SEOly Blog » CPM

CPM Ad Rates Rise 38% in Q2 2009

Stephen Quallich — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:12:09 +0000

According to The Rubicon Project, CPM ad rates have risen 38% from the 1st to the 2nd quarter of 2009. Some niche’s CPM rates rose considerable more; music websites saw 270% rise in rates compared to the first quarter of 2009. This substantial rise in this niche can be attributed to The MTV Movie Awards (There was hype regarding Eminem’s encounter with the pantless Sacha Baron Cohen), the death of Michael Jackson, and ongoing tours by artists like Beyonce. On the other hand, some industries took a hit to their CPM rates; publishers in the travel industry took a 36% drop in their CPM ad rates. This can be attributed to consumer’s fear of the H1N1 virus and the current state of the economy. It appears that overall, CPM ad rates have finally exited the downward spiral that they were stuck in and are now are back on the rise. Publishers can expect future growth regarding ad rates as the future is no longer as bleak as it once was.

CPALead Revisited

Stephen Quallich — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:27:58 +0000

I first mentioned CPALead months ago when it was a newer CPA program within the industry. Since then, CPALead has distinguished themselves as an excellent choice for webmasters when they are considering CPA advertising. For example, I just started to use CPALead on a watch tv online niche website, and the earnings have skyrocketed even though it is currently the tv off season. I have left my CPM ads and Adversal in page popups on the main pages and implemented CPALead on the episode pages.

Period	CPM Ads	Adversal	CPALead	Total Revenue	Page Views	CPM	Other Information
January 2009	361.86	327.46	0	689.32	628,208	1.10
Febuary 2009	309.76	243.96	0	553.72	529,620	1.05
March 2009	303.82	181.79	0	485.61	421,126	1.15
April 2009	443.01	171.54	0	614.55	493,125	1.25
May 2009	423.48	174.06	0	597.54	418,777	1.43	Season ended
June 2009	154.44	67.11	0	221.55	201,270	1.10
July 2009	63.23	27.51	1,028.98	1,119.72	153,405	7.30	CPALead implemented

Not only does the addition of CPA advertising dramatically increase the website’s profit, but the average CPM increases substantially. Instead of making ~$1.18 / 1,000 page views, this website is making $7.30 / 1,000 page views. This means that when this tv series starts up again with their new season I will be earning thousands of dollars per month instead of hundreds per month. Over a 500% increase in profit margin can be seen after the implementation of CPALead on this website. Note that the profit from CPA ads is a lot bouncier and more variable on a daily basis compared to CPM ads; this website earned anywhere from $20 to $75 from CPALead depending on the day. Acknowledge that daily profits may be more variable when using CPA ads, but for this website average profit saw a considerable increase. Does this mean that you should use CPALead on all of your websites? Absolutely not; CPALead works fantastic on some websites, but on others it may even drop your net profit and CPM. If you do plan on implementing CPALead or other CPA advertising methods, I strongly encourage you to track your CPM and profit over the period of a week or month, so that you can see if CPALead (You loss nothing by signing up under my referral code) is the right thing for your website.

CPM Ad Rates Drop in Q1 2009

Stephen Quallich — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:58:46 +0000

According to the Rubicon Project, CPM ad rates significantly dropped from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009. This drop was expected because seasonal pressures, post-holiday budget adjustments generally result in a 20-30% drop in CPM ad rates. Additionally, the global economic crisis has had a clear impact on the advertising industry. CPM ad rates alone can not determine the health of the advertising industry though, one must compare overall revenue and traffic performance as well. When same site and all site comparisons were examined for this quarter , it was found that there was significant growth in traffic and overall revenue amidst the lower CPM ad rates. As CPM ad rates have continued to drop, the online advertising industry has been remodeling and expanding. At the beginning of 2008, there were approximately 300 networks in existence, and now there are over 400 advertising networks. Also, these ad networks have been attempting to improve their efficiency and performance in order to bet out the competition. There has been a shift to a more performance oriented focus. By improving their efficiency, these ad networks have been able to better optimize ads, so that they are more likely to reach the target audience, which result in better performance for the advertisers and the publishers. Although, CPM ad rates have continued their decline, advertising revenue has increased for publishers and there are more opportunities for advertisers.

CPM Ad Rates Drop 11% in Q3 2008

Stephen Quallich — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:17:43 +0000

According to The Rubicon Project, CPM ad rates dropped 11% from the second quarter to the third quarter of 2008. Although, the CPM ad rates have continued there downward spiral, there is significant opportunity within advertising online. This CPM ad rate drop can be attributed to the downturn in the global economy. Many companies have reevaluated how much money they will be spending on online advertising. Regardless of the cutbacks in online advertising, growth has been made within the industry with regards to stronger technology, niche targeting, etc. These improvements allow advertisers to receive more targeted traffic that is more likely to convert. Currently online advertising can take advantage of the CPM ad rate drop situation because the amount that they pay per ad, visitor, and in the end, the action of the users to purchase their product all costs them less due to this drop in CPM rates. Although CPM rates have continued to drop, there is definitely opportunity within the online advertising marketplace.

Adsense: Text vs. Image Ads

Stephen Quallich — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:33:49 +0000

Adsense text ads tend to blend into your website more, which results in a lower CTR; whereas, image ads stick out more against the content of your website, which results in a higher CTR. This does not necessarily mean that image ads are better than text ads. Generally, Adsense image ads are CPM ads; this means it might be a good idea to use these ads on webpages which are unlikely to get clicks. Depending on your website it may be beneficial for you to use Adsense text or image ads. In my experience with another blog of mine, I decided to switch from Adsense text ads to Adsense image ads; the results were surprising. I received ~25% more clicks while using the image ads, but the image ads paid ~50% less than the text ads did. Maybe this is because there is not as much competition for image ads in the niche, which would explain the lower amount paid per ad. The choice to use Adsense text or image ads really depends on your website. You should also consider individual ad positioning to see if certain placements are beneficial to image ads, while others are better for text ads and vice versa. You will not know whether text or image ads will actually perform better until you do a comparison between them.