AdSense CPM Rates in USA 2021

AdSense has one of the highest CPC rates for US traffic. There are many questions regarding AdSense CPM and CPC rates. I thought of pulling some of the stats and sharing them with you guys to have some idea of the potential revenue you can generate from US traffic. Here is a segmented overview of Google AdSense CPM rates in the USA for 2020. We have segmented it to have a clear picture of the CPM across platforms, bid types, creatives, and more.  Make sure you do not forget to check out the quick tips at the end of this article on how you can boost your overall AdSense earnings with slight modifications

The CPC and CPM rates you’re going to see here are for the US traffic, and the blog’s niche is educational. So the common ad formats, along with the CPM rates, are included here.

• Display: $1.25
• Native: $0.80
• In-Page: $0.89
• In-Article: $0.84
• Matched Content: $1.29

Learnings: As you see, the average CPC for the educational blog is in the range of $0.30 to $0.40. The ranges are usually higher for technology blogs, where it can hover around $0.60 to $0.80. However, the finance and SAS niche will get you the highest CPCs in the range of $1 to $5.

AdSense CPM or CPC Rates in the USA: Device Types

Metrics like CPM, CPC, CTR do vary base on the device type. For example, some campaigns work better on the desktop while some works on mobile, and thus the advertiser demand varies. Thus the CPCs can fluctuate a bit, and also, the mobile CTR is different than desktop CTR. So I thought of sharing with you the impression RPM and CPC report based on device types. In most of the websites, the desktop page CPM for AdSense will be higher when compared with mobile.

• Desktop: CPC $0.39 / CPM: $0.96
• High-end Mobile Devices: CPC $0.19 / CPM: $0.58
• Tablets: CPC $0.29 / CPM: $0.63

Learnings: As you can see, the desktop CPCs are almost double when compared with mobile. If you can focus on increasing the CTR, you will see a substantial revenue uplift.

AdSense CPM or CPC Rates in the USA: Targeting Types

Google offers two major targeting types for advertisers- contextual and personalized. Contextual targeting is relevant to understand the intent of the audience and show relevant ads. At the same time, personalized targeting considers the websites visited by the users, interactions, and a host of other factors. Usually, the CPM rates for personalized targeting are higher than contextual targeting due to better ROAS. Here you can take a look at AdSense CPM rates filtered by targeting type.

• Personalized: CPC $0.33 / CPM: $1.23
• Contextual: CPC $0.25 / CPM: $0.54
• RON: CPC $0.45 / CPM: $0.87

Learning: Here, you can see the impression CPM for personalized ads is almost more than double of contextual ads. This means advertisers prefer paying more to show personalized ads to the audience. Also, RON usually has the lowest CPC and CPM across most geographies, but it seems to outperform Contextual ads here.

AdSense CPM or CPC Rates in the USA: Bid Types

Understanding AdSense rates based on bid types are important because it gives you a better understanding of which ad types are showing on your website. For example, Google shows ads from AdWords and DBM on publisher websites. While AdWords works on a cost-per-click model, DBM works on a cost-per-mile model. So, if you have a good percentage of CPM bids, you should consider using ad sizes like 970×300, 300×600, 336×280 since these ad sizes have the highest CPM.

• CPC bids: $0.29
• CPM bids: $1.12 
• CPE bids: $0.14

Learning: A thumb rule is, usually for CPM ads, the bigger the ad size, the more number of ad sizes it can accommodate, thereby increasing the overall competition and auction pressure. A 970×300 ad size can accommodate 900×90, 900×120, 970×250, 336×280 ad units and more. Thus, 970×300 is a better ad size when compared to 970×250, which cannot accommodate the 336×280 ad unit. Unbillable impressions require 2 clicks to reach the advertisers’ site, and the user hasn’t made the second click, and thus the earnings are $0.0.

AdSense CPM or CPC Rates in the USA: Creative Types

This is not very relevant; however, I think you should know what type of ad creatives are served on your website and their revenue. Usually, it used to be text and image-based ads in the early days; however, we see many HTML5 ads now, and they generate the majority of revenue.

Learning: As you can see, expandable ads usually have the highest CPM, mainly due to higher CTRs. Following these are the IBV ads (in-banner video), which have a CPM close to $3. Another interesting finding here is although flash-based have low CPC, they end up having the highest CTR value.

Quick Ways to Increase AdSense CPC or Page RPM

Your ad setup should be tweaked depending on the percentage of your desktop: mobile traffic split.

If the Majority of Traffic is from Mobile: 90%

• A 300×250 display ad unit at the beginning of the content
• A 300×250 ad unit after the third paragraph of the content
• A 300×250 ad unit in the middle of the content
• A 300×250 ad unit just above the last paragraph of the content

Recommended plugin for WordPress: Quick AdSense

If you’ve some Desktop Traffic: Desktop 40% and Mobile 60%

Use a 600×300 or 700×300 display ad unit for desktop and a 300×250 ad unit for mobile on the positions mentioned above. You can implement the same using the Quick AdSense plugin, and the use of media queries can control the ad sizes. Alternatively, you can text the above setup with ‘Responsive’ ad units as well.

Note: I recommend not using a 728×90 top bar ad unit.