Persistent Drop in EPMV despite Optimization Efforts: Seeking Guidance

tmo

I hope you are all well. I'm reaching out to Ezoic to seek advice and solutions regarding a persistent decline in my EPMV. Despite trying various optimizations and closely monitoring the ad revenue index, my EPMV has steadily dropped from $10-$20 when I first added my site in November to just $1-$2 in March. My site traffic share has increased from 45% to 60%, which would typically increase EPMV, but it's only continued to decline. Although I know that basing earnings off of other sites in my niche isn't the best metric, it's hard not to compare when other automotive sites have EPMVs ranging from $10-$50. I've already activated everything I could over the course of optimizing, and have yet to see ANY improvement at all. My Ezoic optimization score is currently at 91/100. I'm hoping to receive some guidance and advice from Ezoic to help me figure out what might be causing this issue.

Thank you in advance,

Heather

tmo Hello Heather here I hope you are well. Sure no problem we can look into this for you. So that we can understand what you are seeing, please can you talk me through where you are seeing site traffic share has increased from 45% to 60%, and which article that you have read that shows an increase in traffic typically increases EPMV? We can then look into this for you and go from there. many thanks

tmo

Heather Oh my mistake, I meant my US traffic share has gone from 45% to 60%. Sorry about the confusion.

tmo

Also, I want to point out that I am aware of seasonality a peak rates, but this just doesn't correlate with the ad rate index at all, not even close. Not to mention I was told that epmv would go up during the optimization phase, but it has only gone down. Every individual landing page has seen a similar decline so it isn't page specific either. It's just really confusing. How does it make sense for epmv to go down to one to two-tenths of what it was before?

Heather

tmo Ah that's great thank you for clarifying.

In terms of why the ad revenue index doesn't match in with Seasonal expectations this article can help you with in depth understanding of this: https://www.ezoic.com/why-ad-rates-are-so-low-in-q4-2022-and-q1-2023/ The article is updated regularly to help Publishers understand the changes in the wider Publishing space.

For your site if we compare March to the same period in December when your EPMV was at it's highest the traffic has dropped by 34.62%, the time on page has dropped and the bounce rate has increased.

There has also been a big jump up in pages without revenue: https://analytics.ezoic.com/reports/content/pagesWithoutRevenue these look to be different variations of your home page which you have blocked ads from showing on

The biggest percentage of your readers access your site through a mobile rather than a desktop. The mobile screen is smaller and so the ads are cheaper for advertisers to buy.

In terms of the next steps, I have taken a look at your website and can see that there are key ad placeholders missing - are you ok if I update these for you? thank you

tmo

Yes, please do and thank you.

I only removed ads from my homepage (which didn't have many ads to begin with) and 2 placeholders that were conflicting with the CSS on my vehicle pages (which are the majority of pages). I added humix and sidebar ads, and I switched to revenue-focused afterward to try and mitigate the effect, but my epmv still dropped by a factor that doesn't make sense to me at all. My mobile traffic share has actually decreased during this time. The weird drop mainly happened during February.

Does a drop in traffic decrease epmv?

Heather

tmo No problem at all I can get that done for you over the next 24 hours and will confirm with you when it is complete.

It can do as it depends where the traffic is originating from and how long they were spending on your site. This article talks you through this in more depth: https://www.ezoic.com/website-ad-revenue-up-down/ This support article can help you to troubleshoot any EPMV drops that you are seeing on your site https://support.ezoic.com/kb/article/troubleshooting-epmv-changes and this article can help you with understanding your traffic more and working on increasing your EPMV: https://www.ezoic.com/epmv-your-website/

Heather

tmo Hello just a quick note to confirm that we have updated your ad placeholders. If you have any questions please do let us know. Thank you

tmo

Ok got it, thank you so much!