Sunday, April 18, 2010

How much are your blog readers worth to an advertiser?

This weekend I spent time looking at Adify.com. a technology platform provider that helps advertisers, content aggregators and individual publishers build and commercialize premium vertical ad networks.

According to their website, Adify's platform powers more than 160 of the world's best vertical ad networks and connects premium brand advertisers to the thousands (perhaps millions) of long-tail sites with niche content. Adify was acquired by Cox in 2008 for $300 million.

While combing through their site, I came across this interesting chart that shows the average CPM throughout 2009, by genre of audience. CPM, or Cost Per Thousand, is the cost an advertiser pays for a thousand impressions of an ad to a particular audience. For example, in Q4 of 2009, advertisers paid an average of $7.48 for 1,000 displays of an ad to a Sports audience. Advertisers wanting to reach a Food audience paid $2.89. Huge difference.


Looking at the CPM trend over 2009 tells an interesting story about brands and the trending worth of online consumer audiences. At the beginning of the year, Healthy Living and Lifestyle was the most valuable, with a CPM of $8.76. By the end of year, Travel was the hottest, at $8.95. Overall, all categories were down by the end of the year. Sometimes in a recession, it won't matter what CPM you pay if consumers simply can't afford to spend (just look at the CPM trend for real estate).

I was happy to see that Moms and Parents, while falling towards the end of the year, consistently remained near the top. I'm curious to see if the numbers have changed in Q1 of this year, especially given a growing climate of economic optimism among consumers, of which Moms and Parents tend to be the most powerful.

Adify's mission is to help advertisers, agencies, and publishers make better sense of an ever-increasingly fragmented web audience. I'm especially interested in how they accomplish this because a driving force behind the fragmentation of audiences and site content is the growth of blogs. Blogs make it very easy for individuals to publish content that attracts niche readers. If Adify can help brands connect with blogs and blog readers (who are often very passionate about their interests), they will do well.

9 comments:

Dawn said...

That is VERY interesting! It gives me hope about finding a sponsor for Relevant. :)

EatPlayLove said...

I tried Adify, but within a week deleted the campaign space. I was really disappointed in the ability to navigate which campaigns will run, they have a general description but unsavory camaigns can slip through. After a horrific smokeless tobacco ad ran, I had to delete Adify. I'm actually having much more success and payout with one simple affiliate link, which gave me the control I needed.

Courtland said...

Dawn, check out Hotchalk ad network. They may be a great fit for you. Denise, Sixapart media is a horizontal ad network, and as such offers its publishers a wide array of advertising. Your blog has a specific audience and would benefit from joining a vertical ad network such as Martha's Circle or iVillage which would eliminate the risk of irrelevant (or otherwise objectionable) advertising appearing on your blog.

extreme personal measures said...

Folowing from Blog Frog post: Follow for a follow & comment.

Alissa said...

Thank you for sharing this site. I am always looking for new sites to check out.

I am having the hardest time finding sponsors for my two sites and I do have a lot of hits. I think a lot of people are holding their advertising budgets closely, as advertising is one of the first things to go when the economy is bad.

If only there were a sound way to measure advertising=sales us bloggers would be golden!

Anonymous said...

Hi Holly How are you?

I really enjoyed your report on this,

Lorie said...

I love the information in that graph! I will have to check out Adify.

Teresa @ Grammy Girlfriend said...

Very interesting....A night of blog hopping....Hope you will stop by and visit me....Enjoyed reading your blog tonight...

Teresa
http://teresa-grammygirlfriend.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I have been working with google, Amazon, BlogHer and Adify - in that order. After two years (admittedly the first two with the fewest hits) and no income, I deleted the google ads. I have earned pennies on the second two - hate admitting it but I write for a niche market, too.

I was hoping you might speak to the relative earnings of those who have Adify ads on their blogs - ?

Would you post on selling ads directly? Thanks, Barbara

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