As the digital publisher industry has grown, there have been a number of metrics that help define success of an ad stack.
There are some general and industry-wide metrics ( Fill Rate, CPM, Viewability, Click through rate) but there are some more nuanced metrics (Ad Req CPM, Matched request, ARPU) and then there are our favourites Page RPM, Ad Req per page, Imp per page.
Page RPM and why it is important
Page RPM is essentially the Revenue Per thousand pageviews. On the surface, the metric is pretty simple but when combined with other data points, a publisher can clearly define the success of an ad stack.
For any publisher, the most important metric of success is overall revenues. However, the way it can be calculated can become complicated. Page RPM allows the publisher to move away from impressions, ad requests, fill rates and CPMs to a standard success metric that only takes into account the actual number of pageviews in a given time period.
How do we calculate Page RPM?
(Revenues/Pageviews)*1000 = Page RPM
Why is it important and our preferred data point?
For a publisher to ensure they are getting a fair value from any partner, including Venatus, they need to be able to review the revenues earned against the pageviews they served. If the metric has improved, it means they are making more money than they made last month or in some cases with their last partner. Page RPM only takes into consideration the actual revenues and pageviews, both of which the publisher can see.
What do you need to consider?
While there is no denying Page RPM is a metric that will work across ad stacks and can also include multiple revenues opportunities and not just advertising revenues, there are some factors that should be taken into consideration. These include:
- Seasonality
- Traffic trends and behaviour
- External factors like
-
- Macroeconomic conditions
- Industry trends
- Non-revenue metrics like
- Engagement
- Traffic sources
- Ad-block
- Impact of cookie/privacy-focused browser such as Safari and Firefox
Once we have the Page RPM, we can then combine a number of dependent metrics such as Ad Req per page, Impressions per page, Ad Req CPM, Bidder performance, Fill Rate, Overall CPM, ad unit level performance and Viewability to better understand and optimize the implementation.
To summarize, if you are reviewing the performance of an ad stack, we would highly encourage you to review the Page RPM from the site and in doing so, consider calculating it based on what you are seeing in your Analytics (pageviews) and what you are seeing on your invoice (Revenues).
Reach out to your Venatus team and ask them to review your ad stack and also provide you a MoM Page RPM performance comparison across multiple opportunities including Direct Page RPM, RTB Display Page RPM, Video Page RPM.
If you want to learn more about how you can improve your revenues by simply implementing Venatus solutions on your site and maximise your revenues across Direct, Display and Videos, reach out to our Team on: market@venatus.com