PubMatic AdPrice Index: Prices Still Stagnant

PubMatic is out with their monthly AdPrice Index report for June 2008 and their analysis shows that prices remain stagnant and show little movement from the previous month. Web sites with less than 1 million pageviews dropped 32 cents/cpm while medium and large sites (those over 1 million views) saw a small increase leading to the overall flat movement.

PubMatic also reported that the news category was basically cut by 50% in cpm ad rates. What I am seeing on my Web sites is that CPMs are down 20% month over month on remnant (default) networks. Here are the key metrics direct from the AdPrice Index:

• On average, Web site monetization decreased by less than one percent from $0.37 in May to $.036 in June. *(Pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks’ share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers).
• By size, small size Web sites had the largest drop to $0.81 in June, down from $1.13 in May.
• By vertical, News and Gaming had significant drops, sliding $0.62 and $0.20, respectively.
• Entertainment showed the only increase jumping $0.11 from $0.29 in May to $0.40 in June.

If the trend continues that rates for smaller publishers continues to drop significantly, will these smaller publishers be forced out of business?

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