Plain Reckoner

What a site earns from display ads, and who would take it

What a site your size earns from ads, and which ad networks would take it. The figures are per thousand pageviews — the trade calls that RPM — and come from 123 businesses whose traffic and revenue a broker verified before sale, plus what each network asked for in 2026, which most guides still have wrong.

Measured by us — our own data, as of 2026-08-31 · source

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Send the address and we will look at it properly and write back: what your traffic is worth at the measured RPM for your niche, which networks would take you today, and whether you pass the AdSense requirements as Google actually words them — including the one page almost everyone misses.

Ten a week, answered by a person. No newsletter unless you ask for one.

Why this number and not another one

Where the RPM comes from
123 businesses sold through a broker that verifies traffic and revenue independently, monetised by display advertising and nothing else — so the vetted revenue is ad revenue. Matched month by month: 1,334 business-months, 1,174.9M pageviews, $6.84M of revenue.
Why it answers with a range
Across the same 123 businesses, the bottom tenth to the top tenth runs $2.21 to $35.05 — a 15.8× spread. A calculator returning one number would be quoting a single point of that as if it were the answer, which is an error we have already published a correction about.
What it will not do
Guess at your ad density, your traffic quality or your seasonality. It reports what comparable sites were verified to earn, and the count behind each niche, so you can see how thin the evidence is before you rely on it.
What most calculators use
A round number from a blog post quoting another blog post. We looked for a by-niche RPM table computed from verified figures and could not find one, which is why this exists.

Every figure here is checkable: the RPM table and its method, and the network thresholds quoted from each provider's own page.

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