Navigating the CPM gap
July 14th, 2009
“Here’s the thing: advertisers treat prospects online as targets, as victims, as people to subject to interruption. Conferences treat attendees as royalty, as paying customers who invested time and money to be there.
And that’s the difference. As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction, you’ll see CPM rates drop. As soon as you (or the advertisers) figure out that creating online communities aligned with the advertising, where attendance is a choice by the consumer, then you’re creating genuine value.”
Yet another great insight from Seth Godin.
Back in the late 1950s ad luminary Howard Gossage suggested magazines ought to charge the real cost of their publication, and forego advertising. He speculated more than a few subscribers would be happy to carry the added burden in exchange for the marked uptick in focused content. Gossage wasn’t the first, I suspect, to offer the idea.
But Godin’s post brings the core premise back into perspective.
“As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction…”
The truth is, it should be much easier today to provide advertising that isn’t a distraction, to provide advertising that’s actually a compliment to the content it surrounds. The technology (and the conversation around regulation) continues to evolve to make behavioral and retargeting efforts all the more common. So, on the one hand, it should be easier and easier for publishers to fine tune the ads they do serve, so viewers receive a greater total of relevant content.
But that’s just filtering. What I think Godin is driving at is harder.
What is your site about? And does that premise still hold water if it’s tarted up with all manner of advertising—especially remnant ads you, as a publisher, might not be able to control?
We’re talking about money, of course. Unless you’ve got other resources, publishing for love might not pay all the bills all the time. So the other hand is this—what’s your site about? How can you enable, inspire and gently prod your advertising comrades to operate in-line with that core premise? The best advertising experiences I’ve had revolved around ideas custom-fit for the media they inhabited; circumstances negotiated so our advertising reiterated and enhanced the overall editorial DNA. We made ads, to be sure. But ads which treated the viewer as royalty.
We’re talking about ad units that are likely more expensive to produce. We’re talking about media negotiations that are likely more difficult to secure. We’re talking about walking away from business as usual.
But why not? CPMs aren’t going up, as far as I can tell.
Comments
Custom ads are great, until you are are trying to spend $10MM in two months. The problem is that it doesn’t scale. Remnant ads address the scale without the relevancy. The rule is those who hold the purse strings writes the rules. Big advertisers are being crushed by production demands — I know we are for MSFT right now.
Godin is right, additive advertising is perfect. It just is few and far between and hard to scale. When you figure out how to do it, please invite me to the island that you buy with the profits.
Posted on July 15th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Thanks for the industry insights, Chris! I suspect “big advertisers are being crushed by production demands” has always been the rule, even in the 1950s. It’s an interesting challenge—having so much money that must be spent, and few truly relevant situations in which to spend it.
Posted on July 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
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