CPM price for large websites is dropping

PubMatic : AdPrice Index: "eCPMs for large Web sites (more than 100 million page views per month) dropped dramatically by 52 percent from 38 cents in March to 18 cents April. Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Small Web sites managed to improve their monetization, increasing from $1.18 in March to $1.29 in April."

You could see this as proof of "The Long Tail". Or it's just a sign that for large websites it's just too much work to offer higher-priced targeted ads. Most "large" websites I know mainly do Run Of Site or even Ron of Network campaigns for their display ads.
Another possible reason is because there's a big gap between pages that attract lots of traffic (like webmail, forums, contests) and pages advertisers want to be on (like portal-style content pages).

In any case: time to move on to more interactive and permission-based advertising.

Couple of advices for Social Media and buzz campaigns

Last week I attended Marketing 2.0 Conference in Paris. Great opportunity to meet new persons who are part of the leaders in the buzz market like Emmanuel Vivier, CEO of Vanksen group - and contributor of this blog too- and to catch up with a couple of great marketing speakers and persons like Mary Beth Kemp, Forrester principal analyst.

I stole a couple of minutes from their busy agendas to ask them recommendations for marketers willing to 'begin a Social Media effort' as opposed to' launch a social media campaign'.

In the first video below, Mary Beth is explaining Forrester POST approach. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. If it should stand for only one key message it would be this one: don't start at the end of the process thinking technology is key. Getting to know how your audience is engaging - or not- with existing social platforms and defining objectives are the success factors to determine the foundations of your strategy, then chose the social tools you're going to tap into or develop for your own community. Mary Beth is also referring to the Social Technographics Forrester has been working on: great tool to understand and categorize how consumers are behaving online. For more info on the topic, I advice you to read the Groundswell blog and contact Mary Beth. Start by listening to her 3 min wrap up :


Mary Beth Kemp, Forrester Principal Analyst from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.

As for Emmanuel, I challenged him at the end of those 2 hectic days with the uneasy task to sum up his inspiring 1 hour long presentation featuring best buzz campaigns. He did a great job doing so in a bit more than 8 min. No magic formula, but a couple of viral successful ingredients based on his wide experience with a number of brilliant campaigns. Worth listening till the end.

Emmanuel Vivier, CEO Vanksen group from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.