Drop in CPM rates

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   Babu Mohanposted 4 years ago

   My CPM rates used to be between 2 and 3 $ in 2019, but with less traffic. It fell under 2 $ after the pandemic struck. The pandemic was a double whammy as it affected both the traffic and the CPM rates.
   
   In the last couple of months, I am seeing a steady increase in traffic. December 2020 looks like the best month I have had so far in HubPages. I am expecting 4000 + views in Dec 2020, which is a modest number for most others but for a 2 year old blogger like mine,  it is special. But the CPM has dropped below 1 $ and I do not know the reason. The source of traffic is primarily search. My main niche is travel with a focus on India.
   
   Most of my travel articles now feature a promo video by Maven team at the top of my article. I am wondering if that is affecting my CPM rates. Can someone throw more light on this?

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      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Generally CPM drops as impressions increase. We're not sure how CPM is calculated, but if it's an average CPM calculated on previous days earnings, possibly what happens is that a spike of extra views and consequentially impressions/clicks are on low value ads and that pulls down the average. So quoted CPM is a historical value based on earnings, not a prediction of what you'll actually earn on future days. Just speculating.

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         Babu Mohanposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         True. CPM and impressions seem to be inversely proportional.

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      Maffew Jamesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Your CPM is likely low because your niche is heavily-affected by the pandemic. International travel barely exists at the moment and companies in the airline and tourism industries won't be bidding on ad spaces right now. Less interest and competition for ad bids means that you end up showing cheaper or generalized ads and make less 'per mille' as a result.

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         Babu Mohanposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         It is very much possible that travel was the most affected niche because of the pandemic. What surprises me is the major drop from Nov to Dec when things are actually becoming better in India. Traffic goes up by more than 2x in Dec and CPM rates drop to half wiping out most of the gains.

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         OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I agree that travel was negatively affected by the pandemic so those articles would not be read as much.  Advertiser are not willing to pay as much for ads placed on travel related articles.
         
         It is my understanding the different topics have different payment schedules for advertisers.  So in this instance, advertisers would not be willing to pay as much for travel articles as they would for recipe articles because people are staying home and cooking more.

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            Babu Mohanposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Thank you, OldRoses. I agree with you on the issues specific to travel niche. For now, I will wait for things to improve.

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      DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Babu there are a lot of good answers here about CPM so I just want to address your first question. No, the Maven video is not causing a lower CPM. As it is almost always unrelated to your original artice, it will cause a higher bounce rate (some searchers will click on your page, see the unrelated video on top, and click back to find a related page even before scrolling down to read your article).
      The Maven video might cause a lower percentage of impressions then but it will not affect the CPM.

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         Babu Mohanposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you, DrMark1961. You answered my main question.

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