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Being close to the publishing world, this does not surprise me. eCPM has halved, if not better depending on demographics. We will likely see this happening to p

by _eht 7y ago

Being close to the publishing world, this does not surprise me. eCPM has halved, if not better depending on demographics. We will likely see this happening to places that started this pandemic out overextended.

reaperducer 7y ago
Since you are close to this space, do you have any sense of whether the number of ad views is increasing because more people are home?
- x0x0 7y ago
  ad views aren't important. Look at dollars in. Over time, net dollars in must exceed net dollars paid to publishers. I have a cxx role at a startup. We slashed our ad budget for the next 45-60 days until we figure out how deep our economic collapse is going to be; I suspect we're far from the only company. The other thing about ecpms is most advertisers have a daily frequency cap for cookies. More browsing plus more ad slots does not necessarily equal that much more filled ad slots. We're going to see a lot more ad-supported content companies fail as we destroy the ability to do cross-site targeting. (I'm not saying increasing privacy is bad; merely that this is an entirely-foreseeable outcome). Some sites will transition to paywalls; others will die. Premier sites -- NYT, wapo, gawker family, etc -- will be able to do direct deals with advertisers. That takes both a dedicated salesforce, a draw, and frequent users. Mid-market sites like this will almost certainly not be able to do so. See also Josh at Talking Points Memo's writing about transitioning to a mostly subscriber-supported model.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    > ad views aren't importanT You sure? If it’s a supply and demand market, in increase in eyeballs can crash CPMs as the competition to get your ad to display craters. Kinda like how a small decrease in traffic (say 10%) can turn a highway from gridlock to free flowing.
    - x0x0 7y ago
      I meant follow dollars in to understand dollars out. There will be some reallocation between publishers, but follow dollars in and you'll see what will most likely happen to ecpms out. The latter is a trailing measure. iow, you will probably get more views, but dollars will probably follow the economy.
    - exolymph 7y ago
      Advertisers only give shit about views insofar as views serve as a proxy for conversion.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jpeg_hero 7y ago
    i feel like the death of third-party cookies is not getting enough attention in the category of "death of the open web." if you are a small website, you "owned" that cookie. now small websites are going to have to strap into the big networks, or fade away like usenet.
- _eht 7y ago
  I think people were expecting a bigger influx than I’ve seen. The real, noteworthy effect seems to be seen in the extreme decrease among certain publishers. Those in the sports, and music industry as an example. My read on the negligible positive is that those are mostly lifestyle and entertainment publishers. People already spent a lot of time on those properties naturally. Also community forums are still very active if they were active prior to this. The thing to watch is who is able to carry their infrastructure through this with the lower ad rates. If you’re big spending on AWS, et al, you might start considering getting a little closer to bare metal. Note that publishers with lower overhead and can hold out longer usually benefit from the earlier publisher shutdowns, as their ad impressions get soaked up by whoever else remains. Having watched the publisher world back in 07-08 this is so far feeling very familiar.

by _eht 7y ago

reaperducer 7y ago

Since you are close to this space, do you have any sense of whether the number of ad views is increasing because more people are home?

x0x0 7y ago
ad views aren't important. Look at dollars in. Over time, net dollars in must exceed net dollars paid to publishers. I have a cxx role at a startup. We slashed our ad budget for the next 45-60 days until we figure out how deep our economic collapse is going to be; I suspect we're far from the only company. The other thing about ecpms is most advertisers have a daily frequency cap for cookies. More browsing plus more ad slots does not necessarily equal that much more filled ad slots. We're going to see a lot more ad-supported content companies fail as we destroy the ability to do cross-site targeting. (I'm not saying increasing privacy is bad; merely that this is an entirely-foreseeable outcome). Some sites will transition to paywalls; others will die. Premier sites -- NYT, wapo, gawker family, etc -- will be able to do direct deals with advertisers. That takes both a dedicated salesforce, a draw, and frequent users. Mid-market sites like this will almost certainly not be able to do so. See also Josh at Talking Points Memo's writing about transitioning to a mostly subscriber-supported model.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  > ad views aren't importanT You sure? If it’s a supply and demand market, in increase in eyeballs can crash CPMs as the competition to get your ad to display craters. Kinda like how a small decrease in traffic (say 10%) can turn a highway from gridlock to free flowing.
  - x0x0 7y ago
    I meant follow dollars in to understand dollars out. There will be some reallocation between publishers, but follow dollars in and you'll see what will most likely happen to ecpms out. The latter is a trailing measure. iow, you will probably get more views, but dollars will probably follow the economy.
  - exolymph 7y ago
    Advertisers only give shit about views insofar as views serve as a proxy for conversion.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jpeg_hero 7y ago
  i feel like the death of third-party cookies is not getting enough attention in the category of "death of the open web." if you are a small website, you "owned" that cookie. now small websites are going to have to strap into the big networks, or fade away like usenet.
_eht 7y ago
I think people were expecting a bigger influx than I’ve seen. The real, noteworthy effect seems to be seen in the extreme decrease among certain publishers. Those in the sports, and music industry as an example. My read on the negligible positive is that those are mostly lifestyle and entertainment publishers. People already spent a lot of time on those properties naturally. Also community forums are still very active if they were active prior to this. The thing to watch is who is able to carry their infrastructure through this with the lower ad rates. If you’re big spending on AWS, et al, you might start considering getting a little closer to bare metal. Note that publishers with lower overhead and can hold out longer usually benefit from the earlier publisher shutdowns, as their ad impressions get soaked up by whoever else remains. Having watched the publisher world back in 07-08 this is so far feeling very familiar.