Ep 6: The Q1 CPM drop

January RPM crash? It’s probably not a Google penalty.

Seasonality: advertiser demand rises and falls on a yearly calendar.

Ads are sold in auctions. In November and December, retailers bid hard for holiday shoppers. In January, many advertisers start new budgets and spend slowly. Fewer bids mean lower CPMs, the price per thousand impressions, and lower RPM for you. One industry dataset, from DataBeat, reportedly showed US programmatic CPMs down about a third from December to January twenty twenty six… but up about a quarter on the January before. That’s the test. Say news.example had a page RPM of four dollars in December, and two sixty in January. Down thirty five percent. But last January was two forty. Year on year, it’s up. Season, not penalty.

Today, compare January with last January, not December. Then check Policy center anyway.

Next: begin to render, why your impressions fall in February.