PubMatic Releases AdPrice Index for 3Q

PubMatic is out with their quarterly AdPrice Index report for Q3 2008. Just skimming the report it's easy to see that every chart is down from previous quarters.

PubMatic also reported that Social Networks is still the lowest priced category with Sports a close second, coming in at 21 cents and 25 cents, respectively. They also report that Entertainment had the most significant drop of all verticals, dropping 42% from 57 cents in Q1 '08 to 33 cents in Q3 '08. I am finding on our sites that rates have leveled out and AdSense performance is actually up by a small percentage. Here are the key metrics direct from the AdPrice Index:

• For all sites in aggregate, Q3 08’s average ad price of 27 cents is a 27% drop from Q1’s price of 37 cents and a 21% drop from Q2’s price of 34 cents
• In Q3 of 2008, the value of ad inventory on Small websites ($0.61) was more than triple that of Large sites ($0.18) - small sites under 1 million pageviews a month, large over 100 million a month

As always, note that the AdPrice Index only measures data from publishers using PubMatic for ad serving.