Can you recommend a CPM company?

CPM companies you'd recommend?

[Ducain3]

Hello everyone. First post, and I need a little advice from some of you veterans.

I have a website that focuses on console gaming, and it averages about 4 million pageviews per month. Driving the content of the site, I'm running a phpBB forum that averages 7-8 million pageviews per month, with an average of 1925 posts per day.

I'm running ValueClick CPM ads on my forum, and doing fairly well with them (at least I'm pleased at this point). I'm looking to fill another ad spot on the forum (468x60) with more CPM banners.

Any reputable companies that you can recommend?

I've tried Adsense on the forum, and the performance is pathetic.

[Fairla]

Fastclick is good and has lots of CPM ads.

[hdpt00]

What type of CPM rates can you get nowadays. I'm thinking of putting some on my sites but want to know what to expect in terms of CPM first. Are we at $0.25 or closer to $1, what? I only get about 10K page views per day.

Thanks!

P.S. I hear casalemedia is pretty good, no?

[Lapka]

Hi,

It depends on your site, which will determine CPM's.

CPM's are generally around $1, BUT they drop rapidly if you have a large number of page views per user (anything over 2 :) ).

My CPM averages around 0.11 and 0.14 and 0.08 from 3 different CPM networks.

So if you are placing it on a forum then expect similar numbers.

Also what niche are you targeting.
Gaming, forums, home decor, teens ... all seem to be low (in my experience).

[Lapka]

Who can I recommend, well I average around 1.2 million page views a day. I think the advertising networks I am with are generally struggling to fill in that space (hence the extermely LOW 0.08 average, yes they go that low :) ).

Over half remained unfilled. Every ad network I enter takes a huge plunge in the average CPM they provide their publishers. Feel like this BIG white elephant that knocks everything over.

For any webmasters who have recently seen a large PLUNGE in their CPM earnings, I apologize, and I have started to split it up across multiple networks, should take another month or so :)

[Ducain3]

For some reason, I've been denied by Fastclick three times now (I reapplied every two weeks).

I even wrote them an email asking what the problem was, and they said "There's absolutely nothing wrong with your site whatsoever. Those type of sites simply do not meet our marketing needs at this time.'

I'm a bit frustrated by that. :(

So, other CPM sites? Casalemedia?

Has anyone had any luck with Realtech network?

Also, for some of you guys that operate large forums, what strategy seems to work best for you? CPM? CPC? Other?

Any advice is very welcome.

Thanks all.

[upside]

Ducain3, be careful with Realtech. I ran their ads on a site for a month (several months ago) and they haven't paid. One clue that they're not on the level is they don't have an actual phone number. The number on their site connects to a call center and when a Realtech rep calls back the caller ID is blank.

[Lapka]

Fastclick just does not have enough advertisers to serve the clients they currently have. I also got turned down. But another site got accepted.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the site. Its a simple function of supply and demand in the FIELD that you are in. The bad news is that there are more and more websites cropping up around the internet a LOT faster than the speed in which advertisers are entering this field. Game sites are saturated (and getting more so). Niche and specialty sites are the way to go. General sites generally do very poorly.

My advice is send an email to someone at Fastclick asking what it is they are looking for. Are sites like yours xyz of interest to them. Usually they would reply, and now you would have a point of contact at FastClick. Then you can query them and get a better idea of what channels (for them at least) are doing well and they need websites for. My 2 cents.

Casale Media is more of a CPC/CPM hybrid. They pay you a CPM like rate, but they expect to get x number of vistors from those banner ads completing y number of tasks. They accept a lot of sites but then they also cancel quite a few, a high turnover. Tribal is small and very selective. Less than 1 in 10 get accepted.

I would recommend you try to get someones email from FastClick.

Cheers

[yosemite]

I just got accepted by Fastclick. When I submitted a second site to be considered, it was rejected.

I also agree that the subject of the sites is probably a big issue. The second site I submitted was not as large as the first (accepted) one, but it had solid content. However, its content was all over the place—a little of this, a little of that. The site that was accepted has several more clear-cut areas of focus.

When I was picking through the ads from fastclick to find ones appropriate for the site that was accepted, I found more than a few ads that were directly related to the content of my site. So there was a certain degree of "good fit" there.

Edited to add: I agree with the previous poster that said that niche topics are the way to go. Every site I have ever created has been on a niche subject. In some cases, extremely niche. Some fare better than others in search engine rankings, but I have never felt that any of them were a waste of my time. Some have done extremely well for me.