Why Your AdSense RPM Keeps Falling? Causes and Fixes for Publishers

Almost every publisher I talk to says the same thing:

“My AdSense RPM isn’t what it used to be.”

And they’re right. Five years ago, a decent site could pull $10–15 RPM. Today, many are stuck at $3–5. Even if traffic grows, earnings don’t.

It feels like Google changed the rules. But really, the market moved on — and AdSense didn’t.

Why RPMs Drop

Advertisers don’t just buy impressions anymore. They want quality. They check if ads are actually seen, if traffic looks clean, if the site feels safe for their brand.

Open your Google Ad Manager reports. If your leaderboard ad shows 40% viewability, buyers will cut bids. They would rather spend on someone hitting 70%.

AdSense itself is another limiter. It only connects you to Google Ads buyers. That’s huge, but it leaves out thousands of programmatic buyers — The Trade Desk, DV360, OpenX, Magnite, Xandr. If you’re only on AdSense, they never even see your site.

Add more publishers competing, shorter user sessions, and ad blockers wiping out 10–20% of impressions. Your RPM slide isn’t personal. It’s structural.

How to Fix It

Here’s the part you actually care about: how to stop the slide and push your RPMs back up.

The first step is moving beyond AdSense. AdX is where the serious demand lives. When you plug into AdX through a certified partner, you’re no longer just auctioning your inventory to Google Ads buyers. You’re opening it to premium DSPs, trading desks, and agencies. That competition alone usually adds 30–50% uplift. I’ve seen it happen on sites as small as 1M monthly pageviews.

But AdX by itself isn’t enough. You also need header bidding. Think of it as putting multiple buyers in the room at the same time. Instead of Google taking the first shot, Prebid.js lets OpenX, Magnite, SmileWanted, and others all throw in bids. I remember one APK site that doubled its CPMs after adding just three strong SSPs into the mix. Same traffic, double the payout.

Floors are another lever most publishers ignore. Set them too low and you undersell your inventory. Too high and you lose fill. The trick is using dynamic floors — prices that adjust in real time based on demand. With smart floors, I’ve seen uplifts of 20–25% on US traffic, especially for high-value slots like desktop video and mobile interstitials.

Then there’s viewability. Advertisers will not pay full price for impressions that nobody sees. If your units are sitting at 40–50% viewability, buyers pull back. But lazy loading and smart refresh can push that into the 70–80% range. I worked with a South Asian news publisher where fixing viewability alone lifted CPMs by 22% — before we even touched demand or pricing.

And don’t ignore traffic quality. Invalid traffic doesn’t always trigger a ban, but it kills your auction. I’ve seen CPMs collapse overnight because of bot spikes from China and Singapore. Cleaning that up with IVT filters brought bids back within two weeks.

None of this is magic. It’s just the difference between running a “default” AdSense setup and running a real monetization stack.

A Few Real Stories

One mid-tier news site was stuck at $4k/month because of an AdSense ad-limit. Same traffic, same content. After moving to AdX, adding floors, and running header bidding, they hit $25–30k/month in 90 days.

Pakistan Observer was running Taboola only. After we set up GAM + AdX and fixed their strategy, they grew from 200k to 7–8M PV/month and now make $15k–18k/month.

Even small sites see impact. One publisher went from $200/month to $500. For them, that meant covering hosting costs and reinvesting in content.

Quick FAQs

Bottom Line

AdSense isn’t broken. It’s just too simple. And that simplicity is costing you money every single day.

If your RPM is falling, don’t wait for Google to fix it. They won’t. You need more buyers, more competition, and smarter pricing.

That’s what we do at Advergic. A 15-minute audit is usually enough to show how much upside you’re leaving behind. Most publishers are shocked when they see the gap.