RPM dropped 87% during 375% traffic spike – need clarification

Adriana Harlan

September 15, 2025 01:27

On July 29th, my site sessions increased by 375% because of a hurricane in Hawaii. My average session RPM is around $20, but that day it dropped to $2.62 — an 87% decrease.

I know RPMs can fluctuate, but this drop seems extreme. With that kind of traffic surge, shouldn’t earnings have been much higher?

Is there any kind of cap during high-traffic days? Can you check if something went wrong on your end?

Thank you, Adriana

0

• 

  Support

  • Journey Support Team

  September 17, 2025 22:07 Edited

  Hey Adriana Harlan - I'm gonna jump in here and it may be a bit long-winded, but bear with me. 😅
  
  It’s not unusual to see RPMs fluctuate toward the end of the month, but I wanted to share a bit more context—especially for anyone interested in understanding how earnings behave whenever you see an increase in traffic but maybe not earnings.

  First and foremost—and most importantly—we do not cap your earnings.

  RPM is simply…math. Revenue / Traffic * 1000 = RPM. So any time any of these numbers change, you'll see RPM change up as well. 

  It's not the actual rate at which you're earning, but rather a way to measure how well your traffic is monetizing. So when RPM goes up or down, it doesn’t mean you earned more or less in total—it just means the traffic was monetizing a bit differently. 

  Looking specifically at your dashboard, it appears that your impressions per session dropped significantly. Even though you saw an increase in sessions, those sessions didn’t generate as many ad impressions as they typically do—hence the drop in RPM.

  Normally, your sessions average about 14 impressions, give or take. On the 29th, that number dropped to around 2. 

  One of your Surf Cam posts brought in a lot of traffic (congrats!), but that page doesn’t seem to have as many ad placements as a regular post would. Also, if visitors are coming specifically to watch the video, they’re likely going straight to it and jumping—especially since the video is near the top of the page. That limits how many ads they see.

  Not that this is specifically applicable to your situation, but just in case anyone else stumbles on this post, it’s also useful to consider where the spike in traffic came from. Was this audience different from your usual readers? For example, if they were coming from countries with lower advertiser demand, or if they were less engaged overall, that could also impact monetization. Not all sessions monetize equally. 

  We have a help article here that goes more into depth about that, in case you or anyone else wants to dig deeper.

  1
• 

  Basma cherifi

  September 21, 2025 16:01

  Hello Journey Team,

  I was recently accepted to Journey, but when I started completing the registration and added my Mediavine code, I received a warning saying that a Google AdSense code exists on my site.

  I have never used Google AdSense before. While checking my Blogger template, I found a code called pagead2.googlesyndication.com and removed it, but the warning still appears.

  I cleared my cache, tried different browsers, and confirmed that my site’s source code is clean. But the warning is still showing in my Journey dashboard.

  Could you please help me check and resolve this issue so I can complete my registration?

  Here is my website link for reference: www.emilyjms.com

  Thank you very much for your support.

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.