I Knew I Wasn’t Crazy: Ad Prices Are Half What They Were A Year Ago
Posted on | January 13, 2009 | 7 Comments
With domaining, a lot of people assume that their “online business” is going to get better and better and that in the future they’ll actually be making more than what they are making right now. I’ve recently had several conversations with people about the ridiculous CPC (cost per click) prices that I’ve been getting using various domain parking providers and even some sites that I had developed that are monetized through AdSense or AdBrite. Obviously, a decrease from “WOW! That’s not bad CPC” to “WTF? Screw domains!” does not mean an increase of revenue in the future for me if things just keep getting worse. Until now, all I’ve been hearing and reading is that there are MORE AND MORE advertisers and that online ad sales will break insane records. Great; more profit for Google–and only Google. Obviously our share of the pie has been cut due to our “economic situation”.
But wait–PubMatic, an online advertisement optimization company, released a statement: Online Ad Prices Are Half What They Were A Year Ago. This means that I wasn’t losing my mind reading about growth! growth! growth! and seeing crap… crap… crap! I saw this article originally on TechCrunch, which makes me think we’re spared a lot of juicy information, such as decrease in major keyword rates, what might have caused such a huge drop, what might the future hold, or if they’ve experienced something like this in the past. Either way, there was a nifty picture that was posted with a column graph comparing Q4 2007 ($0.50) through Q4 2008($0.26):
Advertisement Drop
I’ve had a lot of free time the last two days, so I went through a lot of my parking accounts and checked for differences in revenue from the first 10 days of January vs the first 10 days in November. It seems like a tougher ride ahead if things continue slipping even further, but hopefully some sort of magical online deal will happen which will spark some major compentition (cough: Y! + Microsoft). Seriously though, a lot of people believe that a joint effort with Yahoo! and Microsoft in regards to advertising is going to be the holy grail miracle for most domainers. Don’t believe me? Here’s the first comment on the TechCrunch article:
“yup. when yahoo and microsoft start giving adsense a run for its money… well… ‘nuf said.”
We’ll probably be getting more information regarding the holiday season in the upcomming weeks or so. Hopefully this will aide in making “smarter” decisions for those that rely on online advertising as a way to make a living. I’d be curious to get some sort of information out of the Big G. My Yahoo parking provider feeds absolutely suck right now, so I spent a while changing keywords around this morning. Will find out in 48 hours whether it was worth it or not (Namedrive stat update wait period).
For other graphs/information about some specific niches, check out the TechCrunch article.
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Tags: ads > advertisements > depression > economy > online ads > online advertisements > pubmatic > recession
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7 Responses to “I Knew I Wasn’t Crazy: Ad Prices Are Half What They Were A Year Ago”
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"there's nothing like having a vision, imagining it, making it, then having it work, especially if your very being depends on it"
January 14th, 2009 @ 3:32 am
I think click price will depend a lot on the quality of your site.
If you have ever managed a PPC account, You begin to get a feel how demand for quality content works.
If you site is good, advertisers may target it and bid higher. If you site is what domainers would call a “mini site” ie, piece of Junk, you will go into the site exclusion bin driving down your click price. Its about generating demmand for you site as a placement.
-Guru
January 14th, 2009 @ 5:53 am
I definitely agree in terms of development, which is where this article comes from. There’s a lot more than comes into play regarding the claims PubMatic made, but overall, I’d say there’s definitely an advertising “pricing” slump.
Great information; hopefully I can get a post up regarding quality content and making sure you “keep the quality up”
.
Thanks for the comment!
January 14th, 2009 @ 8:17 am
A good site makes all the difference
January 14th, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
I think everybody will feel the result of this ‘credit crunch’.
January 14th, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
I agree with Guru, development is key when it’s done to help the user, not the developer. I have a few sites in one niche centered around a daily updated site in the same niche. The mini sites all use same keywords for the most part as the updated site, yet get a slightly smaller CPC than the updated site. The updated site is a PR4 with approx 600 UV/day – the rest about 25% of that, PR2. So it seems, the consistant work pays better.
Oh, I have seen a dip in overall revenue, too.
January 15th, 2009 @ 4:17 am
I can count on my fingers the amount of “domainers” that own what would be considered good sites…
Domainers and “good sites” shouldn’t really be mixed together, or mentioned in the same sentence
Best,
Mike
January 15th, 2009 @ 8:13 am
“I can count on my fingers the amount of “domainers” that own what would be considered good sites…”
You just reminded me about an e-mail I received with a guy telling me that I shouldn’t be placing ads on one of my sites and should put up videos/news instead regarding the niche.
“Domainers and “good sites” shouldn’t really be mixed together, or mentioned in the same sentence”
Oh man… if I had quote of the week/month on my blog, I would leave this up on there for the WHOLE YEAR.