The Tale of the $340 CPM | Hacker News Reader

The Tale of the $340 CPM

blog.gochime.com

19 pointswhather10 comments

When we back these numbers out into CPM terms, our platform is doing a $340 CPM! To give some perspective: $20 is a very high CPM for Display and $100 is a very high CPM for Email.

Nit pick but important enough to confuse me and may be others:

Saying you are doing $340 CPM suggests you are making an ad publisher $340 CPM. What you really mean(I think) is that you are making the advertiser $340 in revenue per 1,000 impressions(which btw is incredibly good!).

It gets more confusing when you state:

To give some perspective: $20 is a very high CPM for Display and $100 is a very high CPM for Email.

You really just want to say that here's an advertiser that spends $x CPM to advertise using our platform and in return he makes a profit/revenue of $y on that $x spend.

Thanks zaidf. Sorry about the confusion. We actually mean that we (as the platform) are making a $340 CPM. The advertiser in this case is making closer to a $500 CPM.

The "C" in CPM stands for "cost" and therefore can really only be used to talk about expenses, so it totally doesn't make sense to says "we are making a $340 CPM".

Exactly. Only time I have heard $x CPM is when ad networks tell me they can make me $x for every 1,000 impressions of their ads on my site.

Overall that post remains pretty confusing.

thanks for pointing that out. acronyms aside, those are the numbers.

One term my company uses (not sure if it's an industry standard) that captures what you're describing is "yield," which is basically revenue/cost per user. Ultimately, what "CPM" you are making your advertisers is hard to really evaluate without knowing how much they are paying per impression or click.

That said, sounds like you guys are on the right track, now just have to sustain this success and scale it!

thanks sardonicbryan. "yield" makes more sense. scale is the name of the game!

Yeah but CPM is also used to denote revenue. I notice Google now uses RPM in their Adsense reports which makes more sense but they used to (from memory) use the term eCPM.

Pro tip: make sure there's a link to your home page from your blog.

good point. we're on posterous.

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