To Kill or Not to Kill: The CPM Story Continues
I have been in the Internet media space for 16 years and will start by stating the obvious: The CPM has done more to stunt innovation and drag down quality products than any single thing on the Internet. Maybe it works in other mediums, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on the Internet.
So saying Shelby Bonnie has sparked a new debate with his post on Techcrunch on why we should do away with CPM as a measure of advertising.
Among many things his post touches upon many nuances of online advertising including its creative side as well as the matters that take digital marketing beyond art. It takes matter also to what I believe is a very essential part of online advertising – the content it advertises. An argument that points to the main problem proponents of the call against CPM proliferate, that of bad publishing ethics. Like Bonnie mentions – The focus on CPM is causing a bunch of behavior that is bad for publishers, marketers, and users. Only by killing it do we have the opportunity to invent our new future.
I agree with the part of web publishing giving itself a bad name in the pursuit of page views. However, to convict a metric of measurement as the single ingredient to publishers’ self destructive habits is a point I can’t quite accept.
The post also brings to notice quite a few other points about why CPM leaves a bad impression about online advertising. A key point that is missed though is the creativity that the banner showcases. I have said this many times in many conversations online and off, it is close to cruel to expect a banner to do everything. Its relevance is in the fact that it can continue a conversation attracting traffic from a certain source (high traffic website) to another (landing page). In this case there are many aspects that work in tandem to make the banner campaign successful.
CPM has no role to play in that except to decide on number to limit the exposure of the banner. In fact as media gets mixed more in the future, a comparable scenario asks for a common metric across platforms and media for marketers to be more efficient with their budgets. And CPM does a wonderful job with it.
The falling if any is not of the metric but that of the users – both publishers and the advertisers who make it seem bad. Tomorrow if the entire digital advertising fraternity chooses a new simple and better solution, I am sure advertisers will still try reduce the cost they pay for it, while publishers will try their best to fiddle with the data that the metric measures.
To say that whatever faults we see from sluggish looking ads, to pages filled with banners, to scrappy content spread everywhere is not the fault of measures of advertising but that of the participants of the media. Perhaps the rise of search engines can be blamed for it as well leading to an ever increasing gamut of information often repeated and without significant value. Advertising has its falling everywhere from television to print to radio, and that is the case with the web as well. I have seen advertisements that work online, there are networks and agencies who make it work with the efforts they put in and remarkably they have been sold on the basis of CPM itself.
My experience might turn out to be a fraction of what Shelby Bonnie holds, so these views have to be seen in that light. However, holding a poor point of measure for faults of others doesn’t appeal to my senses. Essentially what online advertising needs is more solid bridge connecting creativity and technology for it to take eyes away from spreadsheets.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed OR Email Alerts!
Leave a Comment and Follow the replies through Post Comment Feed