July RPMs

Whether this is your first July with Journey or your first July serving ads on your site, it's important to remember that July is always a little bit of a shock. 

It's typical for RPM to drop 40-50% in July, and that can sometimes be even higher depending on the variables of your specific traffic. 

Journey by Mediavine ads are still in active beta testing. Performance will continue to increase as time passes. Our Ad Operations and Ad Tech teams are hard at work looking for every possible opportunity to help you and your revenue. 

Why RPM is lower in July

Advertisers plan budgets based on their fiscal year, and for many companies, the fiscal year ends mid-year, in June.
[Pro Tip: For many other companies, the fiscal year ends in December so there is a similar dip at the beginning of Q1 in January]

July budgets are more conservative because it is the first month of the next twelve for brands that have just ended their fiscal year. Buyers need to stretch those ad dollar budgets across the entire year. Consumer behavior also changes in the summer, and so advertisers adjust as well.

What can you do?

While you can't change advertiser budgets or influence economic trends, you CAN always do something — and you’re already ahead of the game by running Grow. ​

• Identify your traffic. Grow offers you loads of free tools and features that compound your efforts to identify your readers and increase CPM. We release new features and updates several times a month, so you've always got options to explore. Recommendations & Best Practices are HERE. 
• Make sure you are as optimized as possible! Be sure to check out our help article on Optimizing your Content.
• Evaluate your Page Level Data. We recently launched Page Level Data within the Journey Dashboard. With pages sorted in the default view (by pageviews, highest to lowest), you can focus your attention on the pages your readers see most to be sure they are properly monetized.