RPM Issues - No recovery post January blues.

We have a steadily growing website with good retention and an acceptable bounce rate yet our RPM has not recovered since the (expected) January slump. We were always on the very low end of the expected RPM (around $7-$9) but since January we are lucky to get above $5.00. Our site has grown in popularity but slumped in RPM. We are a backpacking travel website so we do get a lot of traffic from SE Asia, but this is not new, we have actually grown our tier 1 traffic but nothing seems to help the RPM.

We do wonder if we have not set something up properly / if there is an issue with the integration, we still see the "If you want to see less of this ad" box in place of adverts throughout our site, even when accessing from different computers, I.P addresses or browsers.

We have had to lower ad density to the lowest level but there are still dozens of adverts per page (too many but that is another issue we have raised elsewhere). We have been set up with Journey for well over 8 months at this point, so it shouldn't be a ramping up or onboarding issue.

I know that RPM isn't “how we earn” as such but it is a good indicator of what we will generate as an income due to ads. We just seem to be stuck at an RPM lower than anyone we have heard of or from on the Journey forums. I know, we shouldn't compare but when you are actually lower than anyone else its hard not to wonder.

If someone could look into our site and check we have done everything we should and all is integrated and working properly that would be great. We have raised the issue with the ad density elsewhere.

We are nearly at the traffic levels to apply for the full fat Mediavine program but are unsure of our next steps due to our apparently unfixably low RPM.

Thanks in advance.

www.adventuresofjellie.com