So we continue with our second installment of Forum Talk: a look at what people are talking about in our RMX Direct fourms.

Now, around here, we all know a big secret. And we try to tell everyone out there in online advertsing land about it.

Here it is. Are you ready?

(Really ready? OK. Here it is…)

HIGH CPMs AREN’T just what it’s all about.

(So…what’s it about?)

It’s HOW you got that high CPM. That’s what it’s all about. Ok, I said it. Oi.

What got me in this mood? I’ve been tracking a forum post. It started off innocently enough, it’s title: “Who has the highest CPM?”, and that was the focus. But, it’s evolved into more about ‘how’ to get that high CPM.

Jerri G., our new Business Development Manager, mentioned that she is forwarding this post to her (many!) new websites she’s brought on to join RMX Direct (keep up the work, J!). The post covers some good points about using our platform.

With that, here are some excerpts (in chronological order).

From RMX STAFF

There’s more advice on increasing CPMs in the FAQs, but here are a couple things that many people have found helpful in the past:
-A lot of times, traffic from countries with low English-speaking populations doesn’t pay as well. If you can find a network that pays more for international traffic, bring it into your Manage tab and set up some geotargeting.
-Drive traffic to your site by constantly updating and keeping content fresh and interesting to your visitors.
-Play with ad placement–there are some other forum posts about this one–try moving ads around and putting them in places your visitors will be less likely to ignore them.
-Force competition by making sure that all of your outside networks are in the Manage tab.
As always, feel free to email support if you would like advice or if you’re concerned that something might not be set up properly.
I hope this helps!

From RMX STAFF 2

I think it’s also very helpful and interesting to run the frequency report to see what networks are paying you for the low frequency impressions.
These are primarily the impressions that most networks that default a significant amount of impressions are paying you for. So when a network like Tribal Fusion pays you a $1.00 CPM but defaults 70% of your impressions, they’re usually taking the first couple of ads a user sees and defaulting the rest to keep the CPM high.
Also, remember that you can enter in outside networks you are working with to set a baseline price RMX networks have to beat in order to serve an ad.
If you’ve got a network paying you more than RMX Direct, traffic them in on the manage tab and RMX networks will only serve an ad if they can beat it. There’s no risk there, besides a little time.

From User 1

The networks bid based at least in part on how likely someone is to click or convert. If your Click-thru and conversion rates are low, their bids will be low. I’d be surprised if your Click thru wasn’t well below average (its certainly well below ours, and RMX doesn’t even get our best traffic yet.)
Are you showing the ads either above the fold or the middle of the content? Alternatively, are you showing a lot of ads on the same page?
I’d also suggest checking your sites stats by geography on RMX’s reports - does that also show 90% US traffic or something different? Particularly non-English speaking traffic does poorly here - and most places for that matter…
…You might be blocking too much in Media Guard (what % do you let through?)
It also wouldn’t hurt to get more networks in…

From User 2

“Now I use just two networks - RightMedia and Directa Networks.”
Why just 2? Sign up for all of them. More competition means higher CPMs…

From User 3

I would have to agree with what [another user] said with this following statement…
The reason that RMX Direct has worked well for me is that I am also using 5 other outside ad networks:
- 2 have high CPMs and RMX Direct competes with them for the first impressions
- 1 has a pretty deep inventory in the middle CPM range and RMX Direct competes for 4-6 impressions at the $0.70 - $0.30 range.
- The last two networks are chained to my top 2 networks (one to each) to pick up the defaults
This is also how I am running my program for the most part, and I am seeing excellent results.
I believe that to make the best of RMX, you have [to] signup with all of the networks within RMX, be willing to bring in your outside networks, and then play with your figures (especially your Frequency Caps) until you find your niche (top payouts for impressions) so to speak. Just my .02 here.

From RMX STAFF 3

I definitely recommend adding in outside networks to compete.
…One thing I should point out about Adsense is the default way they report CPM is as a ‘Page eCPM’ which means they’re totaling all the Adsense ads on the page to come up with a larger CPM than for an individual ad unit. So if you have 4 Adsense sizes on one page and the Page eCPM is $2.00, it’s really average $0.50 per ad placement.
To get the CPM for an ad size in Adsense you have to use Advanced Reports and use the pulldown menu on the left to select Ad Unit eCPM, and then you need to have your ad sizes broken out by channel to get the true CPM you’re earning per actual ad unit per size. You may already be doing that…, just wanted to make sure we’re talking about the same type of CPM as Google’s ‘Page eCPM’ tends to be much higher than normal ad networks since they are totaling it.

Ok, I hope that was insightful.

Now, go home and recheck your ‘Manage Tab’ eCPMs. And talk amongst yourselves…

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Publishers, Direct Media Exchange. 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.