Rubicon Releases Q4 2008 Ad Market Report

Online advertising technology provider Rubicon has released their latest 2008 Online Advertising Market Report for the fourth quarter. Similar to the PubMatic AdPrice Index, Rubicon’s report takes a look at the online advertising industry through analyzing the stats and impressions served on the Rubicon system. Rubicon notes that the report came from analyzing 45 billion impressions across their publisher network. The report focuses heavily on news (around the election) and entertainment. There’s also a discussion of the 2009 ad market as well.

Remember that the report comes from only ads Rubicon has served and while not noted in the report, I assume a large percentage of the 45 billion are served via their large publishing properties.

The key takeaways from the report are:

• $134 million was invested in ad network]related deals in Q4
• Traffic to all sites in the Rubicon ProjectNews & Reference channel jumped 50-75% percent on and after Election day
• CPMs tumbled by more than 40 percent in the Dating channel, and by almost 18 percent in the Sports channel. In contrast, they were up 50 percent in the Young Adult channel, up 42 percent in the TV & Film channel, and up 31 percent in Technology.
• Overall publisher revenue across the Rubicon Project is on pace to outperform Q4 ‘08 by 30% in Q1 ‘09.

Check out my interview with Rubicon CEO Frank Addante and all of our Rubicon coverage.