Google AdSense Important Terms

Page view. A page view is what Google counts in your reports every time a userviews a page displaying Google ads. We will count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a pagedisplaying three ad units and it is viewed twice, you will generate two page views.

Impressions

An impression is counted for each ad request where at least one ad has begun to download to the user’s device. It is the number of ad units (for content ads) or search queries (for search ads) that loaded ads.

A note about impression counting

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) in partnership with other industry bodies, periodically review and update industry standards for impression measurement. They recommend guidelines to standardize how impressions are counted across formats and platforms. Over time the standards for counting an ad impression on the web have evolved: from counting an impression when the ad is served, to counting an impression when the ad starts to download on the user’s device (i.e., the ad begins to load on a page).

The definitions are summarized below:

·         Served impression: An impression is counted when an ad is sent (or "served") to a publisher by the ad server. The ad creative may or may not be downloaded to the user’s device, rendered, or viewed by the user.

·         Downloaded impression: An impression is counted only after the ad has begun to download to the user's device.

The AdSense "Impressions" metric uses the downloaded definition for all impressions. Note that the complementary ActiveView viewable metric is used to determine if users actually viewed the impressions.

 

Active View Viewable

The percentage of impressions that were viewable out of all measurable impressions. This metric only includes impressions from regular AdSense for content, AdSense for video and AdSense for games ad units, it doesn't include data from link units, or data from dynamic allocation in Google Ad Manager.

All viewable ads are measurable, because you can't confirm that an ad has met the criteria for viewability unless it can be measured. For example, say the ads on your site had 100 measurable impressions. That means there were 100 impressions where Active View tags were able to measure viewability. If only 10 of those 100 impressions were measured as viewable, then the site would have 10% Active View Viewability.

Click

For standard content ads, we count a click when a user clicks on an ad.

For link units, we count a click when a user clicks on an ad on the page of ads, after selecting a link in the link unit.

Page CTR

The page clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.

Page CTR = Clicks / Page views

For example, if you received 2 clicks for 250 page views, your page CTR would be .8%. (2/250=.8%)

understand your earnings

The reports in your AdSense account are intended to give you close estimates of the current activity in your account. However, these reports do not represent your finalized earnings. Many factors can affect the amount that is ultimately paid to you. After your earnings are finalized, they're posted to your "Transactions" page. Where appropriate and possible, any revenue found to be from invalid clicks or impressions is refunded back to the affected advertisers. If your account is disabled for invalid activity, then you won't be able to receive payment and, where appropriate and possible, we'll refund the revenue in the account to affected advertisers.

On the Home page of your account, we show the following information:

·         Estimated earnings: close estimates of your recent account activity from today, yesterday, this month so far, and last month

·         Finalized earnings: this section displays two levels of earnings:

·         “Current balance", which is the current balance of your earnings that have not yet been paid out. This balance may not reflect the total amount of payment you receive. Google may make adjustments to the amount, including for rounding discrepancies, any invalid activity that needs to be adjusted from your earnings, or other month-end credits as necessary.

·         “Most recent payment", which will reflect the payment you last received.

We may make adjustments to your estimated or finalized earnings to account for invalid impressions or clicks, which means that we may remove earnings from your payable balance. Invalid activity may be caused by issues with traffic sources or ad implementation. We recommend that you review the beginner’s guide and tips for preventing invalid activity for more information.

We reserve the right to adjust a publisher’s earnings in the case that an advertiser who advertised on their site defaults on payment.

To maintain the integrity of our invalid activity detection system and prevent users from circumventing the system, we aren't able to provide details about how much was adjusted per day or per channel. Please know that we have these invalid activity protections in place to keep our network of AdSense sites a safe and useful environment for advertisers, publishers, and users.

Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM)

Revenue per 1000 impressions (RPM) represents the estimated earnings you'd accrue for every 1000 impressions you receive. RPM doesn't represent how much you have actually earned; rather, it's calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views, impressions, or queries you received, then multiplying by 1000.

Formula:
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.

·         If you earned an estimated $180 from 45,000 ad impressions, your ad RPM would equal ($180 / 45,000) * 1000, or $4.00.

RPM is a commonly used number in advertising programs, and you may find it helpful for comparing revenue across different channels.

Page 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.

Cost-per-click (CPC)

The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC for any ad is determined by the advertiser; some advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than others, depending on what they're advertising.

The formula for calculating AdSense earnings is simple

Earnings = Page View x Click-Through Rate (Page CTR) x Cost Per Click (CPC)

• Page Views in this formula only includes those pages with Google’s ads on them. If you have 1,000 visitors viewing 2 pages each on average, that gives you 2,000 page views. But if only half the pages contain ads, AdSense will report 1,000 impressions.
• Page CTR is the percentage of clicks divided by the Page Views. If 1,000 page views generate 10 clicks, your click-through rate is 1%.
• CPC is how much each click earns you, on average. If your CPC is $0.50, your total earnings will be $5.00 (10 clicks x $0.50).

Another term you will see used in your AdSense Performance Reports is RPM. This stands for Revenue per Mille, or Revenue per Thousand page views (“Mille” is the French word for “Thousand”).

It’s calculated like this: CTR x CPC x 1,000.

So, in the example above: 0.01 CTR x 0.50 CPC x 1,000 = $5.00 RPM