Publisher eCPMs can vary significantly, even across similar sites. So when a publisher asks me what we pay on average, I explain that it’s hard to figure out, and that price depends on a number of factors.

On the other hand, maximizing eCPM is not that difficult if you know how to manage those factors effectively. Below are some suggestions:

• Ad placement - a poorly placed ad size will not buy that house in Maui. “Below the fold” ads are virtually invisible. The ideal placement is directly above the content. After that, the strongest positions are below (not below the fold) and to the left and upper left of content.
• Ad noise - How many ads are on the page? 3? 6? 10,000? When there are large numbers of ads on a page, the click-through rate and conversion rate of each ad unit is lower, which generally lowers the eCPM of each individual ad placement. Remove the poorest performing ad units and then focus on how to optimize the rest.
• No site sections - Is every site getting untargeted run of network ads? There is usually no way of knowing, but there are ways to avoid this.  Segmenting your site(s) into sections based on content can help ad servers like Yield Manager optimize for those areas and also allow advertisers interested in targeted categories find your inventory.
• High impression frequency - Does each unique user see the same page 50x a day? Or 1x a month? If a site user has browsed past 15 different ads, and hasn’t clicked through any of them, the next ad impression they see is unlikely to present much value to an advertiser. This drives down the predicted eCPM value of that impression. Increase the number of users coming to your site, not just the number of pages each user views.
• Clicks and conversions - Which placement is underperforming? Analyze click and conversion rates and then modify placements until you get it right.
• Competition - allowing advertisers/networks to compete for your inventory is a sure way to command a higher price, and it’s where Right Media distinguishes itself. Putting each impression up for auction, as opposed to allocating bulks of inventory to specific networks or advertisers, ensures that if a buyer is willing to pay more for impression, that buyer has access and can bid.  If, on the other hand, you send a bulk of impressions to one network for an extended period of time, it doesn’t matter that a different advertiser is willing to pay more—it doesn’t have access to that inventory, and you leave money on the table as a result.

In a future article I’ll talk more about competition and the systems Right Media is building to help publishers.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Publishers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.