eCPM: how to earn more

Last updated on 
eCPM: how to earn more
Contents

Advertising specialists, businessmen, and bloggers in their work use a variety of metrics and parameters that help in doing business. One of them is eCPM or effective cost per mille. eCPM meaning is an indicator that displays the profitability of advertising.

Publishers know firsthand what is eCPM, since this indicator is irreplaceable for them. The higher the eCPM, the more funds the owner of the site or app receives. If the indicator is low, it means that the publisher should correct the mistakes. For example, you can change the location of the banner, appeal to a different geographical audience, or simply modify the site.

In this article, you will learn what does eCPM stand for, learn about the work of eCPM, the analysis and benefits of its results, and also about eCPM calculation tools.

An indispensable tool

The eCPM meaning, benefit, and advantage over other indicators is that it shows the overall picture of the advertising campaign, based on all the parameters of visitors. It is much easier than to understand all the metrics and calculate the profit yourself, that's why eCPM marketing is very popular now.

eCPM also helps you compare your campaigns. For example, if ads are published on different sites, different pages, or even in different ways (banners, videos) on the same page, eCPM displays profitability regardless of the target actions of visitors.

Another benefit of the indicator is that it reflects the objective profitability of campaigns, which may not be so obvious at first sight. For example, 50,000 impressions that brought in $300 will show a greater eCPM than 100,000 impressions that brought in $200.

How to find out ECMP?

The eCPM formula:

eCPM = (total revenue/total impressions) x 1,000.

That is, if you don't know how to calculate eCPM, you need to divide the income received from advertising by the amount of impressions and then multiply the result by a thousand. Let's apply the eCPM formula to this example: the ad earned you $100 and was shown to site visitors 100,000 times. In this case, eCPM will be equal to $1. Conclusion: the campaign brings low income and it should be refined.

However, marketers and webmasters rarely make eCPM calculation on their own. There are special services for this. For example, HilltopAds.

Interactive index

There is also an interactive industry index. It shows the average eCPM values typical for different countries, seasons, devices and types of eCPM advertising. Based on this index of eCPM calculation using a simple formula, several interesting generalizations can be made:

  • Android users bring large revenues to advertisers and are rapidly catching up with iOS users. The gap between eCPM for iOS and Android has decreased by 20%.
  • eCPM in North America grew by 35%, which is the largest indicator in the world. The average eCPM for other regions is 10%.
  • eCPM increases sharply during holidays and sales. Especially high rates are observed at Christmas and New Year, as well as Thanksgiving, Halloween and, of course, Black Friday.
  • eCPM rewarded video continues to grow, leaving eCPM interstitial far behind. Videos with the reward now bring income in eCPM marketing.

Different metrics for different purposes

  • eCPM vs CPM
    CPM and eCPM in general are quite similar, but there is a major difference between them. The eCPM meaning is that it should be used by developers and marketers to find out the profitability of campaigns and build a promotion strategy. CPM is designed for advertisers and helps them find out the relevant purchase price of advertising inventory.
To put it more simply, CPM is needed to determine the advertiser's expenses, and eCPM is needed to calculate the publisher's income.
  • RPM and eCPM
    As is the case with eCPM vs CPM, the RPM metric is also similar to eCPM, especially since both are used only by publishers.
RPM, or Revenue per mille, basically shows the revenue of each page. This is a very useful metric for owners of large sites that have many pages of different topics. eCPM is more versatile, so it is possible to apply it to any eCPM advertising.

Steps to a better result

If, as a result of the calculations, eCPM turned out to be below the desired level, or if you would like to raise it even higher, try some of our tips to boost your eCPM marketing. The introduction of these items will not only make your site visually more pleasant and comfortable but also raise your eCPM advertising.

  • Try different formats
    Different advertising formats may be suitable for different services. For example, it will be better to place banner ads on a website with texts, video hosting services will help promote video advertising, and in-game ads with a reward will be most successful. But this is not the limit — it is quite possible that in the process of work with eCPM ads you will discover unexpected patterns when the interest of users will violate the logical order. The main thing is that this way you will understand which format is worth investing in, and which one is better to avoid.
  • Move your ads
    The place where visitors will see the ad strongly influences whether they like it or not. A huge banner that interferes with the reading of the text will obviously not attract attention, but the ad on the side of the text block has more chances to please the reader.
  • Make sure people see your ads
    eCPM ads impressions depend not only on visitors, but also on you. Services record viewing only when more than half of the ad is displayed on a person's screen. If you place it so that the visitor sees only the edge of the banner, impressions will not be counted.

    The risk in this situation is also not justified. If you force users to look at a large pop-up ad every time they visit your site, chances are they won't open it anymore.
  • Show your competitors' ads
    Although this does not sound like a logical statement, sometimes it is profitable for publishers to show competitors' eCPM ads. But it only works if you guess what is interesting to users. This refers to competitors associated with the niche of your project. Let's say you have a website about cooking, in which case you can publish ads for competing restaurants or grocery stores, thereby increasing profits.

Conclusions

Thus, you can see that the income of your site depends on many conditions. We talked about the visibility of advertising for users, traffic parameters, technical characteristics of the site. eCPM is the most effective tool for working with advertising campaigns, but professional webmasters use others. HilltopAds collected them in one place for the convenience of customers. For example, you can calculate the profitability of your ad without using eCPM formula and change your development strategy based on these results.