An audit checklist for why your ad RPM is lower than peers'

An audit checklist for why your ad RPM is lower than peers'

Thesis: before chasing more views to fix ad revenue, audit whether you're under-monetizing the views you already have. RPM gaps at equal reach are common and often structural.

The audit:
— Check ad density and placement. On long-form, mid-roll eligibility and count materially change RPM; many creators leave mid-rolls disabled or misplaced.
— Examine audience geography. Advertiser bids vary several-fold by country; a US-heavy audience earns multiples of a low-CPM-region audience for identical content.
— Review content category. Advertiser-friendly, high-intent niches (finance, software) clear far higher CPMs than entertainment, per repeated CPM benchmark reports.
— Check seasonality timing. Comparing your January RPM to a peer's November is comparing different ad markets entirely.
— Verify no widespread limited-monetization flags.

Caveat: platform RPM reporting is opaque and aggregates net of revenue share, so peer comparisons are imprecise even when honestly shared.

Implication: several of these are content-mix and audience facts you can't quickly change — diagnose before you grind for views.

What we still don't know: the relative weight of each factor, since platforms don't expose the bidding data.