Understanding CPM (Cost Per Mille) is important if you are a publisher who is trying to maximize your site revenue or an advertiser planning to stretch your budget out. It is a standard metric commonly used in programmatic advertising, but it is also a metric that can create confusion if it drops or fluctuates. Let’s look at what leads to the fluctuations in CPM, and what can be done to improve your CPM.
What are The Reasons for a Low CPM?
Before diving into the tips to lower your CPM, let’s understand the causes for an underperforming CPM.
-
Low-quality traffic
Advertisers are interested in showing their ads to users with a high potential to engage. Your CPM will be lower if your site attracts traffic that doesn’t meet an advertiser’s demand.
-
Low visitor engagement
Advertisers will not see much value in sites that report of a high bounce rate and low average session duration. Quality engagement is of high significance when it comes to bidding in programmatic advertising.
-
Ad placements
Ads with bad placement and viewability do not get paid well. Your CPM drops when your ads are placed below the fold or where user rarely scrolls as this affects your ad viewability.
-
Seasonality and demand shifts
Seasonal patterns lead to an impact on the CPM. They tend to see a spike during the holiday season but might dip in certain months of the year.
How Can You Improve Your CPM?
Since CPM is dependent on the traffic of your website, it focuses on improving the quality of your website traffic, better experiences and smarter monetization strategies.
-
Enhance user experience
Ensure your site is responsive, mobile-friendly, fast loading, and not oversaturated with ads. An overcrowded site can cause ad fatigue and bad engagement.
-
Optimize ad layout
Use variety of ad structures like sticky ads, in-content ads, video ads to test ad placements, formats and their viewability. Study website heatmaps to understand user engagement.
-
Target high-quality traffic
Attract high-quality traffic by using SEO tactics but also focus on getting referral traffic and growing an email list. Advertisers consider returning visitors valuable.
-
Diversify your content
Include topics that will attract premium advertising demand. Curate content that can lead to competitive bidding.
-
Switch to a reputable programmatic ad platform
This is where a programmatic partner like Newor Media comes in. This is where a trustworthy programmatic ad platform like Newor Media comes into the picture. This platform helps publishers to unlock high CPMs by using header bidding and real-time auctioning across premium demand sources.
What Newor Media Offers
At Newor Media, we’re all about helping publishers make the most of every impression. Our programmatic ad platform connects you to top demand partners and uses advanced bidding strategies to help maximize your CPM. We help publishers with the overall setup and optimization to make it monetization ready.
Summary
There are many methods to lower your CPM, these need to be consistently implemented to improve the CPM. Focus on quality content, better user experience, boosting engagement and partnering with platforms like Newor Media to get better CPM.