But a contact through a school doesn't arrive alone; it arrives with a teacher's trust. In April 2026, 43% of enquiries from school partnerships bought a first package, against 12.5% from paid social. A contact that converts more than three times as often can be worth more, even if it costs more to reach.

So the rule has two parts. First, compare options at one step by cost per useful contact, which sorts the paid options fairly. Then judge partner channels by what follows the contact: enquiries, trials and packages.

That gives a sensible mix: the paid part is B, C and E, the three cheapest per useful contact, and F runs as a small test, so the team learns whether school contacts convert as well next September as they did in April.

When Klasna buys several options together, the plan needs one blended cost per useful contact. Add the costs, add the useful contacts, then divide:

• cost: 42,000 + 60,000 + 24,000 = 126,000 UAH;
• useful contacts: 54,000 + 72,000 + 28,000 = 154,000;
• blended: 126,000 ÷ 154,000 = 0.82 UAH.

Don't average the three rates (0.78, 0.83, 0.86). A simple average treats each option as equally big, when C delivers more than twice E's contacts. Here the difference is small, but with options of very different sizes the simple average can be far off.

And remember what 154,000 useful contacts are: views by parents, not families. What they will return is not known yet, because contacts aren't families.

How it fits together: CPM prices attention; cost per useful contact prices the people you need; audience rules and source checks come before price; partners are judged by what follows. The next lesson links contacts to families through the CRM's rates, and builds the budget from the goal backwards.