Declining monthly RPM, starting in December 2021

[guarriman3]

Hi,

Starting in December 2021, I use the Google's system to show GDPR and CCPA messages (https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/5053969.htm). And starting also in December 2021, the RPM of my website started to drop month over month.

Most of my web traffic comes from US, and the Impression RPM was last week (10-16/Jul/2023) 57% lower than in week 20-26/Dec/2021. I'm aware that it was Xmas season, but the Impression RPM is now 34% lower than in 11-17/Jul/2022, just one year ago. The RPM trend is downward each month, even in December 2022 with respect to November 2022 and October 2022.

Most of the webpages of my site are quite long, with 5-6 "manual" AdSense units, and "Auto Ads" enabled. I'm not sure if I configured something wrong, or it is just a declining advertisement market, due to the economic uncertainty.

Other KPIs:
- CPC is also declining month-over-month
- CTR is slightly increasing month-over-month
- Active View Viewable is slightly increasing month-over-month, now at 50%

I would appreciate similar experiences, KPIs to be measured or parameters to be tuned, in order to obtain conclussions.

[rafraf]

"Most of the webpages of my site are quite long, with 5-6 "manual" AdSense units, and "Auto Ads" enabled. I'm not sure if I configured something wrong, or it is just a declining advertisement market, due to the economic uncertainty"

way too much ads, and to check this see the report with ads fill

every fill below 100% means you have too many ads on page

[guarriman3]

@rafraf Thank you for your answer.

How can I check the "ads fill" report? Thank you.

[londrum]

You might not be doing anything wrong. Advertiser spend has dropped a lot since christmas - [adrevenueindex.ezoic.com...]

[guarriman3]

@londrum Thank you very much for your answer.

Yes, if we take 2021 as a reference, the ad price level was 60, and now it's 40. A slowdown of 33% with respect to 2021. But, according to Ezoic, the ad price level was quite constant in 2023, and my Page RPM is declining month over month, and the CPC is constant since January 2023 (sorry, my first post is not completely correct).

You may be right, but I would like to be sure that I am not doing anything wrong.

[londrum]

if it was me i would try turning off auto ads completely, and manually move the other ads around to get your active view at least 60%. it's not that difficult if you have one straddling the fold, then a couple more at intervals.
less ads are usually better, because they'll be higher paying. if people are clicking on the 6th auto ad at the bottom of the page then you might get your CTR up, but it will likely pay a lot less.
taking all those extra ads off might improve your page speed as well