Cpm

the foundation?

[Visi]

Was rolling up the stats to determine how effective adsense is to us and did an average CPM for the last 7 months. The EPC, impressions, CTR all vary daily and monthly as we know however it is interesting that the CPM value is rock steady especially in the last 3 months. (this is an overall CPM value for all months calculated). Have we been looking at this program from the wrong approach....is google actually calculating on a longterm CPM basis? Yes I know its supposed to be bid based, a percentage paid calculation, however the flattening of the average CPM overtime jumps out at us as the one stable factor. Course that could also be the lack of sleep and bad coffee effect showing through:)

[richmondsteve]

That's just anecdotal evidence and I doubt that pattern is applicable to publishers as a whole. My effective CPM has had significant variance as has that of some client.

[Visi]

Agree richmond...cpm has large variances, day to day or month to month. Plotting the average CPM for the year shows the flat trend the last three months.

[europeforvisitors]

My effective CPM varies from day to day and from month to month. (It's jumped significantly in 2004, probably because of seasonal factors.)

[Visi]

Each month we average out from the beginning of the program the CPM, this is what we have seen flatten out. Each month it varies sometimes dramatically but flatline for last 3 months, taking into consideration moving epc's and ctr's found it unsettling. <1% variation

[jomaxx]

Some people have speculated that the payout algorithm takes CTR or total clicks into account. It's just idle speculation, but that could tend to be a dampening factor on your CPM.

[europeforvisitors]

Each month we average out from the beginning of the program the CPM, this is what we have seen flatten out. Each month it varies sometimes dramatically but flatline for last 3 months, taking into consideration moving epc's and ctr's found it unsettling. <1% variation

I've made the same calculations, and I don't see any flattening. Quite the contrary. If we take last summer's (June-Aug) numbers as a baseline, I saw a moderate drop from September through December and a strong increase in January. February has been stronger still at nearly 80% higher than the long-term average.

If there's any kind of artificial "dampening factor" at work, it obviously hasn't affected my AdSense revenues and effective CPM, which follow my normal seasonal patterns (strong in summer, weak in late fall and early winter, with a big resurgence after New Year's).

[jonknee]

I don't see a steady CPM either. It all depends on what I post, and what ads get served by it. If a story is hot (gets picked up on /. or something), it makes a big difference in the month's total.

That being said, the CPM I am getting is more than I could sell it to advertisers for.