<b>Why average RPM is the wrong number to plan a business on</b>

<b>Why average RPM is the wrong number to plan a business on</b>

Thesis: nearly every RPM figure creators cite is a mean, and means are structurally misleading in a market this skewed.

Context: when a 2024 analysis of public CPM/RPM disclosures aggregated long-form YouTube channels, the headline 'average' sat around $5-7 per thousand views. But the distribution underneath was log-normal, not bell-shaped — a small cluster of finance, insurance and B2B-software niches pulled the mean far above the typical channel.

Findings: the median creator earned materially less than the advertised mean — often 40-60% lower in self-reported samples. The mean describes the dataset; the median describes you.

Caveats: most of these datasets are self-reported and survivorship-biased (failed channels don't post screenshots), and niche is rarely controlled for. Two channels at identical view counts can differ 10x on RPM purely by topic.

Implications: model your budget on a niche-matched median, then stress-test at the 25th percentile.

What we still don't know: nobody has a clean, niche-stratified RPM dataset with verified payout records rather than dashboard screenshots — so every benchmark you see is a floor of uncertainty, not a measurement.