MyAIDevelopment · Product · Operations notes

Advertising Revenue in Depth

Learning goal: Explain how ad revenue is built from impressions, CTR, CPC, CPM, RPM and fill rate, compute the pageviews a target amount needs, and tell apart what raises RPM from what loses you the account.

As of: 2026-09-29. Revenue shares and policies follow the official documents, and all RPM figures are assumptions. The exchange rate uses the track-wide assumption of USD 1 = KRW 1,400 (the Seoul FX market close on 2026-09-09 was KRW 1,336.1).

Key Concepts

Metric Definition Formula
Impression The number of times an ad is shown on a page ad requests × fill rate
Fill rate The share of ad requests actually filled with an ad filled requests ÷ all requests
CTR Clicks as a share of impressions clicks ÷ impressions
CPC Advertiser cost per click ad spend ÷ clicks
CPM Advertiser cost per 1,000 impressions ad spend ÷ impressions × 1,000
Page RPM Publisher's estimated earnings per 1,000 pageviews estimated earnings ÷ pageviews × 1,000
Viewability How much of an ad was actually visible on screen Definitions differ by measurement tool
Invalid traffic Clicks or impressions that do not reflect genuine user interest A policy violation; grounds for deductions and suspension

CPM and CPC are what advertisers pay; RPM is what publishers receive. Google's help example: earning USD 0.15 from 25 pageviews gives a Page RPM = (0.15 ÷ 25) × 1,000 = USD 6.00 (KRW 8,400 at the assumed KRW 1,400 rate).

Principles

How Ad Spend Reaches the Publisher

In November 2023 Google announced that from early 2024 AdSense would split its revenue share into buy-side and sell-side rates and pay mainly per impression. AdSense for content publishers receive 80% of the amount left after the advertiser platform's fee. For ads bought through Google Ads, Google Ads keeps on average about 15% of advertiser spend, so the publisher's share is about 68% of advertiser spend.

flowchart LR
    AD[Advertiser spend 100] --> BUY[Buy side, Google Ads keeps about 15 on average]
    BUY --> NET[85 remains]
    NET --> SELL[AdSense sell side keeps 20%]
    SELL --> PUB[Publisher share about 68]
    PUB --> RPM[Observed as Page RPM]

100 × (1 − 0.15) × 0.80 = 68

Decomposing Page RPM

Page RPM ≈ ad requests per page × fill rate × publisher earnings per 1,000 impressions

Example (assumption): 3 ads per page, 90% fill rate, publisher earnings of KRW 1,000 per 1,000 impressions.

Adding more ads raises requests, but can lower viewability and user experience, and with them earnings per impression and return visits. The three terms of the formula are not independent.

Traffic Math: Pageviews Needed for a Target Amount

Monthly pageviews needed = target monthly earnings ÷ Page RPM × 1,000

Google explains that AdSense earnings vary with content category and visitor region, and it publishes no fixed average RPM. The RPM values below are therefore assumptions for seeing the range.

Target monthly earnings RPM KRW 1,000 (assumption) RPM KRW 3,000 (assumption) RPM KRW 6,000 (assumption)
KRW 500,000 (example studio fixed cost) 500,000 PV 166,667 PV 83,333 PV
KRW 3,500,000 (break-even) 3,500,000 PV 1,166,667 PV 583,333 PV

Even just covering the KRW 500,000 fixed cost at an RPM of KRW 3,000 takes about 5,556 PV a day (166,667 ÷ 30). For real planning, recompute this table with your own site's Page RPM four to eight weeks after ads go live.

What Raises RPM

Factor How it works What you can do Caution
Topic Advertiser competition differs by topic Cover topics with buying intent (tool comparisons, adoption guides) within your expertise Writing on topics you don't know just for RPM lowers quality
Geography Ad demand differs by visitor country Reach readers in other regions with English pages Pages at machine-translation quality create quality problems
Layout Ads that are not seen are worth little Place a moderate number of ads within the flow of the text Placements that make ads look like content violate policy
Core Web Vitals Slow, jumpy pages hurt both search and users Reserve ad slot sizes to prevent CLS LCP ≤ 2.5 s, INP ≤ 200 ms, CLS ≤ 0.1 is the "good" bar

Google Search Central recommends good Core Web Vitals and explains that this aligns with what its core ranking systems seek to reward. If ads slow the page down, search traffic can fall and total earnings with it.

