Jul 07 2007
What eCPM implies on Adsense?
eCPM stands for Effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions. It is an accurate way to measure performance of ads on your site and across different networks. eCPM is also an industry standard in print and broadcast mediums.
eCPM is calculated by as follows:
( Your total earnings / Number of impressions ) x 1000
So if your site is making $1000 a month with 500,000 impressions, your eCPM is calculated by (1000/500,000) x 1000 to give an effective CPM of $2. Most publishers report an eCPM of $1 - $5, some even make an effective CPM of more than $10.
Its important to note that site-targeted ads pay only on CPM (cost per thousand impression) basis where as Contextual targeting works on CPC (cost per click) basis. If you want to determine which type of targeting in functioning on your site follow these instructions.
You might notice that Site targeting gives you lower revenue than contextual targeting. The lower eCPM for site targeted ads is simply because site targeting (on CPM basis) takes place on lower performing pages where it is more viable than contextual targeting that works on CPC basis. Still if you do think site targeting is not the thing for your website (maybe contextual ads are more targeted) you can opt-out of site targeting by contacting Google.
The eCPM reports on your account can be used in two ways:
- To determine if Adsense eCPM works better in comparison to other networks.
- To determine the performance measure of your ad units and formats.
For example your might have Skyscrapers and Square Rectangles displaying on your pages and you have configured them on separate channels. If your earnings are as follows:
Skyscraper $3 from 600 page impressions
Square Rectangles $0.7 from 110 page impressions
Calculating eCPM you get:
Skyscrapers $5
Square Rectangles $6.3
Which implies you will be earning more per thousand impressions for your Square Rectangles than your Skyscrapers considering you’ve ran the these reports on a considerable amount of data. So maybe its time for a switch!
Rather than looking at eCPM, which can give a somewhat slanted view of what is really going on, I recomend looking at eCPM per customer or unique visitor. Otherwise if you have a website that gets many page views/visitor, then your eCPM will show (sometimes much) lower than what it really should be.
However, if you would like to look at eCPM for ONE particular page, (as mentioned above), this should be fine (you will have a lot more accurate readings). So in the jist, I believe that eCPM is really only useful for single pages and what you mentioned above is good for tracking these single pages (but never entire sites). Thanks!