How Revenue Is Calculated

Publisher revenue in the OpenWeb platform is generated when advertisements are delivered and users interact with those ads within publisher properties.

Revenue reporting combines ad delivery events, engagement signals, and advertiser campaign pricing to determine earnings for each placement and container.

This page explains how key monetization metrics are calculated and why some reporting metrics may differ from raw engagement counts.

📊 Key Revenue Metrics

Several metrics are used to measure advertising performance and revenue generation.

🧾 Served Ads

Served Ads represents the number of advertisements delivered within a placement.

An advertisement is considered served when the ad unit successfully renders within the email or content surface.

This metric reflects how many opportunities were available for user engagement.

📬 Opens

Opens represent the number of times a container or placement is loaded by a user.

In email environments, an open typically occurs when the email client loads images associated with the message.

Because email providers may preload images, opens can sometimes include automated image loads generated by email clients.

🍎 Adjusted Opens

Adjusted Opens apply a correction factor to account for automated image loads generated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP).

Apple MPP can trigger image requests that appear similar to real user opens. To provide more accurate engagement metrics, the platform applies adjustments that reduce the impact of these automated loads.

Adjusted opens are used when calculating certain performance metrics such as CTR and RPM.

🖱 Clicks

Clicks represent the number of times users select an advertisement.

Clicks indicate active user engagement with an ad and redirect the user to the advertiser’s landing page.

Click activity is often used by advertisers to measure campaign effectiveness.

💵 Revenue

Revenue represents the total earnings generated from advertisements served within publisher placements.

Revenue is generated based on advertiser campaign pricing models and engagement with advertisements.

Revenue may be influenced by factors such as:

Campaign bidding strategies
Click volume
Advertiser demand
Inventory performance

📉 RPM (Revenue Per Mille)

RPM measures the amount of revenue generated per 1,000 opens.

RPM helps publishers evaluate how effectively their inventory generates revenue.

RPM is calculated as:

RPM = (Revenue ÷ Adjusted Opens) × 1000

Because RPM uses adjusted opens, it accounts for Apple MPP corrections.

Higher RPM values typically indicate stronger advertiser demand or higher-performing placements.

📊 CTR (Click Through Rate)

CTR measures how often users click an advertisement relative to the number of opens.

CTR is calculated as:

CTR = Clicks ÷ Adjusted Opens

CTR provides insight into how engaging advertisements are for users.

📦 Container vs Placement Revenue

Revenue can be analyzed at multiple levels in the reporting interface.

Container Revenue

Container-level reporting aggregates revenue across all placements within a container.

This view helps publishers evaluate performance across entire properties such as newsletters or content channels.

Placement Revenue

Placement-level reporting shows revenue generated by individual advertising positions.

This level of reporting helps identify:

high-performing placements
underperforming inventory
opportunities to optimize ad placement strategy

🍎 Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)

Apple Mail Privacy Protection can generate automated image requests when emails are opened.

These automated requests may artificially inflate open counts.

To provide more accurate engagement metrics, the platform applies adjusted open calculations in reporting.

Adjusted opens help ensure that metrics such as CTR and RPM more closely reflect actual user engagement.

📄 Reporting vs Invoices

The reporting dashboards provide near real-time estimates of revenue and engagement metrics.

However, the numbers shown in reporting are considered indicative.

Final revenue values are determined through billing reconciliation processes and appear on official payment invoices.

Because of this process, there may occasionally be small differences between dashboard reporting and finalized invoice values.

📈 Best Practices for Evaluating Revenue Performance

When analyzing revenue performance, publishers should focus on trends rather than isolated data points.

Helpful metrics to monitor include:

RPM trends over time
Container-level performance
Placement-level performance
Click engagement rates

Consistent monitoring helps identify opportunities to improve inventory performance and maximize monetization.