The Performance by Page report in the Raptive dashboard gives creators access to page-level earnings and performance data, including pageviews, earnings, Page RPM, impressions per pageview, CPM, and viewability.
Definitions:
- Pageviews: how many pageviews that URL received during the date range selected
- Earnings: how much ad revenue was generated on that URL
- Page RPM: how much that URL earned on average for every 1,000 pageviews
- Impressions per pageview: how many ad impressions were served, on average, for each pageview to that URL (ads in view refresh every 30 seconds)
- CPM: how much advertisers paid, on average, for every 1,000 ad impressions on that URL
- Viewability: a measurement of how well ads on the page are seen by readers (higher viewability can lead to higher earnings)
Your site’s overall Page RPM (earnings per 1,000 pageviews) gives you a high-level metric to help you understand how your site is performing as a whole.
It takes into account how each ad slot on each page on your site earns for each visitor and averages those total earnings across every 1,000 pageviews your site received during that same time period.
Page RPM = total earnings ÷ total pageviews × 1,000
Your overall Page RPM is based on how each individual page on your site earns, but those earnings can vary a lot from page to page.
For example, on your site, you can have a page with no ads, a page with few ads, or a page with your optimized ad layout.
You can have a page with an influx of traffic on desktop, a page that goes viral on social media, or a page that goes viral for readers who really like to block ads. You can have a page where readers are spending a great deal of time or a page that quickly sends them off to another resource.
And each of those pages will earn differently.
The Performance by Page report in your dashboard helps you understand how your most important pages are performing—and how different factors combine to produce your total take-home earnings and Page RPM.
How do I see page-level RPM and ad earnings?
You can view your page-level RPM and ad earnings in your Performance by Page report. From the menu in your dashboard, click Earnings and then By Page.
What kind of data is available in the Performance by Page report?
The Performance by Page report includes data for every page of your site. The data available for each page includes pageviews, earnings, Page RPM, impressions/pageview, CPM, and viewability.
The data is sorted by pageviews (highest to lowest) by default, but you can click the arrows in the column headers to sort by another metric, or to reverse-sort.
There are also ‘Quick Filter’ options available at the top of the report. These filters allow you to apply premade filters to the data:
- Site pages: This filter displays your current Performance by Page default settings
- Top earners: This filter displays the pages that received above-average pageviews and RPMs compared to the rest of your site. Use this filter to see your content that is both popular and high-earning. These are great posts to promote and emulate as you create new content.
- Revenue opportunities: This filter displays the pages that received above-average pageviews and below-average RPMs compared to the rest of your site. Use this filter to see your content that is popular yet low-earning, and prioritize making improvements to increase revenue.
- Custom view: If you change any report filters, the custom view filter will automatically be selected. This filter cannot be manually selected.
If you click the Export Data button, you can download a CSV file containing this information.
Percentages and median:
Under the Impressions/Pageview and CPM metrics, you’ll see a percentage. This shows how each URL performed in relation to the median value of all other URLs on your site for the date range selected.
For example, if your CPM is $1.00 and the percentage shown is +25%, it means that URL has earned 25% more revenue per 1,000 ad impressions than the median CPM for your site—$0.80 in this example. You can view the median calculation by hovering over the tooltip.
If your impressions/pageview is 15 and the percentage shown is -25%, it means that URL has 25% fewer impressions per pageview than the median impressions per pageview for your site (which would be 20 in this example).
Note: An impressions/pageview value of 15 does not mean you are running 15 separate ad spaces on that page. Ads in view refresh every 30 seconds, creating new impressions, and these refresh impressions are included in the reported impressions/pageview value. You earn more with more impressions!
Date ranges:
The date range for the Performance by Page report defaults to the last 30 days of available data, but is customizable.*
You can view information as recent as two days ago, as this report takes up to 48 hours to finalize data.
*Earnings are available starting from October 1, 2019, pageviews and Page RPM are available starting from January 1, 2020, and time on page and viewability are available starting from June 1, 2020.
What determines Page RPM?
We take the earnings and pageviews for each individual page on your site and use the standard Page RPM calculation of total ad earnings divided by pageviews multiplied by 1,000.
Page RPM depends on a vast number of factors (read more here), which include:
- The type, number, and location of ads running on the page
- Where readers are located
- How much time readers are spending on the page
- What types of devices readers are using
- What types of browsers readers are using
- What types of information advertisers have on each reader
As advertisers bid for each individual slot on the page, for each individual visitor, these factors come together to create the total ad earnings for that page for the given time period.
How can I use the Performance by Page report?
See what’s working, what can be improved, and make decisions based on page-level performance.
You can better understand how an individual page earns by analyzing some important earnings factors:
- Ad layout: What ad layout is appearing on this page? Are any (or all!) ads blocked? Is it a longer, informative post with plenty of content ads appearing? Is it a shorter post, or a category or archive page running a more limited ad layout?
- Time on page: Is there something that causes readers to spend a considerable amount of time on the page, such as a recipe or a how-to or an engaging video? Or are readers spending less time on this page?
- Brand safety: Certain advertisers may spend less or not bid on a post if the title, URL, or content includes a word that triggers their filters (e.g. “killer chocolate cake recipe” could trigger a violence warning). See this blog post for more information: How does brand safety affect RPM?
You can gain additional insights by looking in your Google Analytics data:
- Geo: Where are the majority of readers located? Did this post attract a larger percentage of readers from the US or from another country?
- Device: Are more desktop or mobile users accessing this page?
- Browser: Was there a spike in one type of browser to this page? For example, Safari mobile traffic tends to spike if Facebook referrals spike — and advertisers spend less money to reach Safari users due to lack of cookie data.
However, lower-earning pages are not necessarily a bad thing! If the page is bringing you results in another way, such as selling a product or generating email signups, then it may be serving the purpose you need.
But if you’re looking to improve your ad revenue on these pages, consider all of the above factors and see if there are ways you can update the post to perform better.