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Definition of Pageview CPM
Pageview CPM (PV CPM) is the total amount of money spent by advertisers on ads on your website over a given period of time, divided by the number of page views over the same time period. Then multiply by 1,000 to get an effective pageview CPM.
Definition of Pageview RPM
Pageview RPM (PV RPM) is the gold standard metric for ad revenue for publishers. To get this amount, you’ll take your total ad revenue over a given period of time, divide it by your number of page views over the same time period, then multiply by 1,000 to get an effective pageview RPM.
How to Use Pageview CPM and RPM
These two metrics are the most important metrics a publisher will track to get an immediate read on performance in a given time. This metric helps to remove any effects of increases in page views (which is still great!) from your calculation to help you truly understand how your ads are working or improving.
Why is Pageview CPM/RPM important? It should give you a very clear picture of how your ads are performing in relation to their typical performance, and be the leading indicator you look at which should help ensure your total ad revenue or take-home will be what you expect.
How often should you check Pageview CPM/RPM? Every. Single. Day. Even multiple times a day. You should be comparing this metric day over day, week over week, and month over month. You should know the expected seasonal variations in this metric across the course of a single day, week, month, and year-long cycle like the back of your hand.
What are you looking for? The percentage change in this metric should be able to give you a pretty obvious “red, yellow, green” indicator of what to do when you see it.
- Red: More than a 10% decrease in pageview RPM/CPM should set off alarm bells and immediately cause you to dig down and figure out if something is “broken” somewhere in your setup or there is an issue with demand somewhere along the ad call chain. Learn more about what to look for in this article.
- Yellow: 0% change down to a 10% decrease in pageview RPM/CPM is an indicator that you should be digging in deeper and looking for a cause of decrease, but is not an alarm bell that the world is ending. You should definitely look into it, but it is not necessarily uncommon to see a decrease within the realm of 10% due to normal seasonality.
- Green: Anything that represents an increase in this metric is all good! Large increases definitely merit investigation to see what caused an improvement (so you can do more of it!).
Pageview CPM/RPM vs. Just Standalone CPM
Why separate pageview CPM from just a standard notion of average CPM? Because looking holistically at your pageview CPM helps to remove any effects of increases in page views from your calculation to help you truly understand how your ads are working or improving.
Increases in pageviews, while great for your total revenue and a very important metric to track, will naturally change your CPMs. This makes it very difficult to determine what is affecting your CPMs (between either a change in number of users or your ad monetization settings).
Separating the two metrics allows you to more effectively understand the performance of your ads, separate from the performance of your website in terms of viewership. That way you can strategically determine where you need to focus and how to improve each item in order to maximize total revenue.
-- Guide Continues Below --
Need more guidance? Visit the complete ad revenue resource center.
Definition of Session CPM
Session CPM is calculated by adding all of the money advertisers have spent on your site in a given time period, dividing that by the sum of user session times over the same time period, then multiplying that by 1,000.
Definition of Session RPM
Session RPM is calculated by adding up all of the ad revenue you’ve earned in a given time period, dividing that by the sum of user session times over the same time period, then multiplying that by 1,000.
How to Use Session CPM and RPM
Session CPM and RPM are both very helpful in understanding how each user session, regardless of the total number of sessions, affects your total ad revenue.
Why is Session CPM/RPM important? Similar to pageview RPM, this metric should give you a very clear picture of how your ads are performing in relation to their typical performance, and be one of the leading indicators you look at which should help ensure your total ad revenue or take-home will be what you expect.
How often should you check Session CPM/RPM? Depending on the type of website you have, and how much you expect your user experience to change, you may look at this as frequently as pageview RPM, but likely you’ll check it closer to weekly.
When should you be concerned? The “red, yellow, green” indicators for this metric are the same as pageview RPM:
- Red: More than a 10% decrease in session RPM/CPM should set off alarm bells and immediately cause you to dig down and figure out if something is “broken” somewhere in your setup.
- Yellow: 0% change down to a 10% decrease in session RPM/CPM is an indicator that you should be digging in deeper and looking for a cause of decrease, but is not an alarm bell that the world is ending. You should definitely look into it, but it is not necessarily uncommon to see a decrease within the realm of 10% due to normal seasonality.
- Green: Anything that represents an increase in this metric is all good! Large increases definitely merit investigation to see what caused an improvement (so you can do more of it!).
Session CPM vs. Pageview CPM
Both pageview and session CPM are important metrics. Looking at the difference between these two metrics is often valuable for identifying major changes in user experience that change the way users behave on your website.
Once you’ve looked at your “high-level” or website-wide metrics like pageview and session CPM, you may start digging down to the ad unit level to check on performance of individual ad units.
Often digging into ad unit CPM is relevant when you see a major change in pageview CPM or session CPM to determine if an individual ad unit seems to be the primary cause of the shift in the high level metric.
Definition of Ad Unit CPM
Ad Unit CPM is calculated by adding all of the money advertisers have spent on a particular ad unit in a given time period, dividing that by the total number of impressions of that ad unit over the same time period, then multiplying that by 1,000.
Definition of Ad Unit RPM
Ad Unit RPM is calculated by adding up all of the ad revenue you’ve earned from a single ad unit in a given time period, dividing that by the total number of impressions of that ad unit over the same time period, then multiplying that by 1,000.
How to Use Ad Unit CPM and RPM
You’ll want to dig into ad unit CPM at least a couple of times per month to make sure each of your individual ad units are maintaining performance or improving. You’ll want to make sure you are considering the relative volume of each ad unit when reviewing this data.
You might end up with something that looks somewhat like the table below when reviewing this data (numbers are purely random to demonstrate the math in the table):
|
Ad Unit |
Impressions |
Revenue |
CPM (Revenue / Impressions x 1,000) |
Percentage Contribution (Total # of Ad Impressions / # of Unit Impressions) |
|
Unit 1 |
10,000 |
$5.00 |
$0.50 |
2.7% |
|
Unit 2 |
200,000 |
$1,000.00 |
$5.00 |
54.6% |
|
Unit 3 |
150,000 |
$1,200.00 |
$8.00 |
41.0% |
|
Unit 4 |
6,000 |
$150.00 |
$25.00 |
1.6% |
|
TOTAL |
366,000 |
Now that you’ve gathered the information, what you are looking for is major changes in the CPM of an individual ad unit when compared over different periods. In this instance, you can see that ad units 2 and 3 drive much higher percentages of total revenue than units 1 and 2, so you’ll be more concerned with major changes in CPM on those units.
-- Guide Continues Below --
Need more guidance? Visit the complete ad yield management resource center.
Definition of Viewability
Viewability is a measurement of how many ad impressions were actually in view when served. Viewability is calculated by taking the number of impressions measured as “in-view” divided by the total number of ad impressions.
Similar to IVT, Viewability is a measurement primarily used by advertisers to determine inventory quality to avoid wasted spend on ad impressions that aren’t even in view of a user.
Why is Viewability Important to Publishers?
Similar to IVT, Viewability is a measurement primarily used by advertisers to determine inventory quality. It is used to avoid wasted spend on ad impressions that aren’t even in view of a user.
Thus, as a publisher, poor viewability readings on particular ad units will result in much lower CPMs.
Keep in mind that if you are trying to make a major jump in viewability (from 5% to 70% for instance), it will initially cause a pretty big drop in revenue. Stair stepping is also not the greatest option, as a change from 5% to 20% viewability will not have a major effect on improving results (since viewability is still far below the desired level to advertisers).
So, essentially you have to decide if you want to go big or go home, and if you want to go big you’ll have to suck it up on the revenue front for a short period of time. So, basically, choose wisely when you make major changes to improve viewability (and do it with the knowledge of what effects it will have in the short term).
How to Measure Viewability
Viewability is typically measured by tools paid for by advertisers, like MOAT or other Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited tools. Thus, to get this reading publishers would either need to purchase a subscription to a tool like MOAT or use a publisher management system that provides the measurement for them (like Playwire’s RAMP Platform).
Google Ad Manager (GAM) does have some ability to estimate viewability, however advertisers will always use MRC accredited tools to measure it, like MOAT. There are often large discrepancies between GAM’s reading of viewability and MOAT’s, so knowing your viewability readings from an MRC accredited tool is very important (as that will be the source of truth for advertisers bidding on your inventory).
How to Use Viewability
We recommend keeping a pretty close eye on viewability and checking it at least a couple times per month.
Major changes in your viewability readings might not have immediate impacts on your revenue, but instead impact CPMs a month or so down the line. This is why staying on top of your viewability readings are incredibly important. If you don’t, you could miss your opportunity to avoid lost revenue in the future, and tracing back the source of lost revenue can be very confusing if it is because of a viewability issue that happened months prior.
The gold standard for viewability is 70% or higher. This is considered high-quality inventory for most advertisers. You can check this at the website level, or across your entire inventory set, but digging into viewability on an ad unit basis is where things get really valuable (covered in the next section).
These metrics are all meant to create a framework for identifying issues before they result in major losses in revenue. They are meant to be checked frequently, and we’ve noted specific recommended frequencies in each category.
Once you see an issue with one of these metrics, it turns into investigation time! This is where you put on your “true crime” hat and dust off all those skills you learned watching serial killer and FBI profiling documentaries to figure out what tiny cog in the system has broken before it truly causes your revenue to suffer.
Now is where you want incredibly detailed and granular analytics so you can dig down into individual ad units, demand sources, content types, and more (and combine all these dimensions) to find out either what is wrong or where you can improve!
Oh, wait, I think we might have something for that…
