5 Google Adsense Definitions

As one of my blogs is $1.98 away from making that first $100.00 from Google Adsense, I thought I’d provide this definitions page as it relates to the Adsense Overview reports page.

As a reminder, Google pays out on the first $100.00 you make using Adsense.  So if I hit the $100.00 mark this February 2009, I’ll most likely get paid by the end of March 2009.  The beautiful thing about that is, the $100.00 will have paid for my web hosting costs for the past year and more.

Google Adsense ads are the ads you see on this blog and other blogs and websites that have a Ads by Google stamp around them.

These definitions are from the Google Adsense Overview page.

1. Page Impressions – Page Impressions are what Google Adsense counts when a page is loaded in a browser that contains adsense ads.  No matter how many ads are on the page, one page load is considered one page impression.  If you have 3 ads on that page, you’ll generate 3 ad unit impressions.

2. Clicks – Clicks are how many visitors clicked on the Google Adsense ad at your site.

3. Page CTR – This is Page Click Thru Rate.  It is expressed as a ratio – the clicks to the page impression.  So 1 click for 200 page impressions yields a .50% click-thru rate.

4. eCPM – Effective CPM – This is the effective clicks per thousand impressions.  It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands.  For example, if the publisher of the ad earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the eCPM would equal $180/45, or $4.00.

5. Earnings – On the adsense overview page, your earnings are calculated by taking the Page Impressions * eCPM / 1000.  So, 201 page impressions times an eCPM of .78 cents earns you .16 cents.

With those definitions in hand, there are many variables that make calculating adsense revenue challenging.   Also, adsense is one of the easiest ways to start advertising on your blog but difficult to make money with.

Adsense is one way to start monetizing your blog but not the only way.  There are plenty of tips, tweaks and techniques to optimize adsense on your blog.