whatisrpm.com

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AdSense RPM and the published split

Reviewed08·2026

AdSense is the floor of the market in the best sense: no traffic minimum, published revenue share, and the Page RPM metric the whole industry borrows. Here is how it pays, verbatim from Google's own pages.

By Oliver Wakefield-Smith. Oliver Wakefield-Smith runs a portfolio of ad-monetized publisher sites and reads these dashboards weekly.

How AdSense pays, per its own documentation

Three published facts define the deal, all verified 2026-08-01. First, payment is per-impression: AdSense pays on an eCPM basis reflecting advertiser bids Google AdSense Help2026-08. Second, the split: publishers receive 80% of revenue after the advertiser platform's fee, which nets approximately 68% of total advertiser spend when Google's buy-side is the advertiser platform; Google states the share is consistent across geographies Google AdSense Help2026-08. Third, entry: there is no traffic minimum, only a policy and quality review Google AdSense Help2026-08.

What Page RPM means specifically here

Your AdSense Page RPM is estimated earnings per 1,000 pageviews, already net of the split above Google AdSense Help2026-08. Because payment is per impression, everything that adds filled impressions per pageview raises Page RPM, which is why layout is the first lever on the levers page and why the arithmetic lives on impression RPM.

Who AdSense fits

  • Sites below every managed-network threshold: it is the on-ramp.
  • Publishers who want set-and-forget simplicity over yield maximization.
  • Sites whose geography or niche fails managed networks' published geo rules.

The moment your traffic clears 10,000 to 25,000 monthly units, the switch question opens; the published thresholds are in the table and the first-switch decision is worked through on AdSense vs Ezoic.

Why its RPM trails managed networks, stated carefully

The structural reasons are public: managed networks negotiate additional demand, run denser tested layouts, and take video and premium formats AdSense alone does not chase. The size of the resulting uplift for your site is not published by anyone not published, which is why this site's calculator makes you set the hypothetical RPM yourself instead of projecting one.

Questions this page keeps getting

What revenue share does AdSense pay?

Google publishes it: publishers receive 80% of revenue after the advertiser platform takes its fee. When Google's own buy-side is the advertiser platform, that nets out to about 68% of total advertiser spend.

Does AdSense have a traffic minimum?

No. Sites pass a policy and quality review rather than a traffic bar, per Google's published eligibility criteria.

Does AdSense pay per click or per impression?

Per impression. AdSense moved to per-impression (eCPM) payment, aligning its payout structure with the display industry; the change is documented in Google's revenue-share pages.

Why is AdSense RPM often lower than managed networks?

Managed networks layer premium demand, denser layouts and yield optimization on top of the open auction. How much that is worth for a given site is not published anywhere, so treat specific uplift promises as unverified.