Getting a good CPM rate?

[idv]

Hi

My site currently has around 300,000 - 500,000 impressions each month.

I am currently getting around 0.25p cost per thousand impressions via an ad network.

I realise this is very low and would be interested in learning the best approaches to improve this figure to around £1.50 - £2.50 per thousand?

 

[terryuk]

What market? What country is the traffic from?

 

[idv]

hi we are in the UK and we operate in the sports market similar to sky sports etc

 

[Steven Tucker]

Speaking as an advertiser, I have always found content targeted advertising yields very low click through rates compared to search advertising. If you are using something like google adsense, the lower the click through rate, the less you are going to make per thousand impressions.

A lot of content sites hide the adverts at the bottom of the page, where very few people will see them. It may be worth you checking your site design to ensure that the ads are suitably prominent. Also, check the ads that are displayed to see whether they are actually relevant to the type of person who uses your site - if they aren't relevant, there may be a targeting problem.

 

[idv]

No we are not using Google Adsense. We are using an advertising network.

Would we be better going via a 3rd party ad agency to source advertisers for the website? in order to achieve a higher CPM?

 

[coloradorockies]

That depends on what you expect to get from it. I charge $2.50 CPM. However, I can get really bad traffic for .04 to .06 CPM though. You have to have realistic expectations going in. The bad traffic has a click thru rate of .0055. The good traffic has a click thru rate of .17%. Then again, none of this traffic is targeted. If I were advertising a cooking site to people interested in cooking, I'd expect a much higher click thru rate.

 

[poohbear99]

The only way you can grow the price the ad network is willing to pay is by increasing your traffic or justifying it through the audience you are attracting. Ad networks will pay more for very specific niche audiences so this helps. The problem is most ad networks sell the inventory on to the advertisers at about £1.50-£2.00 CPM so in order for them to make a profit they really can't buy it for much more than what they are paying you.

You could try an ad network that specialises in contextual or behavioural targeting as they tend to charge clients a higher CPM for the technology they use to target the ads.