Are CPM networks running out of ad space?
I’ve been getting loads of emails, from friends and followers of forum threads asking to help them get included into certain CPM networks in which I have some pull in. The most common complaint is that when applying to one of the CPM networks, both small and major, they are being rejected due to an overwhelming amount of websites in their sector.
Now this sort of surprises me, because from an ad network’s perspective, wouldn’t your goal be to have as many sites (quantity over quality baby!) so you can spend as much of the advertiser’s coin as possible, and then split that with the publishers (and probably skim a bunch off the top as well — those thieving bastards!) and then keep having the advertisers spend more and more? I mean, this is America, and isn’t the goal of corporations to make as much profit as possible, regardless of how it’s done? That’s my goal, so why isn’t it theirs anymore??
What I think is at work here is a much different animal. I don’t think the CPM boys and girls are changing their work ethic, what I think is happening though, is certain markets are getting flooded with really shitty sites, really quickly. Seriously, you guys need to start making quality sites, even if you’re duping the same old one by a billion others, spend a few minutes more on cleaning it up a bit, because it’s getting too sloppy, and not only do you end up lowering your overall CPM rate, but you fucking ruin it for everyone else! (everytime something is ruined, I get more emails asking for help, so stop it already!)
CPM is a very fragile and HIGHLY lucrative due to the fact that you pretty much control your revenue stream as a publisher. No one has to click, or buy anything, all you have to do is make sure pages load. It’s so simple it should be illegal! But thankfully it isn’t.. just yet. So unless you want CPM rates to drop drastically, clean up your damn sites, and stop redirecting all of that useless Chinese traffic to your site to increase your impressions, because as a fellow publisher, who now relies on CPM like a drug addict does on coke to survive, I don’t appreciate it and neither do the rest of the coke addicts…err.. I mean publishers!! Yeah! So tone it down you guys, for the good of the community at least.
I think the general principal that applies to this is if it’s too good to be true, it isn’t.
Basically when generating revenue becomes so little of an effort, those with nothing to lose will come up with new ways to create traffic. This will degrade the original business model and morph it into something new. It’s just a cycle, I don’t think there’s permanent way to prevent this from happening.
CPM sucks! Low payouts and it promotes spamming. A big scam with CPM sponsors is using autohits on your site to generate page loans which in turn generates income.