Author: Dwayne Lafleur

What Is CPM & Why Ad Networks Use It As A Metric

What is CPM?

CPM means “cost per mille” or, more modernly, “cost per thousand”. Mille is the term used for a thousand impressions in the ad business. It’s an everyday metric that advertisers and ad networks use and it has its origins all the way back at the beginning of online advertising. So what is CPM good for if you’re a publisher or website owner, and why do advertisers love to focus all of their measurements on it?

what is cpm

CPM is a bad metric for publishers and website owners

As for online publishers and site owners, you’ll undoubtedly see CPM used by most ad networks and touted as the de facto metric that you should be focused on if you want to earn more money.  However, it was created by ad networks and is often manipulated by them to serve their end goal — to generate more revenue for themselves — which doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue for the online publishers and website owners.

Higher CPMs don’t mean that a website owner will actually earn more ad revenue

What you’ll find is that there isn’t a worse metric available for publishers. Below we’ll highlight why ad networks typically want publishers focused on increasing CPM’s and why it’s in your best interest as a site owner or publisher to focus on a  handful of other things instead if you truly want to increase your total site earnings Continue reading “What Is CPM & Why Ad Networks Use It As A Metric”

Google Algorithm Change – Adwords

How latest AdWords change affects Organic Traffic

On February 22nd and 23rd, Google rolled out a change to the way that Adwords ads are displayed on search results.  As a publisher you might not think that this affects you since it’s a paid search update, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This change has significant implications for CTR on organic results.  Below we describe the change and show you some examples of how the change affects the traffic to your site.

Continue reading “Google Algorithm Change – Adwords”

Mobile App Development

We all know about mobile apps – there are over 1.5 million apps available on both the Google Play Store (Android Devices) and Apple’s App Store – and most of us use them every day. You’ve probably even heard that people use apps more than the mobile web – which is true – but let’s dig in a little in to exactly what that means.

 3 Facts About Mobile Apps You Need To Know

Continue reading “Mobile App Development”

AdSense Changes

AdSense CPM Changes

How your revenue from AdSense, Google Ad Exchange and other ad networks and ad exchanges change during the seasons.

At Ezoic, we have the luxury of being able to track and view the online advertising market across thousands of websites that all use hundreds of ad networks and exchanges.  One advantage of being able to do this is that we’re able to see trends that affect all websites and are able to distinguish between something that’s potentially gone wrong with a single website vs wider trends or seasonality. Continue reading “AdSense Changes”

End of December / Early January Advertising Market

Earlier this year I wrote about “The Ups & Downs of Online Advertising” which dived into the changes in advertiser behavior that occur during the various seasons as well as brand marketing budgets and their quarterly cycle.  In this post, I wanted to examine the changes that occur in December and January in a little more detail with the hope of helping bring some sense to the volatility of your website’s revenue during this time of year. Continue reading “End of December / Early January Advertising Market”

Sleepless Startup

For many of us, our best ideas don’t come to us when we are in a boardroom or sitting at a desk — they tend to come to us when nothing else is occupying our minds.   For me, the problem with this reality is that it is a rare occasion when work or the kids isn’t consuming  the vast majority of my mindshare — so the only time that I seem to “free” from distractions is when I’m sleeping (or supposed to be). Continue reading “Sleepless Startup”

The Ups & Downs of Online Advertising

In one way or another, I’ve been involved in the online advertising industry for the last 15 years.  I’ve been an advertiser spending 7 figures a year, a publisher earning 7 figures a year and, as the founder of Cubics (the first Facebook Advertising Network), I even was the ad network. Continue reading “The Ups & Downs of Online Advertising”

The Journey Begins: Why We Built Ezoic

More than 6 years ago, I started Cubics, the first Facebook Ad Network for application developers.  When we launched, it was the only way for individual application developers to get something back for all the hard work they put into their Facebook applications.  Back in those days, Facebook applications were largely made by individuals, not professional companies. For several years, I had the pleasure of working very closely with those small application developers and I learnt a lot, but one thing that stood out in my mind was that no matter what the content or application, the layout that the application used was extremely important. Continue reading “The Journey Begins: Why We Built Ezoic”