Advertising For Banners

[dallaskid]

I wanted to add some advertising banner to my site Free Freebies. it gets 200-300 unique visitors a day and 1000+ page impressions a day. How much should I charge per month?

[Greg]

It really depends on what you can get. Banner advertising rates range from $0.25 CPM ($0.25 per 1,000 impressions) all the way up to $50+ (in theory). It depends on the size, placement, your audience, and topic.

Easiest thing to do is to use Adsense and track how much that spot is making you from Adsense. Then charge a direct sales rate higher than that (go with double the rate). So if you make $2 per 1000 impressions in that spot for Adsense, maybe charge $5 or something.

You can also use other ad networks like.... Remnant ad networks like Adify or Valueclick will get you a quarter to a few dollars CPM. Niche networks like Glam or BlogHer can get a few dollars to over $10 CPM if they're selling specifically for your site. You can also use CommissionJunction to pick banners (usually on a per-click or per-sale basis) for even higher CPMs (in theory, depending on your topic).

You can also look at what Federated Media is selling. These are some of the highest rates in the industry. https://advertisers.federatedmedia.net/explore/

Truth be told, however, in order to get the highest CPMs for banners, you'll need to have big volume and a great brand. Banner advertising is about brand advertising, so massive coverage is what the marketers (ad buyers) are looking for. It's probably worth more to use contextual ads (eg., Adsense) or targeted affiliate ads (eg., CJ) in those banner spots.

Hope that helps.