Everything publishers need to know about Page RPM
Page RPM (revenue per thousand [mille] pageviews) is a value web publishers use to measure the revenue earning performance of their website. It enables sites, regardless of niche , country or size to compare the revenue earning performance using a single metric.
The value is usually taken from the entire site, often over a monthly period, to get a site-wide average; however, you may chose to use the same calculation on a single page or timeframe to measure specific performance.
Page RPM is calculated by dividing your earnings by the number of pageview impressions and multiplying it by one thousand.
(revenue / pageviews) * 1000
Try our Comprehensive Page RPM Calculator if you're unsure of your revenue or if you want to understand how your revenue is calculated.
It's best to split this into two main categories, direct factors and indirect factors.
Indirect factors all contribute to your Page RPM but can't be directly measured in the Page RPM calculation. They are still extremely important and can be measured in their own way for improvement. They also feed into some of the direct factors, such as time on page. Indirect factors include:
Direct factors are included in the Page RPM calculation and include:
These are described in more detail below and are included in our Comprehensive Page RPM Calculator.
Comparison is the thief of joy.Theodore Roosevelt
As there are so many factors which contribute to Page RPM, you may see it range anywhere from $0.05 - $50 or even more. It will also fluctuate depending on seasonal and economic factors; for example, leading into a holiday season when advertisers are willing to spend more. But generally speaking, a well tuned website with predominantly tier 1 country traffic, in a competitive niche, should expect to see Page RPM in the range of $15 - $30.
But for the average website, you would more likely see Page RPM in the $2 - $5 range.
The single best way to improve your Page RPM is to improve your content. You want to keep your visitors entertained and informed. If your content is more compelling and satisfies your visitors, they will stay longer and are more likely to share your content. More time spent on page combined with more visitors will always increase your Page RPM.
Changing your ad network partner to one with more features, higher quality ads and lower commission is a great way to increase your Page RPM. While many have traffic requirements which must be met, they still present an opportunity to increase your revenue with little effort.
Placing ads on your website is by far the easiest way to start earning revenue but it's not the only option. Depending on your websites niche, you could also consider adding affiliate links. These could be a very lucrative avenue if your websites content is related to purchasable items.
Another way to increase Page RPM is to offer digital downloads for sale. Think along the lines of eBooks, audio files, templates or other content which has value to your audience.
Depending on your website, you may also consider adding an exclusive "members only" area which users need to subscribe to. Having stable recurring revenue through a subscription is a fantastic way to leverage your community.
Finally, you could replace some of your ads or add new inventory which is only available to direct advertisers. Reach out to businesses which are local to your audience and have them advertise their products or services directly through you.
While producing quality content can't be beaten for increasing visitors over time, there are some other things you can do while your organic traffic is building. Your should start by improving your on page SEO. Make your content more discoverable by search engines and correctly structured so they know what your content is about.
You could also reach out to other website owners and see if they are willing to link back to your website. They may ask you to produce content for their site which you can leverage for backlinks.
Another way to increase your website traffic is to market your website more. You might not want to spend money promoting your website, but you can still leverage social media channels to increase awareness and traffic.
Some website audiences are more technically savvy than others and may take advantage of ad blocker technology at a higher rate. If a lot of your traffic is blocking your ads, you may wish to combat this. You can try asking your visitors to whitelist your website if your ads aren't overly offensive in nature or volume.
Another technique is to block access to your content until they disable their ad blockers. This will only work if users can't find the same or similar content elsewhere without that restriction.
Finally, there is technology and techniques out there which can still serve ads regardless if an ad blocker is present or not.
The number of ads you place on your page can have a significant impact on your overall Page RPM.
Adding more ads doesn't always mean earning more revenue. Even though it's advised to have a sufficient amount of inventory, at some point the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions for the advertiser) will decrease due to over-supply. Finding the right balance might take some experimentation and time.
One of the biggest advantages of moving from AdSense to another 3rd party ad partner is often the addition of header bidding. This is a technique where before any ads are served, a real-time auction takes place amongst multiple ad serving networks - so you benefit from not just the highest paying ad, but also the highest paying network. This alone will massively increase your Page RPM.
If your webpage has visitors staying for reasonable length of time, then having your ads refresh can help your Page RPM. It's another technique to add more ads but without needing more space. However, the same rules apply with adding more inventory, the CPM will decrease as you increase supply. You will need to experiment to find the optimal refresh rate for your website.
There is a fine balance between promoting your content vs your ads. But if you are hiding your ads well below the fold (requiring your visitors to scroll) or in other less seen areas of your website, then you should consider increasing your ads visibility. Advertisers will pay more if their ad has a higher chance of being seen and therefore clicked on. One very popular technique is to have an ad unit stay in view by keeping it "stuck" to the viewport, even when the user is scrolling.
Unfortunately, this time bigger truly is better. Advertisers love bigger ad units. It enables them to get more of their message across, even to the point of taking over the entire screen. So if you can afford the real-estate, then opting for larger ad units will help with your Page RPM.
Another ad unit proving to be very lucrative is video. Again this is because advertisers can deliver more of their message to the viewer.
It's important to keep your users experience in mind when selecting the right ad units. Too much intrusive advertising can turn them away which will have a negative impact on your Page RPM.
Positioning your content to target a more lucrative audience is a great way to increase your Page RPM. Understand who is spending money in your niche and where they're from. For example, you could take that knowledge and refine your content to drive more affiliate sales.
