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Is Plain Reckoner free, and do I need an account?
The publisher calculators, public-site checks, research findings and published data downloads are free to use without an account. Source-working requests are separate: availability depends on the records and permissions.
How much data is behind the benchmarks?
The RPM study covers 123 sale-selected businesses and 1,334 business-months, aggregating 1,174,949,344 reported pageviews and $6,844,447 ad revenue. The four published datasets contain 4,266 rows of different units, with possible overlap. These totals are not individual visitor logs or a count of unique sites.
Does the median RPM predict what my site will earn?
No. The median describes businesses in a historical, sale-selected sample. It is not a representative census of publishers or a forecast for your site. Country, content, traffic mix and ad delivery can differ. Use your own matched traffic and earnings to calculate actual RPM.
What is the difference between session RPM and page RPM?
Both divide revenue by a traffic count and multiply by 1,000. Page RPM uses pageviews; session RPM uses sessions. Monetized-session RPM uses a narrower, provider-defined denominator. Compare the same unit and revenue definition before interpreting a change.
Why can traffic go up while ad revenue goes down?
Revenue depends on both traffic and earnings per thousand. In a synthetic example, 20% more pageviews combined with 40% lower page RPM produces 28% less revenue: 1.20 × 0.60 = 0.72. This arithmetic does not identify the cause of an RPM change; check matched dates, reporting definitions, ad delivery and audience mix.
Are my CSV files and comparison figures uploaded?
The two-period comparison reads CSV files locally in your browser and does not upload or save those period figures. Its template requires date, traffic and revenue_usd columns with complete, contiguous days. It is not an automatic converter for every provider export. The separate benchmark panels save their own figures on this device; shared benchmark URLs include those figures.
Can the ad-network checker guarantee Mediavine, Journey, Raptive or Ezoic approval?
No. It screens published requirements using the figures supplied. Worldwide visits, pageviews, sessions and qualifying sessions are different measures. Networks may also review revenue, geography, domain age, content and traffic quality. Confirm the provider’s current rules and its assessment before applying.
Is the website value calculator a verified sale price or appraisal?
It is a historical listing benchmark based on sold-status records and their stated multiples. Final closing prices are not verified. The calculation is not an offer, appraisal or promise that a buyer will pay that amount. Net profit and gross revenue must be kept distinct.
Can I download, reuse and cite the data?
The complete published CSVs and combined JSON are available without an email gate under CC BY 4.0, with attribution to Plain Reckoner and a link to the dataset page. Retain the method, date, row definition and limitations. The expanded RPM file adds calculated columns to the same 123 businesses; it does not add independent observations.
Is Ask the research a live human or generative AI chatbot?
It is an instant FAQ and research source finder. It matches questions locally to published answers, shows excerpts and links to their sources. It does not generate new claims, diagnose private accounts or connect you to a live operator. Questions are not uploaded or stored; clear the conversation to remove it from this page.
What does the public-site scan inspect?
The scan reads a bounded sample of public pages and publisher files to report observable signals such as ad-network references, policy links, advertising records and crawler directives. It does not log into analytics or prove revenue, audience quality, legal compliance or a complete site audit. A missing or unreachable file is not automatically a failed policy.
Can search engines and AI tools read the FAQ and research?
The FAQ and research findings are served as public HTML with headings, source links and dates; reading them does not require the question widget or an account. The site’s robots.txt permits public content and excludes /api/. Crawler permissions, indexing and selection for an AI answer are separate matters, so accessibility does not guarantee a citation.