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Low RPM and it's also climbing down

Nadiyac

I was accepted into the Mediavine Journey program on October 23rd, but my session RPM isn’t growing much, it’s currently $6.23 after 42,256 sessions. The majority of my traffic comes from the US and other Tier 1 countries, with less than 1% from Tier 3 countries. I’ve already reviewed and implemented recommendations from the Mediavine blog, but I’m still stuck. Could you review my website and suggest any additional steps to improve my session RPM?

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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • Support
    • Journey Support Team
    Edited

    Hi Nadiyac 

    I took a look at your site and I think there are a few things at play here. The first thing I noticed was your sidebar. 

    You have a sidebar set to ‘stick’ it seems on desktop which keeps our sticky sidebar ad from serving and was causing some overlapping. I went ahead and fixed the overlap for you but you'll want to remove the sticky element from your sidebar so that the sidebar ad can serve properly. It also looks like your Recommended Content Widget in Grow is overlapping your sidebar as well. Once you've fixed your sidebar, you can use this help document to re-check your selectors to make sure there isn't any overlapping.

    Aside from that, I think there's some further room for optimization. 

    • Your font size is pretty small even on desktop view but especially on mobile. I'd recommend bumping that up to at least 18px and adjusting your line height to be anywhere between 1.6-1.8px. 
    • Lengthen your content. I'm not just talking filler but elaborating more on the topic you're discussing. Your content is on the shorter side so there weren't a ton of opportunities for in-content ads. 
    • Another great way to increase scroll time on a post is to make sure you're adding plenty of big, bold images- these are great for SEO, help slow the reader down, and can keep them scrolling longer. Adding more images to your posts would be a great way to lengthen things and help improve performance.
    • I'd also move your Grow widget to the right side of the screen on mobile. Right now it's stacking on top of the Universal Player and just taking up a lot of real estate on the left side of the screen. 
    • Move your social share buttons out of the first screen view. The buttons will take readers out of the browser and to those apps on mobile. Offering that option lower on the page can increase time on page if a lot of readers are taking advantage of those buttons. You already offer them at the bottom of the page so the top ones aren't terribly necessary. 
      ​

    When I look at your site I see ads serve as expected so the next best thing to do is to make sure there aren't any conflicts with your Journey script and that your posts are as optimized as possible using the help article I've linked and the points I've made above. 

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  • Nadiyac

    Thank you! I’ll fix the mentioned issues. Do you have any recommendations for a theme that could help increase RPM? Also, I’m not currently using any caching or script optimization plugins. Could you suggest any that would help increase on-page time and RPM? I’m open to making changes to improve user experience and boost RPM.

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  • Nadiyac

    Thanks for your suggestions. I’ve applied all the fixes you mentioned, and they made the website look and feel better than before. Could you take another look at my site and let me know if any further modifications are needed?

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  • Nadiyac

    Unfortunately, even after making the changes mentioned, my RPM is going down again  😢 

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  • Support
    • Journey Support Team

    Hey Nadiyac RPMs. RPM is almost always going to fluctuate just due to the very nature of programmatic advertising. But I did take a look and it seems things are trending in a positive direction in the last week. 

    If you haven't had a chance, I recommend checking out my Q4 Check-in tips here! 

     

     

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  • Nadiyac

    Hello again,

    After waiting for some time, I’ve noticed that the RPM hasn't improved much. Could you please check and suggest some improvements? Thank you!

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  • Support
    • Journey Support Team

    It's pretty normal to see a drop post-holiday. Advertiser spending usually begins to settle down this week and will likely taper off a bit more as we head into Q1. It's a regular seasonal shift, so nothing out of the ordinary.

    Keep in mind -Just because your RPM goes up doesn't mean you made more money. If it goes down, it doesn't mean you made less.  RPM isn’t the rate you earn, but instead an average of how everything comes together. So as your CPM, traffic, and impressions fluctuate - so will your RPM. You can read more about that here.
     

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Journey is Self Supported

Our support staff is monitoring this forum everyday for bugs related to ad delivery, the display and functionality of the Journey dashboard, and any bugs related to the onboarding process. We are typically unable to assist with non-bug related issues like RPM performance expectations, issues setting up the ads.txt file, and questions already answered by our existing help docs. Read here for a more detailed breakdown of how Journey is self-supported and our recommendations for how to find answers to common issues.

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