Spring CPM’s Have Sprung
Part of our STAQ Benchmarking Newsletter series
After a dismal start to the year, CPMs so far in May are 12% below last year. While still not what publishers are hoping to see, this is a vast improvement from being down 25% where we started the quarter.
The bright spot is happening in the Private market, specifically Preferred Deal, with CPMs 15% above last year over the first 2 weeks of May.
The industry is bracing for a fundamental shift that began early last year. With CPMs down especially for news content (down 40% to be exact), fragmented video inventory (still generating 5x the CPMs compared to display), and the looming threat of AI in Google search (hey, we didn’t mention cookies for once!), identifying opportunities to maximize revenue – new or old – is more important than ever.
The 3 advertiser categories showing revenue growth in the first 2 weeks of May are Shopping, Internet + Telecom, and Auto, all up 5-10% since the beginning of the month.
We are seeing consistent CPM growth so far in May, so hopefully that’s a sign there’s good news ahead. Check out our earlier blog post for more insights on the state of the industry and opportunities for publisher revenue growth in the coming months!