It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that doubling your page views should double your earnings, yet this is rarely the experience of content producers who see sudden surges of traffic. All too often RPMs drop almost mirroring the traffic increases and resulting in far lower incremental revenue gains than they might hope.
If the new traffic is of lower quality this is easy to understand, but we see this pattern over and over when the traffic profile is larger, but otherwise unchanged.
In the chart below ad impressions are shown in yellow and RPM is in pink. As impressions increase the RPM has responded by dropping. If this looks familiar, read on to understand why this happens and why it isn’t always a bad thing.
When looking at performance changes, it is always useful to look behind what is driving those RPM figures. RPM is a product of Cost Per Click (CPC) multiplied by Click Through Rate (CTR). If your Impression RPM drops then it is because either: A) Your CTR has dropped, B) Your CPC has dropped or C) Both of these things have happened.
Why high traffic can lower your CPC
AdSense reporting encourages us to watch average performance numbers. Averages can be deceptive though and few advertisers will actually pay your average cost per click. The Revenue Profile report within AdSense provides a good demonstration of this.
The revenue profile report gives publishers insight into what high value bids they are attracting. In the above example, the publisher is achieving an average ad-request RPM of $0.39, but their top 10% of impressions are averaging $2.66.
One of the great strengths of AdSense is that it fills close to 100% of impressions. If the available inventory on a site increases that means that lower bids need to be accepted in order to fill those additional requests. There may be exactly the same number of impressions being sold at the higher price, but the additional inventory may go for a lower price in order to ensure that the impression is served.
An increase in the supply of available impressions also means less upwards pressure in the auction to push advertisers up to their maximum bid, again lowering the average price achieved for an impression. In short, they might still get the high paying impressions, but they are joined by lower paying ones that drag the average down.
Why high traffic can lower your CTR
With the best performing ads likely to win auctions, an increase in available impressions also opens the door for less competitive advertisers. Less competitive advertisers might be lower quality, less compelling or might just be less precisely targeted to your audience. Any of these can result in ads that are less likely to get clicked and bring your average CTR down as a result.
Putting things in perspective
The “double-whammy” of lower CTR and lower CPC is usually bad news for publishers, and can certainly put a depressing slant on your RPM charts. When the double-whammy comes as a result of increased traffic the end result doesn’t have to be bad.
If we go back to our first chart and now also add a line in for revenue in blue, we get a more realistic picture of what is happening. The average performance metrics might be lower, but overall the site is earning more as a result of the increased traffic.
Metrics like RPM are useful tools to understand and use to get insights, but it is revenue that pays the bills. In the example above the site ended up more than doubling its earnings, a fact that soon helped alleviate any worries about falling RPMs.
Mat has been supporting content creators on the web since 1996. As Co-founder of OKO Digital, Mat became the first person in the UK qualified to AdSense partner status and repeated this first with Google Certified Publishing Partner programme.
nice post
Adsense Optimization is pretty interesting for me. If we concentrate on conversion rate optimization along with SEO, I guess in less time we can improve revenue generating funda of our web marketing efforts. The best way to improve Adsense revenue is to write content on high CPC keywords, but such articles will not perform well in organic search because of high competition. We can drive traffic through low competition keywords to blog and include high paying keywords link within the article; so that visitors would click on high paying keywords link and redirect to high CPC article within a blog.
For me, it’s just studying with ad placements and experimenting with font size and colors to mix in with the content that works. I know that Google Adsense optimization is critical to earning from blogging. But it is very ugly to use 336×280 at the top of blog post because it diverts reader attention. So I always keep 728×90 or 468×60 at the upper part of the header.
CPC/CPM/PPC is the most crucial factor if your blogs main monetization factor of Google Adsense. I’m practicing very hard to increase my Adsense earnings because they are very low in my blogs. I’m working with keywords in articles, and I’m praying I can get something more from it. Anyways its an excellent article about increasing Adsense earnings. You have discussed all the key points for increasing CPC of Adsense Ads. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing a wonderful information with us.
Thanks for the info. it is really educative
I am also not getting even 1 cent from page rpm or impressions just getting clicks money.
AdSense’s page RPM is a measure of how much you earn per 1000 pageviews from all bid types (per click, per impression etc). AdSense is overwhelmingly paid per click though, so it is normal for most to come from that. This is one reason many publishers prefer the impression based model of AdX.
it,s a very helpful article and giving nice information so many many thanks sir how I get good traffic
I’m getting low cpc what shuld i do for high cpc please reply?
why this possible
The different ways and techniques that you have listed are great, and I think, most of us here would be already following that. There must be more than these ideas to increase Adsense RPM. At this time, I consider one smart way to boost RPM, if you are looking for improving Adsense RPM quickly, just make sure you are allowing best (high paying) advertisers on your website, by barring or adding any low paying advertiser from your AdSense account settings…
Moreover, it might be advantageous for you to attach Google Analytics with your AdSense a/c. This will advise you to check where the improvement in the earnings is coming from. Frequently it occurs when a page on the website rises in search rankings. In case, if your organic search count has increased, they are much more likely to click on AdSense ads if they are arriving from Google than the social sites or a referred or traffic buying site. The visitors for the Google search are very targeted to the topic of yours page. But yeah, on the other side, not sure about the image ads. From my own experience, the visitor tends to stay away from them. I need to practice to know more about this. Let’s see…
Anyways, thank you so much for all these. Definitely, it will encourage me to concentrate on each and small things to improve earnings. And FYI, now I have done some of this but not all. I will be updating my Adsense account today, or in case, I need any, I will post here for you to anwer.. :D
thank you so much ,i think we have to wait for site to become HIGHER DA SITE
Domain Authority isn’t related to CPM rates. There may be a small correlation between the two within the same vertical, but only because a higher DA site is likely to be better known and potentially attract more targeted buys.
In the case of your site you should test that top menu across more devices. It is pushing all ads and content below the fold for us, which will severely impact usability and ad CPMs
Thanks for the pointers. The article really helped. My traffic also went high resulting in low cpc and low rpm.
I was getting good cpc, but from last month it started down. Also my clicks are decreasing, what should I do?