Forum Moderators: skibum
Someone responded by saying that $10 per 1,000 views was a price to start with.
It's been my limited experience that advertisers don't want to pay for exposure. They want to base what they pay on the results they see.
Am I wrong?
It has become what I call the branding option. What better method of charging for sticking graphics (i.e. company logos) in visitors faces?
It can be variously combined with other advertising/marketing/sales options to enhance the total spend result.
Because targeted eyeball branded numbers are the CPM criteria a site must know (site log analysis, etc.) uniques per period, page views per period, (likely/certain) visitor demographics, etc. to match appropriate brand(s) and page(s). Long time popular (and profitable) for tech sites but certainly not limited to that category.
The higher your targeted traffic volume the more you can charge.
<OT>I always wonder the bot percentage when I see site uniques quoted.</OT>
...advertisers don't want to pay for exposure...
You are correct - most advertisers want 'results' not 'exposure'. Large companies, however, especially manufacturers, already have a sales 'results' network and what they want is 'exposure' - branding.
Think of CPM ads as TV spots. This does mean that the CPM market is dominated by big companies and their agencies. On the down side: it takes large detailed numbers to catch their attention. On the up side they expect large ad spends.
To webmasters serious about CPM I recommend to first present proposals to local and regional 'on topic' manufacturers and large local 'on topic' retailers to get a feel for the market. Once comfortable and having all your numbers right I would then go after the national/international companies.
To move up the value ladder usually both quality and quantity of traffic have to dramatically improve relative to the specific ad target audience.
Important Note: CPM market cap varies greatly between niches; many top out at much less than $100 CPM.
My site gets roughly 200,000 visitors per month, and has anywhere from 900,000 to a bit over 1,000,000 page views.
Of the 1600+ pages I have on my site, there's about 1250 that are availalble for advertising. The other pages either already have banner ads from one advertiser on them, or are pages that my subscribing widget stores pay to be on.
My site is very narrowly focused on a particular segment of the sporting goods industry. The lone banner advertiser I have now gets a 5% click-through-rate.
Are you folks saying that the value of banner ads on the rest of my site would be worth anywhere from $1 per 1000 page views to as much as $10?
I've been approaching every manufacturer and/or retailer I can find, and nobody wants to spend a dime.
I don't know how you folks do it, but any suggestions are wholeheartedly welcome.
$10 is out of this world. Perhaps if the guy owns yahoo...
First: CPM networks generally pay poorly. Run of site ads simply can not be well targeted so pay zilch. If you can find a network that sells individual page matched ads the relevance and CPM value goes up. The nature of the beast is these will always be low value low priced ads. Do you track the CPM networks? Their TOS, ad to page matching or run of site options, rate structure, payment and fraud history?
The highest rates are direct site to agency/company. Means you gotta do more than cut-n-paste some code.
Second: what is your site niche(s)? each category (sub)niche(s)? each page (sub)niche(s)? what is site/category/page traffic by average/exact daily/monthly? what is s/c/p traffic trend since startup? what is s/c/p traffic demographic breakdown (and how do you know)? where in each SE's SERPs for which company-relevent search terms? what is your traffic to which pages for such terms? what is bot to human visitor ratio (and how do you know)? how well are you excluding bots (and how do you know)? Means you gotta do your analytics and security homework.
Third: what is the annual ad spend in your niche? how many companies in your niche that do regional/national ad campaigns? how aggressive? in what media? who are they and who handles their advertising? what are their ad policies? what is their web presence? Means you gotta do your intelligence work.
Fourth: I recommend a minimum 1,000,000 monthly (a million a day is open sesame) site uniques before bothering to approach an agency/company with a proposal. If your site is extremely unique and extremely good and extremely niche-company aligned you might get in the door with 100,000. These folks are the major leagues and if the quality of your site, its traffic, its relevance, and your proposal aren't to that standard you lose. Means you gotta be good and you gotta be prepared.
Landing the first account is the hardest. It took me 14-months. This was while the bubble was bursting and the web was dieing which didn't help. These folks watch and gossip just like us webmaster/seo types. Subsequent ad sells become easier. In some niches they actually wait in line for good site ad openings - this is where CPM price rockets as renewal rates ratchet up.
Not all niches and not all sites within those niches are of interest to high CPM accounts. Part of my business model is making this determination prior to choosing site niche and content.
dickbaker: the little I know from your comments says your niche has CPM possibilities. There are both regional and national players used to large ad spends. This is good. Many are not web savvy. This makes the original sell harder - but once made the others would likely follow. Trailbreaking is hard work.
