Many Google AdSense publishers have been reporting massive declines in their earnings and RPMs (page revenue per thousand impressions) since late February. This comes a couple of weeks after we reported that the switch from CPC to CPM bidding in AdSense did not negatively affect publishers’ revenue.
There are many threads of complaints from AdSense publishers about the drop in earnings and RPMs but here is one thread with hundreds of complaints from publishers in the Google AdSense Forums. It has publishers claiming drops of 70% or so in their earnings and RPM.
The reports started in late February but continue through today – in April.
What is RPM?
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 = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000
For example, if you earned an estimated $0.15 from 25 page views, then your page RPM would equal ($0.15 / 25) * 1000, or $6.00.
The first report in that thread was on February 27th, from a publisher who wrote, “My earnings and RPM have dropped around 50-70% suddenly three days ago. Traffic and impressions is normal and ads are showing.”
Here are more quotes from the thread – now keep in mind, this started before the March core update: