Site Targetting now $1.00 Finally.

[markus007]

Looks like there is going to be a big influx of ads now that CPM has been lowered to $1.00

[FromRocky]

This has been mentioned. Site match -lower min. bid to $1 CPM [webmasterworld.com]

[creepychris]

Makes sense. I always felt that most banner ad networks are overpriced. Not that $1.00 bid will make its way to a lot of sites since lots of sites earn far greater than!CPM with strictly CPC bids anyways.

[hyperkik]

I have mixed feelings about site-targeted ads.

First, they aren't targeted to the page, and as much as I appreciate being targeted I would also like to serve relevant ads to my readers (even if I make a bit less than I theoretically will as a result of targeting).

Second, while I understand that Google attempts to set its algorithms such that publishers make more money after being targeted, this does not always appear to work in practice. It seems like an uncomfortable variant of "smart pricing", where Google looks at the historic performance of a site and then guesstimates how many fewer contextual ads to serve in order that the site-targeted ads raise the overall eCPM. When this calculation is wrong, which my way-too-small, non-scientific study (i.e., my gut reaction to my own stats) suggests is about 10% - 20% of the time, eCPM drops. And in comparing the drops to the increases, it seems that even in that ratio overall site earnings can be unaffected or even drop.

I would like to be able to set a minimum CPM for site-targed ads, preferably by channel.