by Andrew Lennon | Managing Editor | The Daily Anchor
PubMatic has released their Q4 2008 Ad Price Index and its clear that online advertising has entered into a recession.
PubMatic is an ad revenue optimization survey, and the PubMatic Index is a quarterly survey given to over 5,000 websites, 85% of which are based in the U.S. It’s worthwhile to note that PubMatic’s data reflects net publisher monetization for advertising that is sold through ad networks, not advertising sold through a publisher’s own sales team.
Download a PDF of the report here
Key Takeaways:
- All sizes of website sizes were down dramatically from Q4 2007 by an average of 43%
- Small Sites (<1 million pageviews / month): 52% drop
- Medium (1-100 million pageviews / month): 23% drop
- Large(>100 million pageviews / month): 54% drop
- All sizes of websites were also down from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, but the drops were not significant, bucking the trend of larger drops from quarter to quarter throughout 2008; this may be an indicator that the online ad sector got just enough of a boost from holiday advertising to keep ad rates steady.
- Similar to sites by size, all vertical categories also experienced significant drops in their ad pricing from Q4 2007; the biggest drop by a vertical was Business & Finance, which fell from an average price of $2.13 in Q4 2007 to $0.83 in Q4 2008 – a 61% drop.
- Also similar to sites by size, no vertical categories dropped by a significant amount from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, and some verticals even improved from the previous quarter; the Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, and Music verticals all had higher ad price averages in Q4 of 2008 than in Q3 of 2008.
