CPM Ads and EPC

New metrics needed

[elguapo]

Now that folks here are reporting seeing CPM ads, I was thinking about its implication to our "EPC." We calculate EPC to be revenues/no. of clicks, but now that CPM ads are thrown into the mix, revenues are not all from CPC ads. So it makes the EPC metrics to be questionable at best as it is not all earnings from clicks. Am I correct?

G and many here will say that EPC is not the stats to really consider, but ECPM, but I also see many folks here who makes decisions based on their EPC.

We need new metrics - if only to give us a breakdown of all our CPM earnings and CPC earnings!

[bnhall]

I agree 100% - we need a new metric

[alika]

My concern is more of the impact of CPM ads on my CTR. As the nature of CPM ads, many of it are for branding only with the goal of getting the name of the product/brand out there, and the ad is typically not designed to generate the most click throughs. Hence, there is the possibility for CTR to fall (hopefully not)

Now if CTR falls, how will it affect smart pricing for the CPC ads? Will our cost per click decrease because overall CTR suffered from the decline in clicks brought about by the CPM ads? Or will the increase in revenues brought by the CPM ads compensate enough for any smart pricing adjustment to the CPC ads?

Lots of questions with no clear answer ...

[europeforvisitors]

We need new metrics - if only to give us a breakdown of all our CPM earnings and CPC earnings!

We'll probably get that information in due course. (Remember how long publishers clamored for page-level stats, a.k.a. URL channels, before they became available?)

What I'd really like to see is a report of how many site-targeted CPM campaigns ran on the publisher's site for a given day, week, month, etc. This would give publishers an incentive to build and maintain quality sites that attract advertisers, because site-targeted CPM ads are likely to become a much more important (and profitable) part of the AdSense mix.