What is Page RPM in Google AdSense?

Anyone new to the Google AdSense advertising network will eventually discover the importance of page RPM.

What is page RPM in Adsense? RPM stands for revenue per thousand impressions. In the case of page RPM, an “impression” is a page that a website visitor views.

So the term refers to the amount of revenue a website receives from AdSense for every 1,000 page views.

Google defines how it calculates it this way: “Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.”

Page RPM Versus Ad RPM

Just to make the subject a little more confusing, Google AdSense reports also refer to ad impression RPMs in addition to page impression RPMs.

An ad impression RPM is the amount of revenue for every 1,000 times a single ad appears on a page. Consider that a page may have one or more ads.

For example, an ad position produces $2 for every 1,000 impressions, which means it has a $2 RPM. There is only one ad position on the page, so the page also has a $2 RPM.

Another page has two ad positions, each of which produce a $2 ad RPM. Because there are two positions, each producing $2, the page has a $4 RPM.

Why Page RPM Is So Important

The above example shows why understanding RPMs is so important for sites that want to generate the most revenue possible. More ad positions on a page produce more revenue.

So website publishers have a good reason to place more than one ad position with Google AdSense throughout their sites. But that doesn’t mean a page with 20 ad positions will lead to 20 times the revenue of just one position for the following reasons:

• Too many ad positions will slow down page load, which will lead to punitive rankings by search engines.
• Too many ad positions are overwhelming to site visitors. They are more likely to leave quickly without clicking on anything.
• Even Google has a limited amount of advertising to share with a website.

So how many ad positions are ideal? Google itself used to insist on a limit of three display ads and three link unit ads (text only) per page. With the demise of link units and other reasons, Google has lifted that limit.

But three to four display ads per page is still a good number to target. Another factor is the amount of content on the page. A page with a few hundred words of content will look terrible with three or four ads. A page with 2,000 words will look fine with them.