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I'm not a youtuber, but I'm trying to understand the RPM.

Based on my understanding, RPM is directly proportional to the amount of money you make.

So, how does a lot of views from India cause a lower RPM?

In the post the author even says this:

> When I see my RPM drop suddenly, it is usually because my videos are being watched a lot in India

Like, say you have a billion views, and 200 million of those views were from India. Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead?

Why does Indian viewers cause this? I mean, they too see ads, right? Or is it because in India it costs less (??) to put up an ad?



> Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead?

No, that would mathematically make no sense.

His average RPM drops because of views from India but he still makes some money from the extra 200 million views.

I'm Indian. The reason Indian views make less money is simply that the advertisers who advertise to Indian audiences have lower budgets due to PPP. So the amount they pay to YouTube is less than what a US advertiser would pay. In turn, the channel's share of the revenue (supposedly 55% of it) is also less.


Advertisers bid on ad spots, based on the viewer. It's all algorithmic and real-time.

Advertisers can target ads based on various demographic info, e.g. age, gender, location. Cookies etc allow for even more targetting.

So you can imagine an advertising bidding high for ad spots shown to 20-30 males in London (i.e. relatively rich westerners who can afford your product), and bidding low for poorer nations where people do not have as much money to spend (so are not your target customer - e.g. imagine you are trying to sell iPhones etc)


> Why does Indian viewers cause this?

Not a lot of Indians are going to buy your product even if they the cost of the product will probably be lower for Indians so the advertiser makes less money




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