Earn side · what creators are paid
AdSense RPM and the publisher ladder
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith · updated October 2026
The short answer
Two published numbers anchor blog display income: AdSense for content pays the publisher 80% of revenue after the advertiser's buying platform takes its fee, which Google says works out at about 68% when Google Ads is the buyer, and RPM is defined as estimated earnings divided by page views, times 1,000, both per Google's own documentation. Everything else (your niche, your readers' countries, your ad density) decides where inside a wide range you land.
Page RPM vs impression RPM: which are you reading?
page RPM = earnings ÷ page views × 1,000
$120 earnings ÷ 30,000 page views × 1,000 = $4.00 page RPM
Same $120 ÷ 90,000 ad impressions × 1,000 = $1.33 impression RPM
Illustrative page with three ad units: one page view carries three impressions, so page RPM runs ~3x impression RPM on identical money.
Comparing your page RPM to someone's impression RPM (or to an advertiser's CPM) is the standard way publishers depress themselves with arithmetic. Match denominators first; the full metric map is at what is RPM.
Why RPM swings so wildly
- Niche. Advertiser bids follow customer value: insurance content out-earns celebrity news per thousand by auction logic, not merit.
- Geography. US and Western European impressions clear far above global-average prices; your traffic mix is your rate card.
- Density and viewability. More units raise page RPM and lower impression RPM; viewable placements price better (the vCPM logic).
The managed-network upgrade path
The publisher ladder has published rungs: Mediavine asks for $5,000 in annual ad revenue (its Journey on-ramp, 1,000 sessions from tier-1 countries in 30 days), and Raptive 25,000 monthly pageviews with at least half the traffic from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand or Australia. Managed networks bring direct-sold demand and yield tooling that typically outperforms self-serve AdSense for qualifying sites; the entry thresholds are the citable facts, the uplift is your own experiment.
The advertiser's end of your impressions: programmatic CPM and the fee chain (the CMA's ~35% intermediary finding explains part of the gap between their spend and your 68% share's base). Adjacent seller market: newsletter rates.