What does eCPM mean on my Google AdSense report?

Would you mind explaining my stats below, please?

Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
2,600	73	2.81%	$13.79	$35.86

This is my Adsense for content and I enabled it few months back, if i read your post correctly it seems that my eCPM is $13.79 is what I can ask for people placing their Ads on my blogs (where my Adsense is running) and charge them per click? or what is the measure?

Dave's Answer:

First off, let me say that you have good numbers there! An effective click-thru rate (CTR) of 2.81% is good for Google AdSense, actually, and what's even better is that the keywords that are matching your content are valuable too, which is what you see with the eCPM figure.

Now, let's talk about how this is all calculated.

Much of this is pretty straightforward, to be fair. Page impressions is the number of times that Google showed an AdSense advert on your page or site. In this instance, you displayed an even 2600 adverts over whatever time period you're summarizing. Clicks is the number of times people clicked on these ads, and your click-thru rate is calculated thusly:

CTR = Page impressions / Clicks

Since much of the actual valuation data is hidden by Google even to you as a publisher, the only other actual figure shown here is the net value of those 73 clicks: $35.86. How do they calculate the effective CPM value? Again, a formula:

eCPM = (Earnings / Page Impressions) * 1000

In your case, your earnings are 35.86 and your page impressions are 2600, so you can do the math and come up with the $13.79 eCPM yourself too.

The problem is that the value of your page and your keywords varies over time. Some times the ads on your page might be worth $X per click, while the very same advert at 3am, or a week later, might be worth 1/10th $X, or worse. On my own AdSense reports I see the eCPM fluctuate rather dramatically from a high of over $17 to a lower of about $7.

This means that as a basis for you calculating the CPM for competing ads on your pages, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps the fairest strategy would simply be to average out your eCPM over a few weeks and use that running average, or, to be profitable, 10% more than that running average, as your advertising rate for other ads.

Two additional thoughts: first, be careful that your own ads don't look too similar to AdSense blocks, because that can get you in trouble with Google. Second, realize that if you are indeed calculating on a CPM basis, that means you'll need to be providing traffic reports to your advertisers, which might be more trouble than it's worth. Instead, I suggest you consider having a flat monthly ad rate based on CPM and your average monthly page views.

Hope that helps clear things up with Google AdSense!

Categorized: Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising (Article 7119, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: adsense, cpm, google adsense, ppc
Previous: Review: Sony Digital Book Reader, Model PRS-500
Next: How do I selectively show filename suffixes in Windows XP?

Subscribe!

Never miss another Q&A article! Click to subscribe:

Comments

Thank you so much for your valuable explanation ,it makes sense.

Posted by: Moha at April 19, 2007 10:06 PM

Hi Dave, you're a real expert. The world needs more real ones so thanks.

I am a computer Dummie and I still don't understand this stuff. I can't reconcile the number of people viewing my blogs with the numbers appearing on my Adsense account. The figures in the account are nowhere near the total numbers on my blogsites. Why?

Posted by: Xingtiao at June 4, 2007 3:48 AM

Given your name, it's quite possible that you are overseas or a significant percentage of your readership is overseas. Note that the way the Google AdSense engine works, as far as I understand, is that it reports pages upon which it has found and placed an advert, not pages that requested an ad. The difference? If you have readers from a region that are blocked or for which there aren't any advertising matches, they'll be a page view for you, but not for Google. So your stats will not match.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at June 4, 2007 9:28 AM

CPR is actually calculated by clicks/impressions and not the other way around.

Posted by: Danny Wright at January 2, 2009 2:15 PM

I'm not sure that's right, Danny. I assume you're talking about CTR, and if you had, say, 1000 ad impressions that generated 17 clicks, by your formula you'd have

17/1000 = 0.017 or 1.7%

Doing it the other way would be

1000/17 = 58.82

Uh, um, you're right, I'm wrong. :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 3, 2009 9:58 AM

do we have to pay e-cpm
do we have to pay google anything for using adsense

Posted by: Vipul at January 20, 2009 11:13 AM

Thanks Sir,

I was looking for exact what is here. I understood

the concept of CPM and CTR.

Posted by: Helio at February 10, 2010 7:01 AM

Thank you very much.

I think that this topic must be copied to Google's Help.
I look at my report, there is no explanation like that.

Thanks again,
tham tu thanh long

Posted by: tham tu thanh long at May 9, 2010 10:01 PM

This really helps. Thanks.

Posted by: mor rufa at May 31, 2010 10:00 PM

i want to know how ur page ecpm become so high plz reply me ass soon as possible

Posted by: yasir kiani at July 10, 2010 1:55 AM

Dude .... CTR= clicks/page impression x 100. ok

Posted by: aditya at November 30, 2010 9:45 AM

My adsense CTR is good and getting very much clicks then what is the problem within eCPM? My earning is just like stuck. Nothing improving, Please suggest me what i do?

Posted by: Rakesh Kumar at March 15, 2011 9:20 AM

I am still confused. From the above illustration what is the actual earning? is it 13.79 or 35.86 dollars?

Posted by: m at August 13, 2011 6:57 PM

M, the amount *earned* is $35.86. Dividing it by traffic, the effective "value per thousand visits" is $13.79, which is quite good. The challenge this webmaster faces isn't to have more valuable adverts but to get more traffic so those well-matched ads generate more income overall.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at August 13, 2011 9:10 PM

thanks, its too helpful. I have problem with new adsense look, can't find that which ad give me earning even I create custom channel.

Posted by: APNA JAHANIAN at January 19, 2012 8:18 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!