RPM drop why?

[analis]

Page views compared to the same month last year are up by 2/3% but RPM is in continuous decline example:

RPM JULY 2017 1.80
RPM JULY 2018 1.46

RPM AUGUST 2017 1.59
RPM AUGUST 2018 1.29
 

Because?

[justpassing]

First of all, these variations do not look important, also it depends if we are talking of thousands of PV, tens of thousands, hundred of thousands etc...

But reasons can be multiple :

- brand safety
- evolution of the profile of your visitors (also more page view, doesn't meant "quality" extra visitors)
- evolution of mobile usage (compare desktop vs desktop , mobile vs mobile)
- evolution of the advertisers, and the demand for your site
- continuous increase of ad blindness
- ...

[analis]

Page views MOBILE JULY 2017 70,04%
Page views MOBILE JULY 2018 70,98%

Page views MOBILE AUGUST 2017 73,23%
Page views MOBILE AUGUST 2018 75,85%

- Mobile penetration has changed little. I do not think this is the problem.

- Continuous increase in advertising blindness, I do not think the cause is the decline of the RPM is 20% is too much in a year.

- 99% of my visitors are Italian, those from other parts of the world are irrelevant.

[robzilla]

Speaking very generally, there's not as much demand for your traffic.

Noone can tell you exactly why're you experiencing a drop, but justpassing has already given quite a few possible indications. The market is in a state of constant flux; when your average RPM decreases, that of other publishers might increase (possibly at your expense) or remain stable. All you can do is work towards becoming as attractive as possible to advertisers.

[analis]

there is no way to see if I have lost advertisers?

[robzilla]

Nope, but the number of advertisers doesn't necessarily correlate with revenue anyway. Everything roughly boils down to your attractiveness to advertisers, especially compared to the countless other available websites they can advertise on. If they want (or the system deems it effective) to be seen next to your content, or by your visitors specifically, that will get you results. If not, the result may be a downward slope.

[analis]

if my pages are in the top positions and they treat the topic because an advertiser should decide to cut me off?

it does not seem to make much sense to this thing. But since when can advertisers decide which sites to show ads on?


The statistics give in the period January / July advertising market on the internet growing in Italy + 4.8%.

Even this factor does not seem the problem.

[leebow]

I’m having exactly the same issue as OP.

Exactly the same number of visitors - same active views - but money is down loads compared to last year.

Do ad buyers actually choose our sites to put their ads - or is it just random?

Is there any way to use custom channels or anything to improve advertisers chances of choosing your site?

[robzilla]

I think it's important for AdSense publishers to know how AdWords works. Ad buyers can indeed choose specific sites to advertise on, but mostly it's the system determining where the best bang may be had for the buck. It's most certainly not random. As a publisher, you can optionally define ad placements [support.google.com] that advertisers can target.

[ember]

I'm fairly sure that advertisers can also block their ads from showing on certain sites.

[analis]

my active views in july 2018 +10%, august 2018 +4%

[expat123]

>> Page views compared to the same month last year are up by 2/3% but RPM is in continuous decline example:

It makes sense to me. Your pageview supply went way up but advertiser demand did not.

[steviec79]

It's not just compared to last year.

It's the start of a new financial quarter, and regardless of what people say, Google DOES shave, to claw back money on any drop from June-July-August, or previous years. It's happened consistently for years. Then - things randomly improve after around 2-3 weeks, once Google have clawed/shaved enough off Adsense users.