CPC is the price of a visit. Google describes CPC bidding as paying for each click on your ads (Google). Whether or not the auction is run on clicks, every campaign has an effective CPC: spend divided by clicks.
CPC is the bridge between CPM and CPA. CPM is what 1,000 impressions cost; CTR decides how many of those become clicks; CPC is the result. A better video lowers CPC without lowering the bid, because more of each 1,000 impressions turns into traffic.
Example. An ad set spends $1,000 for 100,000 impressions, so a $10 CPM. With a 1 % CTR that is 1,000 clicks at $1.00 CPC. Swap in a creator video with a 2 % CTR at the same CPM and the same $1,000 buys 2,000 clicks at $0.50 CPC. If 3 % of clicks buy, the first version produces 30 orders and the second 60. Example numbers, not a benchmark.
When brands use it. The pain this answers: “We paid $300 a video and nine out of ten never beat our control.” Brands compare the CPC of creator videos against their own brand creative, and they compare the CPC of paid traffic against the effective cost of creator-driven organic traffic. A creator paid $5 per 1,000 views whose post sends clicks at a 2 % rate is delivering traffic at $0.25 a click, which is a number a media buyer understands.
The creator’s view. Creators are rarely paid on clicks, but CPC explains why brands pay for some videos and not others. A video that gets cheap clicks is a video the brand will scale, and under an ad spend share that scaling is the creator’s income.