A comparison of advertising options since I wanted to see if I could optimize advertising earnings from my sites, to see if there are any other options than AdSense. This mini investigation concerns foremost the Swedish market, but it might be of interest to international readers anyway.
I looked at some ad providers and the eCPM that they pay for a sidebar ad sized 250×200 or 250×300 for some sites related to mine. All solutions except AdSense are Pay Per Impression, while AdSense (as you know) is Pay Per Click (PPC). None the less, the earnings from the four ad providers investigated , Tailsweep, Livsstilsnätverket and Clear Channel ranged from $US 2.2-40.6 per 1,000 impressions (eCPM to use AdSense terminology). In the case of AdSense the eCPM is likely to vary quite a lot from publisher to publisher. The number in my chart is just an example of a typical eCPM for one of my own sites.
Advertising on a big Swedish B2B site (Clear Channel B2B) yields a sky-high eCPM (in this case for a skyscraper ad) , while a more comparable number is the Clear Channel ad pricing for a very popular community site, $US 4.3 CPM which is rougly double from what can be expect from AdSense.
It should be noted though that the ad network are likely to take their share of the money, so what the advertiser sees as effective eCPM is a few percent lower (to my best guesstimate), except for AdSense which is the eCPM that you defacto see.
Conclusion: AdSense holds its own against Tailsweep, but other ad networks pays substantially higher (and more reliable) eCPM. This conclusion is valid for this example only, as AdSense CPM might vary substantially and actually outperform other ad networks in some cases.
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