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Cashing Out: Week of Nov 16-22nd, 2008 in Online Marketing News

Nov 23, 2008
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CPM Rate Drop Signs
As J.P. Morgan predicted CPM advertising revenue is taking a hit. One big indicator was this week’s cut of TechCrunch’s CPM rates by Federated Media. The public CPM rates on TechCrunch dropped from $36 to $23.40. Federated Media handles the advertising for TechCrunch among a dozen other top tier blogs.

Yang Steps Down
Two weeks after a his revealing interview (video at midpoint in article) at the Web 2.0 Summit, Jerry Yang officially stepped down as CEO of Yahoo. Chairman Roy Bostock is leading the search for a new CEO. Yang will maintain his board position and his role as Chief Yahoo.

BestCovery Launches for Shoppers to Discover
Kamran Pourzanjani, co-founder and former CEO of PriceGrabber announced the launch of BestCovery which offers reviews on a wide array of consumer products. The site is very slick and is designed to lead consumers to the products it has crowned as the best. Looks like Buzzillions just got some serious competition.

Zazzle launches “I’m A PC” Store
In what seems like a very desperate co-branding attempt by Microsoft a new “I’m A PC” store that mimics the sentiments of Microsoft’s current branding campaign has launched. Yes, it does seem to be commissionable for Zazzle affiliates but we expect the conversions will be low.

Filed under: Cashing Out
  • http://www.rhinofish.com Pat Grady

    On the CPM rate drop, I tried to follow your links and struck out. In any case, I have this gaussian distribution assertion about the number of bidders at the outskirts of the mean pricing spread that has a lot to do with early slide rate implosion… a few high bidders on the skinny part of the bid amount population curve means rates in a high bid auction ecosystem (economy, not ecology) don't reflect the average very well at all, so there's what wall streeters call 'strong support' behind those now-nervous bid leaders, and these secondary bidders are in much greater numbers. Few stop bidding altogether, so the pop curve gets skinnier and taller. So on a percentage basis, I think the present fear has driven CPM rates down the majority of their expected fall for a protracted bad economy. At the support levels, are ROI minded folks who make money (not just a name for themselves) at these pocked up lower rates. So who got whacked along the way? Those that don't measure ad spend return or value well. And who benefits? Those who do measure themselves well – they have access to large media buys at prices that make sense to them. Storm clouds look grey and somber on the bottom side, but from the top, it's… well… a Johnny Nash kind of thang…

    I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,

    I can see all obstacles in my way

    Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

    It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)

    Sun-Shiny day.

    Anne Murray sang it too, though the Jimmy Cliff remake is the one I can hear in my inner thought ear right now…

    So get your metrics funk on, see clearly and it's all gonna be okay, maybe even a tad righteous.

  • http://www.popshops.com Angel Djambazov

    Hey Pat,

    Thanks for pointing out the link, it is fixed. The J.P. Morgan article is interesting and as you stated does reflect the "fear" factor in CPM rate adjustments that is the model traditional advertisers are most familiar with. ROAS is always important and those who don't bother to measure their return numbers closely will always get whacked. The pain points currently might be a little more sharp.

    Funny I always think of Pink Floyd when I think about advertising spend…