I think the FF traffic would be considered incremental and should not be considered as a replacement.

Anybody who thinks someone as a commenter refreshing a page more than once is a good person to be marketed to who is looking for your ad is sorely mistaken. That’s why I think online ads on most blogs are a complete waste of time. For those exceptional blogs that have managed to make money, great, but I hope the advertisers know they’re not getting good value.

I agree that CPM might not be the best way – but as I’ve said so many times, until a new option comes that can be tracked, the agencies and brands won’t go for it. Remember it took years to get them to go for online ads at all using the CPM model.

I do sure hope we find something better – would probably lead to better content as well.

Can you name examples of blogs that get that? On average? I’d say on average it may be $1 (maybe $2 tops), if they get lucky. They will also need a person to focus on advertising and working with networks and agencies.

1. I look at CN and TC, and the other major blogs. 70 comments per post is a high average – TC is probably 30 or so, everyone else much less. Engadget probably gets the most, but I don’t see them complaining about FF. Oh, that may be because only geeks use FF and nobody else cares.

2. While blogs sell $10/CPMs on their ratecard, the likelihood that every one of their pageviews is monetized at that rate is low. If you can post your weighted CPM rate, or get Michael Arrington or Mashable to post their’s, please do. But my guess is, on average, the CPM rate of a blog that size would be closer to $3-4, maybe $5. Of course, every blog puts fifty ads on each of their pages, so maybe the volume of ad space counterweights this point.

3. Not 100% of commenters will come back. Maybe 10-15%.

4. On lively discussions, people may be coming back to see what happens, but again, lively discussions are not the norm.

Therefore I think the math should be something like:

10 posts per day x 20 comments = 200 comments, x 300 (nobody comments during holidays) = 60,000 pageviews, or 60 CPMs. At $5 cpm, thats $300. Pretend there are five ads per page, that’s $1500. Then presume that you get 10% repeat visitors on comments, you’re at $1650. Then pretend I am completely low-balling, and double that number.

$3300 a year, or a few hundred bucks a month. Doesn’t seem that much to get so worked up about? Maybe put up six banners per page instead of 5, and call it a day.

I don’t see how this one is about CPM. I think Alan is simply saying that:
1) a blog with more traffic is easier to monetize and
2) additional traffic (gee) gives the blog owner more $.

As for CPM, well, I think it’s just as bunk as PPC.

If you buy ads on a CPM basis which generate clickthoughs, you can easily back into your effective PPC.

How is that different than buying PPC directly?

Should it matter to advertisers if the clickthrough comes on the first view of a story, or on a comment refresh, as long as the effective PPC price/conversion rate is still within desired targets?

The bigger issue (if there is one) might be that without more disclosure about the history of each ad-clicker, PPC advertisers are still buying a lot of bot clicks.