If you can target an audience which spends money in a location with a strong economy, then advertisers will be competing to position themselves on your website.
We are building a database of user submitted Page RPMs. Once we have enough data, we will publish the results here.
| Category / Industry / Niche | Avg. Page RPM | |
|---|---|---|
| Arts & Entertainment | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Autos & Vehicles | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Beauty & Fitness | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Books & Literature | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Business & Industrial | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Computers & Electronics | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Finance | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Food & Drink | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Games | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Health | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Hobbies & Leisure | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Home & Garden | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Internet & Telecom | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Jobs & Education | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Law & Government | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| News | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Online Communities | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| People & Society | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Pets & Animals | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Real Estate | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Reference | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Science | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Shopping | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Sports | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Travel | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
| Other | still collecting data | Tell us your current Page RPM |
English speaking countries with strong economies* tend to offer the best ad revenue. Although some european countries whom english is not their first language also perform well for their local traffic.
The ad publishing industry has categorised countries into three tiers to represent their traffic value, with tier 1 being the most desireable.
If you follow the chatter in the various publisher communities, then the order from lowest to highest goes something like:
To join the highest paying ad partner networks you will first need to meet their criteria. This usually means a lot of traffic from tier 1 countries and your website having advertiser friendly content.
...but don't feel limited by just the most talked about ad partners. There is a directory of Google Certified Publishing Partners and any one of those may serve you better. Do your own research!
AdSense is probably the easiest way to start earning money from your website. Their barrier to entry is very low and you could see money hitting your bank account by the end of the following month.
While they do take a 32% commission, they offer some great tools and guidance to get you earning money from your website traffic.
Other publishing partners usually offer more features like header bidding and ad refreshes, but they often also require more traffic before they will consider taking you on as a partner.
AdSense is a great way to start earning money from your website. Once you have established your website with solid traffic, it might be worthwhile to look at other partners to take advantage of the added features at their disposal.
| Gross Ad Earnings | Commission | Net Ad Revenue | Affiliate Revenue | Sales Revenue | Total Revenue | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx |
| Week | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx |
| Month | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx |
| Year | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx | xx |
Pageviews are the number of page impressions your website receives. This is not the same as sessions, which are the number of visits your website receives. A user may visit your website on a number of occasions and view multiple pages during each visit. Thus making your pageviews the higher of these metrics.
Pageviews > Visits/Sessions > Unique Users
Pageviews can be calculated by taking the number of sessions and multiplying it by the average pages per visit. This is usually reported on a monthly basis.
This is the average time spent by users on your website pages.
While this sounds simple, it can be hard to calculate accurately. Often the analytics tool measuring this number is unable to determine when a user leaves the site, so can be less accurate as the last visited pages time isn't counted. Modern techniques are more accurate and call this metric average engagement time (GA4) and also factor in things like if the user has scrolled down the page or if the tab is in the background.
This is the percentage of visitors who leave your website without any interaction. An interaction my be additional page views or triggering a measured event, such as clicking a button.
While some visits my be considered a bounce, they could infact have read the content on your page, spending over a minute enjoying youe website, before clicking back.
This metric (bounce rate) is being depreciated in GA4 in favour of the engagement rate metric due to the way it can now detect additional interactions such as scrolling.
This is the percentage of visitors to your website who are using an ad blocker to prevent the display of ads.
An ad blocker is a software tool that is designed to block or remove advertisements from web pages. Ad blockers work by identifying and preventing the loading of content from known ad servers, or by removing or hiding the elements of a web page that contain ads. This can include banner ads, pop-up ads, video ads, and other types of online advertising.
Ad blockers are typically used to improve the user experience by removing unwanted ads and reducing page loading times. Some ad-blockers are browser extensions, others are standalone apps, and there are even built-in ad-blockers in some browsers.
A few ad blockers do allow whitelisted ads to appear, but otherwise you will not receive ad revenue from users who employ an ad blocker without additional services or software.
Depending on your geographic location, site niche and prevelence of mobile vs desktop traffic, your adblock rate might be anywhere from 10%-50%.
CPM stands for "cost per thousand" and it is a pricing model used in online advertising. It is used to calculate the cost of displaying an ad on a website for 1,000 views or impressions. The cost is typically quoted in terms of CPM, and advertisers pay this amount for every 1,000 views of their ad. This means that if an advertiser has a CPM of $2.00, they will pay $2.00 for every 1,000 views of their ad. This pricing model is commonly used for display ads and other non-performance based ad formats.
This is your ad inventory.
Depending on your pages layout and content, you may have many or few ads at a range of sizes and positions.
Different ad units perform at different rates depending on how prominent they are to users and therefore more desireable they are to advertisers.
Offering a range of ad sizes is a good technique to ensure you have inventory available for advertisers.
Some ad partners will offer the ability to refresh ads.
This is especially useful if your visitors tend to stay on a single page for any length of time.
While subsequent bids for those ads may deminish in value upon each refresh, they can still significantly impact your overall revenue in a positive way.
Advertisers will only pay for viewable impressions. For example, if you have a long blog post with two ads near the bottom of the page, but the user never reads or scrolls down that far, you will not earn revenue from those units for that visit.
Unfortunately you do not usually get to keep all of the revenue generated by your website. Often you will partner with an agency which connects your website to the advertisers.
Depending on which service you are using, their take could be anywhere from 20-32%.