Report: Online Ad Revenues Up, Despite Flat CPMs

Written by Ryan Lawler

Monday, February 23. 2009 at 05:15 PM EST Post a comment

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According to The Rubicon Project 's fourth-quarter Online Advertising Report, online advertising CPMs were flat in the fourth quarter, but overall revenues were up due to increased volume at publisher sites.

The Rubicon Project's online ad report is similar to PubMatic 's Ad Price Index, in reporting the average CPMs that are being reported by publishers that use its ad network optimization platform. But while PubMatic only just measures the average CPM seen by its publisher partners, Rubicon is giving some insight into the overall revenue trends that are seen by publishers on its platform.

While overall CPMs were flat for the fourth quarter, fluctuations varied widely depending on the vertical channels that publishers were in. The dating channel, for instance, saw CPMs decline by more than 40 percent during the quarter, while CPMs in sports and entertainment channels fell by more than 15 percent. 

But some verticals saw large increases. CPMs in the young adult channel were up more than 50 percent, and publishers of TV and film Websites saw CPMs grow 42 percent. CPMs at technology sites were up 31 percent, while the news and reference vertical saw CPMs increase 17 percent from the third quarter.

Due to the U.S. elections, the news and reference vertical saw significant increases in both CPMs and traffic. According to the report, traffic to online news sites grew more than 27 percent in the week leading up to Election Day, with page views doubling and time spent on sites increasing by more than 61 percent.

In the entertainment vertical, on the other hand, CPMs may have declined, but overall revenues were strong due to increased traffic. Entertainment CPMs fell more than 15 percent overall in the fourth quarter, but traffic thrived. According to The Rubicon Project, publishers in the entertainment vertical saw revenues increase 70 percent during the quarter.