Facebook RPM in India: what a thousand views really pays, and what to do about it

Updated 24.09.2026 · Kostas Obuchow

India sits in the bottom tier of Facebook's auction: the anchor from community and our own figures is about $10 per million views, against $100–200 for a US audience. Why the gap is structural, why English-language content lands in India by default, and the three things that actually change the number.

Short answer

India sits in the bottom tier of Facebook’s auction. The anchor we publish, from community figures and our own: a million views in a cheap market returns around $10 — roughly $0.01 per thousand views.

For comparison, public measurements put a million Reels views on a US audience at $100–200. That is an order of magnitude or more, and the gap is structural: it comes from what advertisers pay for attention in each market, not from your content.

Two honest notes. We run no Hindi-language pages, so the figure above is an order of magnitude rather than a measurement of ours. And the rate moves every month with the auction.

Why the rate is low

Facebook pays out of the advertising it sells against your views. The price of attention in India is low, the auction is less crowded, and the payout follows.

That is why the rate cannot be fixed by editing harder: five hours of post-production aimed at a bottom-tier market is a loss at any view count. The tier list, and what each tier means for what you can afford to spend on a video, is in Facebook RPM by country.

Why English content lands in India

If your content is in English and not tied to a country, the algorithm sends it where it earns retention. That is India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh — markets with enormous volume and cheap attention.

Creators read this backwards. “We will publish in English and reach the US” is the most expensive mistake in the topic: views multiply, revenue stands still, and the blended rate falls.

For a creator in India this cuts the other way: the audience comes easily, and the rate is what it is. Which makes the next section the whole game.

What actually changes the number

Three things, in order of effect.

1. The share of expensive geography. The rate follows the viewers’ country. A topic tied to the US, Canada or Northern Europe — prices, products, events there — shifts the audience, and with it the rate. Nothing else moves the number as much.

2. The format. Photos and text posts cost minutes and are paid alongside reels; into September the photo rate for English-language operators ran around $0.30 per thousand. On a cheap audience every format pays little, but cheap formats keep the loss small. See what to post on a Facebook page.

3. Volume against cost. In the bottom tier the economics only close when production is cheap. Expensive video for an Indian audience does not pay back; that is arithmetic, not pessimism.

How to read your own figure

In the Professional dashboard, Earnings Rate is money per 1,000 qualified views. Read it by country, not as one number: a single page often mixes an Indian audience with a small, far more valuable slice from elsewhere.

What Meta does and does not publish about the calculation is in what percentage Facebook pays. Our own measurements by page language are in Facebook RPM by country.