Ep 1: RPM dropped overnight? Five checks before you panic

Wednesday, seven a.m. Your page RPM is down forty percent. Breathe.

First, check coverage: the share of ad requests that came back with an ad.

Take news.example. Yesterday, coverage was ninety percent. Today, sixty. A third of your ad slots are empty… that’s delivery, not price. Delivery has three usual suspects. One, a Google incident, so check the Google Ads status dashboard. Two, Policy center, for restricted or disabled ad serving. Three, the ads.txt status on your Sites page. Now flip it. Coverage held at ninety, but RPM still fell? Ads are showing, just earning less. Check four, did traffic shift to lower paying countries or devices? Check five, compare full days only, against the same day last week.

Today, add coverage next to page RPM in your AdSense report.

Next: traffic problem or RPM problem?