Value of a site for advertisers?

[Drew]

So, on a semi-related note, can anyone suggest a good program to track and/or rotate banners and such?

- Drew

[Justin]

I prefer the per-impression method myself for my site - but if I were paying for advertising I'd probably want to pay per click... my average ratio is about 0.5%. Working this out at $15/CPM, if my math is correct, that's $3 per click. Hm... so for me, charging by impression works out better. Note that this is highly targeted advertising -- I always expected the click-thru to be higher than it is, but most of my advertisers seem content, and they can view their stats in real time (note that the ratios vary by banner greatly).

The other reason per-impression seems better to me is that my traffic has been quite steady lately. Clicks vary too much - so I can more reasonably predict what I will make in a given month using impressions...

As for ad software, I couldn't fine anything suitable for my needs in any reasonable price range, so I wrote my own PHP/mySQL software, which is tightly integrated with the rest of the site...

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Dan Kaplan]

Click thrus can also be sold in the thousands, though they are stated as CPMs.

Okay, time to swallow my pride, display my ignorance, and ask the question, what is "CPM?"  The best I can come up with is cost per million, but that doesn't make much sense based on Justin's numerical example.  Clicks per minute...  Come pay me...  Cow pie manure (ok, that one was poor)...

As an engineer I worked with once said, "I saw a great TLA the other day."  My reply:  "huh?"  His reply:  "A three letter acronym!"  Some people have WAY too much time on their hands.

DDK

[This message has been edited by Dan Kaplan (edited 01-06-00@5:44 pm)]

[Justin]

If I'm not mistaken, it is Clicks Per Mil - keeping in mind that a Mil is one thousand (Mil-enium )

Hope this helps.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Rich]

CPM - Clicks Per Thousand

M = 1,000

Which comes from the use of roman numerals.

Rich

[Tatu]

I think I read in Wired or Yahoo! Magazine months ago that adult sites are paid $2.50+ for click throughs "because after a clickthrough, the visitor is quickly sold". LOL! I myself would NEVER degrade myself to that low moral level of business EVER (I and mean NEVER EVER NEVER). Even if I ran a click-thru network I would immediately ban all adult andhate material w/o question, even if they paid FIVE dollars a click.

-Tatu

[Dan Kaplan]

Thanks guys.  Thousands was my first thought, but I miscalculated Justin's example and that didn't make much sense...

What's "clicks per" in latin?    That would be a little more consistent with roman numerals.  Or in the Y2K spirit, CPK...

Dlirious

[Justin]

If it were CPK, that would be 1024 clicks. Which is why I disagree with EVERYONE's theories: I say the millenium started a few days ago, but Y2k did not hit - not until 2048, when of course we finally have 2 kiloyears. We are only currently at 1.953125 kY...

I think M stands for Mil, a prefix meaning one thousand in some contexts - millimeter, millisecond, and so on.

Cent == one hundredth.
Mil == one thousandth.
Century == 100 years
Millenium == 1000 years

So technically, once you have $1000 you have made your first Mil And you are just shy of a kilobuck

<okay, I need to crawl back into my corner now...>

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Drew]

whoa... I always that CPM = cost per month.  No?  D'oh!
-drew