While publishers have several tools to track revenue generation, one of the key metrics they can monitor and influence is page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM). It’s an important metric to detect issues with ad effectiveness as well.
Although RPM is quite a volatile metric, there are several strategies you can implement to influence this metric and estimate how much revenue is being generated.
What is Page RPM?
Page RPM is a formula used to gauge the revenue generated by a web page. Because it is essentially the same as effective cpm, which stands for “effective cost per mille”, Google uses the terms interchangeably.
eCPM is used on many platforms—including include desktop, mobile, in-app and video—that monetize through display ads.
How to Calculate Page RPM
Page RPM is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings or ad revenue by your total number of page views and multiplying the result by 1000:
Page RPM = (estimated earnings / total number of page views) * 1000
For instance, if you have 1500 page views per month and an estimated revenue of $15, your page RPM would be ($15/1500)*1000 = $10.
What Influences Page RPM?
There are two metrics that directly influence your RPM:
1. Click-through rate (CTR)
This measures the number of clicks on an ad per thousand ad impressions. The more an advertiser’s ads are clicked, the more publishers are paid. An increasing CTR translates to an increase in how much revenue your site can generate.
A higher CTR also means the publisher is offering a high-quality placement for those kinds of ads, which would allow the publisher to get a higher price per click on the ad placement bid.
2. Cost per click (CPC)
This measures how much money an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on an ad placed on a publisher’s site. CPC varies based on the content of the ad, context, and niche.
Publishers should ensure that they are keeping both CTR and CPC as high as possible since increasing these two metrics will drive the growth of their page RPM.
There are several strategies publishers can use to increase the effectiveness of their advertising real estate. Here are some of the best ways publishers can increase page RPM.
11 Ways to Increase Page RPM
The actions you take to boost your page RPM won’t necessarily have an immediate effect. When doing A/B tests to implement any of these recommendations, remember to use a significant sample size and let each experiment run for at least a week before evaluating the results.
There are three main areas you can work on to improve page RPM: your own web pages, the ads that are shown on your website, and the audience that visits your site.
1. Focus on your content quality
It may be a cliché at this point, but focusing on your content quality is the foundation that will allow you to command a higher page RPM. Having strong content that your audience cares about has a waterfall effect on all the other metrics and optimizations.
True, having great content is not a guarantee for success. We all know great publications with high-quality content in their niches that disappeared. But look at it from the other side: how many successful, sustainable sites that you know of have poor content?
2. Suggest relevant content to maintain user engagement
Content recommendation engines are designed to provide navigational pathways to related content to keep users engaged and increase their time on page and throughout the site.
Increasing the number of page views will drive up your page RPM, as it increases the chance that the user will end up clicking on an ad.
3. Increase site speed and fix technical issues
Increasing your ad, site and page speed is a key factor for improving user experience and ad visibility. But you should also pay attention to any other technical issues that might decrease your performance, such as mobile rendering issues or broken links.
These technical issues have a gradual, accumulating negative effect on your SEO efforts, which will impact your page RPM as well.
4. Increase ad viewability
How effective is an ad that isn't seen? Not very. Increasingly, advertisers and publishers are using this metric to evaluate ad campaigns. There’s a growing trend among advertisers to pay only for viewable impressions.
According to eMarketer, desktop viewability is around 50%. This means that almost half of the advertising investment goes to ads that are never seen. If the industry switched overnight to paying only for viewable impressions, publishers would lose an important part of their revenue. So, it’s in everyone’s interest to increase viewability.
According to our research, there’s a strong correlation between viewability and CPM which means that increasing viewability will directly impact your page RPM.
Reducing ad latency (increasing ad loading speed) is one factor that can impact viewability of ads. Improve your ad layouts can also help you increase the viewability of your ad units.
5. Optimize your ad formats and sizes
There are a variety of formats you can accept on your site: text, display, video, rich media or expandable ads are some of the options available. Some formats command higher prices per click and impression.
That doesn’t mean that switching all your ad inventory to video ads will allow you to increase your page RPM. You’d need to experiment and find the optimal combination of formats that can maximize your revenue performance.
There is also a variety of ad sizes which are defined and standardized by industry bodies like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB which are based on image proportions rather than fixed sizes. Some ad sizes are used more frequently by advertisers, which results in a higher competition.
Implementing these ads would drive the CPC of your ads up, which would result in higher page RPM. Some ad sizes are also more effective and have higher CPCs than others. While you should
Post a Comment