Shanker Bakshi dot Com

Couple of days back one of my friend called me up and asked that he has good amount of traffic to his site but he hate putting CPC (Cost Per Click) ads instead he is interested in putting up CPM (Cost per Impression) ad inventory, is there any way that he can opt only for CPM advertising ad inventory of Google AdSense.

His question is valid; bloggers dishearten when they sees ad stats like 7000 Page Impression 10 clicks.  They wish if some one could pay them on per page impression basis. Google AdSense has any answer to their quarries?

Before we precede any further let me explain what CPC and CPM Price Models are?

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

Cost per impression (CPM) is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand. Each time an advertisement loads onto a users screen, the ad server may count that loading as one impression. Publisher gets paid after an ad gets thousand page impressions. So the big question is can you opt CPM or CPC price Model on their AdSense Ad Units. Actually the rights which an AdSense Publishers can opt are:

1. Display Text Ads Only, Image Ads Only, or Text or Image Ads (default).
2. Display Ad unit in a variety of sizes and formats

But a publisher can’t choose between AdSense Price models CPC or CPM.

AdSense follows a CPC Price Model but there are AdWords Advertiser who bid on CPM price model, so if ad unit you are displaying on your blog/site is based CPM price model then you get paid on CPM basis, that is why few publishers wonder they can’t see any outgoing click from ad unit but they get paid by Google, the reason being they are showing up ads based on CPM price model.

Both image and text ad units are based on CPC and CPM basis, but you don’t have liberty to choose price model for your ad units.  Which ad unit will appear on your blog/site is decided by ad auction unit. In order for a CPM ad or an image CPC ad to win in the ad unit auction and appear on your site, it has to produce an effective CPM greater than the sum of the individual text ads that would otherwise appear. For an image ad to appear on your site, it has to produce an effective CPM greater than the sum of the individual text ads. This is called Ad Ranking system of AdWords.

Few publishers thinks that AdSense image Ad units are based on CPM method, but its not true Image ads are based on both CPC and CPM price model. But you are recommended to opt both text and Image to get the maximum benefit from your AdSense Ad inventory. If you choose only Image ads to display on your blog/site you might also see public service ads if there is a limited inventory of image ads relevant to your site content. So better you opt for both Text and image Ad Units.

Hope it will help you understand appearance and payment system of AdSense ads on your site.

I will explain some other method similar to contextual ads beside Google AdSense. Keep looking this place.

Sign up for Google AdSense HERE

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