Do mobile visitors earn your site less?
Problem
- Most of your visitors are on a phone, and they usually read fewer pages and see ads that pay less.
- The phone share keeps rising, so earnings can slip even when the visit count holds steady.
Solution
- Read your device split and pages per visit off your WebCounter report, and RPM by device from your ad network.
- Put them into the free calculator below and it splits your earnings by device and shows what a rising phone share does over two years.
Key points
- One computer visit earns as much as 2.2 phone visits at 1.5 pages and $3 against 2 pages and $5.
- Phones bring 65% of the visits but only 46% of the earnings in the default example.
- A phone share rising 3 points a year cuts earnings about 5% in two years at the same traffic.
- If phone visits earned like computer visits, the site would make $35.75 a month more - 56% on top.
- The fix is on the phone page - speed, a clear next post, and ads that do not bury the article.
In how many ads per page earn the most we saw that every ad you add costs page views. Phones make that trade-off sharper: a small screen fills up fast, and readers leave sooner. This post asks how much less a phone visitor earns you, and what the rising phone share does to your total.
Why a phone visit earns less
Two gaps multiply. Phone readers usually read fewer pages per visit, and ads on a phone usually pay less per 1,000 page views.
- Earnings per visit is pages per visit times RPM. At 1.5 pages and $3, a phone visit earns $0.0045; at 2 pages and $5, a computer visit earns $0.01.
- So the computer visit is worth 2.2 phone visits - the gap is bigger than either number alone suggests.
- The pages per visit and the RPMs are estimates - your counter and your ad network's device report give your own.
- The phone share of web traffic has been rising for years, so the mix drifts against you even at steady traffic.
Work out your earnings by device
Type your visits a month, the share from phones, pages per visit and earnings per 1,000 page views on each device, and how fast your phone share is rising. The calculator splits your earnings by device, shows what one computer visit is worth in phone visits, and charts two years as the phone share rises - in rand at today's exchange rate.
Prefer a full page? Open the mobile vs desktop earnings calculator on CalcSA. Slow phone pages cost readers too - the cost of slow page load calculator puts a number on it.
Worked example: the calculator's defaults
A site with 10,000 visits a month, 65% of them on phones at 1.5 pages per visit and a $3 RPM, and the rest on computers at 2 pages and a $5 RPM, with the phone share rising 3 points a year.
- The site earns $64.25 a month from ads.
- Phones bring $29.25 of it - 9,750 page views, 46% of the earnings from 65% of the visits.
- Computers bring $35.00 - 7,000 page views.
- In two years 71% of visits are on phones and earnings fall to $60.95 - 5.1% less at the same traffic.
- If phone visits earned like computer visits, it would make $35.75 a month more.
Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown:
- Phone readers read 2 pages instead of 1.5: $74.00 a month - 15% more from the same visits.
- A phone RPM of $4 instead of $3: $74.00 a month as well - speed and better ad placement can do it.
- A phone share rising 6 points a year: $57.65 in two years - 10% less.
Estimates. The pages per visit, the $3 and $5 RPMs and the 3-point drift are assumptions, as in the calculator. Your WebCounter report and your ad network's device report show your real figures.
Two years of ad earnings, by how fast the phone share rises
Same site, same 10,000 visits a month, ad earnings as the phone share stays put, rises 3 points a year, or rises 6 points a year:
- Phone share steady
- +3 points a year
- +6 points a year
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | Steady | +3 points a year | +6 points a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | $64.25 | $64.25 | $64.25 |
| 6 | $64.25 | $63.43 | $62.60 |
| 12 | $64.25 | $62.60 | $60.95 |
| 18 | $64.25 | $61.78 | $59.30 |
| 24 | $64.25 | $60.95 | $57.65 |
- The drift is slow but it never stops - 5% to 10% in two years with no change in traffic.
- Raising phone pages per visit from 1.5 to 2 is worth more than two years of drift - $9.75 a month against a $3.30 loss.
- Watch earnings per visit, not just visits - flat traffic can hide a falling income.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter gives you visits, the device split and pages per visit; your ad network gives RPM by device. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Phone share is phone visits divided by all visits on your WebCounter report, for one month.
- Compare pages per visit by device - a big gap means the phone page is losing readers.
- Check the same month a year ago to see how fast your own phone share is rising.
- Count bots out - many bots report as computers, which makes computer visits look worse than they are.
Sources
- The 1.5 and 2 pages per visit and the $3 and $5 RPMs are our estimates - no single published benchmark was found that holds across niches and ad networks.
- The rising phone share: StatCounter Global Stats has shown phones above half of worldwide web traffic for several years - we did not re-check the current figure; your own counter is the number that matters.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Mobile vs desktop earnings.
Estimates only. What each device earns depends on your niche, your ad network, your page layout and how fast your pages load; your own reports are the test.
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