How to Lose the Account: Invalid Traffic and Policy

AdSense forbids artificially inflating ad impressions or clicks, including clicking your own ads, asking for clicks, and automated impressions or clicks. With high invalid traffic an account can be suspended or closed; on closure, unpaid earnings are not paid out and are refunded to advertisers.

At the approval stage, the rejection "your site isn't ready to show ads (low value content)" is common. Google asks for original, useful content and a good user experience and navigation.

Why Content Sites Need Search and AI-Search Traffic

The ad model assumes large, repeated visits. For a one-person content site, traffic at that scale mostly comes from search. Yet in a Pew Research Center study (2025-07-22), visits where a Google results page showed an AI summary produced clicks on traditional result links 8% of the time versus 15% without one, and clicks on source links inside the AI summary 1% of the time. For search-traffic strategy, read the Marketing section's "AI Search · GEO/AEO" document alongside.

Ads in Apps and Games

Format Characteristics Core AdMob policy
Banner Stays visible on part of the screen Do not overlap content or buttons in ways that invite accidental clicks
Interstitial Full screen at transition points Only at natural transition points. Loading unexpectedly, showing after every click, or showing during gameplay is prohibited
Rewarded The user chooses it to earn a reward Show only after the user clearly opts in. Rewarded interstitials need an intro screen with an option to decline

How ads fit into a game's economy design is covered in 07.

Applied: The Example Studio

Assuming the technical documentation site C2, preparing for AdSense, gets 5,000 pageviews a month at the plan's start (D0 in 10, 2026-10-05) (6,200 on 09's day-60 dashboard):

Item Calculation Result
Monthly ad earnings at an RPM of KRW 3,000 5,000 × 3,000 ÷ 1,000 KRW 15,000
Multiple needed to reach the KRW 500,000 fixed cost 166,667 ÷ 5,000 about 33.3x
Multiple needed to reach KRW 3,500,000 break-even 1,166,667 ÷ 5,000 about 233.3x

The D90 gate in 10 (double down at 10,000 or more, kill under 3,000) sets the double-down line at twice this baseline and the kill line at 60% of it.

Conclusion: ads alone are unlikely to support the studio from this site. Its role is to earn a floor of ad revenue and to be the path through which the studio's other products are discovered. Order of work (assumption):

  1. Approval prep: merge or strengthen thin pages, and check navigation, the privacy policy and cookie notice.
  2. Ad placement: reserve slot sizes to prevent CLS, and start with few ads per page.
  3. Measurement: after four to eight weeks, recompute the table above with the real Page RPM (09).
  4. Linking: from each document, link to the related tool product and to the studio list sign-up (the combination example in 04, the shared audience in 02's Going Deeper).

Going Deeper

Ad Management Companies Beyond AdSense

As you grow, consider an ad management company. Raptive lowered its entry bar to 25,000 monthly pageviews on 2025-10-16, but sites between 25,000 and 99,999 pageviews need at least 50% of traffic from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand or Australia. Mediavine's Journey says that from 2026-01-15 sites can apply with at least 1,000 sessions from Tier 1 countries in 30 days. Both assume English-speaking traffic, so for a Korean site the traffic of its English pages decides eligibility.

Ads Are the Floor, Not the Ceiling

Ad revenue per visitor is small, so it earns less per person than selling ebooks, templates or tools to the same visitors. Ads are the easiest first step for turning traffic into money; once traffic is confirmed, layer the other models from 04 on top.

Common Misconceptions

Self-Check Questions

  1. With 2 ads per page, an 80% fill rate and publisher earnings of KRW 1,500 per 1,000 impressions, what is the Page RPM?
  2. At a Page RPM of KRW 2,000, how many pageviews a day on average are needed to earn KRW 1,000,000 a month?
  3. If an advertiser spends KRW 1,000,000 through Google Ads, roughly how much is the AdSense publisher's share?
  4. Name two moments when an interstitial must not be shown.
  5. Besides ads, what value can your content site give the studio?

References