How Revenue is Calculated

Where your dashboard revenue comes from — GAM reconciled figures supplemented by real-time Prebid win data intraday — and how eCPM, impressions, and your net earnings are derived.

This article explains where the revenue figures in your dashboard come from, how they are calculated from raw auction data, and what the numbers mean in practical terms.

The source of truth: GAM reporting

Advlume's authoritative revenue figures come from Google Ad Manager (GAM). Every impression served through your ad units — whether filled by a Prebid header bidding winner or Google AdX dynamic allocation — is recorded in GAM's delivery system. GAM applies its own deduplication and reconciliation, making it the most reliable source of record for billing purposes.

Revenue is reported in USD as the net amount Advlume receives from demand partners after exchange fees, but before the Advlume platform fee is deducted.

Intraday estimates (today's numbers)

GAM reporting has a reconciliation lag — final figures for a given day are typically available the following morning. To give you useful numbers throughout the day, Advlume supplements GAM data with real-time Prebid win data from the edge ingest layer:

Every time Prebid wins an auction, a bidWon event is sent to Advlume's edge ingest endpoint with the slot, DSP, and CPM.
These wins are stored in the prebid_wins table on the Bunny DB edge database.
For today's date only, if GAM data has not yet landed, the dashboard shows an estimate derived from the sum of CPM × impressions / 1000 across all Prebid wins.

Once GAM's reconciled figures arrive (typically by 09:10 the following morning), they replace the Prebid estimate for that day. If GAM reports higher revenue for a given day — for example, because AdX filled some impressions that Prebid did not record — the GAM figure is used.

Update frequency

Update	Frequency	Data source
Intraday dashboard	Every 30 minutes	Prebid wins (edge) + GAM if available
Prior day finalisation	Daily at 09:10	GAM reconciled figures (last 2 days)
Historical backfill	On demand	GAM (configurable date range)

Demand channel breakdown

Revenue is attributed to individual demand channels based on which DSP won each auction. In your dashboard you can see the revenue split between:

Google Ad Manager / AdX — Google's dynamic allocation fills
Prebid demand partners — individual SSPs and DSPs such as Magnite, Index Exchange, OpenX, PubMatic, Xandr, Criteo, and others

For any DSP not explicitly mapped, revenue is grouped into a generic DSP bucket. Channel data is updated on the same 30-minute cadence as overall revenue.

Key metrics explained

Revenue (USD)

The total net amount earned across all impressions for the selected period, in US dollars. This is the figure used to calculate your payout.

Impressions

The count of individual ad creatives rendered on your pages. One page view with three ad units counts as three impressions.

eCPM (effective CPM)

Effective cost per thousand impressions, calculated as:

eCPM = (Revenue / Impressions) × 1000

eCPM is the most useful metric for comparing performance across different periods or ad units, because it normalises revenue relative to traffic volume.

RPM (revenue per thousand page views)

Where page view data is available, RPM is calculated as:

RPM = (Revenue / Page Views) × 1000

RPM is a broader measure of monetisation efficiency — it accounts for both ad density (how many units per page) and eCPM.

Your earnings vs. displayed revenue

The revenue shown in your dashboard is the gross revenue recorded in GAM. Advlume retains a platform fee from this amount; your net earnings (the amount you are paid) are the gross revenue minus the Advlume fee. Your specific revenue share is set out in your publisher agreement. If you have questions about your rate, contact your account manager.

Why numbers can change retroactively

It is normal for revenue figures to be revised after they initially appear:

Today's estimate → final: The intraday Prebid estimate is replaced by GAM's reconciled figure the next morning.
IVT adjustments: If GAM detects invalid traffic during its reconciliation pass, those impressions and their revenue are deducted. This can reduce figures for a prior day. See What is Invalid Traffic (IVT)? for details.
Discrepancy corrections: Occasionally a demand partner reports a different impression count to GAM. The platform uses GAM's figure as the source of truth in all disputes.