Facebook app CPM numbers from Inside Facebook

CPM rates on Facebook apps
Great data from Justin Smith on Facebook app CPMs: What CPM is your app making? Data from Facebook Developers. Thanks to Justin for putting together these great numbers.

Here are the numbers:

• tspree15 is making $0.60 CPM with Social Media
• cbovis is making $1.50 CPM with VideoEgg, but they can’t cover all his inventory (the rest runs on RockYou)
• sweetsteve is making $0.27 CPM with Cubics, down from $0.43 earlier this month
• ejono is seeing a $0.40 CPM with Cubics
• cory is making a $4.78 eCPM with Social Media (???)
• mzeitler
  is making a $0.50 CPM each with AdSense, FB Exchange, Social Media, and
  RockYou (and by combining 2 units on a page is making $1.00 CPM)
• saintseiya is making $0.125 CPM with Lookery ($0.25 with 2 ads above the fold)
• markdoub is seeing $0.10 CPM with Cubics, down from $0.43
• ersingencturk is seeing $0.04 CPM with AdSense

Overall, the numbers are generally <$1, and you also see that there are some issues with "fill rates" - that is, how likely it is that an ad gets displayed when there's a space. For brand advertising, it can be quite low.

How does this foot to internet-wide CPMs?
These numbers are in-line with my previous post on 5 factors that determine your advertising CPMs, where I wrote:

• Social sites (forums/chat/etc) without direct ad sales teams: <$0.25 CPM
• Largely international sites: <$0.50 CPM
• Medium-sized sites that use banner ad networks: <$1 CPM
• Reference sites in a specific category: >$5 CPM or sometimes
  much higher, depending on category - we ran into home improvement
  reference sites that did $20 CPMs

Given that these are all social sites with mostly US traffic but no direct sales teams, an average of 10-50 cents is pretty accurate.

Combine this with Jeremy Liew's insights on getting to $25MM/yr on Facebook app ad impressions, and you see that it takes a good 900+ million installs. Ouch. Jeremy's slides below...

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Comments

[Mike Berkley]

Thanks, Andrew.

Here are some of our thoughts...

Application owners, just like Facebook and MySpace themselves, need to think beyond the banner ad. In social networks, ads need to “become part of the conversation” (the new social media cliche). The line between content and ad needs to blur, or vaporize altogether. Ads need to become personal, social, and dynamic. And ads need to provide immediate value to the consumer, either in the form of utility or entertainment. Yes, ads must work harder in social networks to be accepted by this incredibly discerning audience.

Here is more on the topic: http://blog.splashcastmedia.com/2008/04/23/yes-banner-ads-also-suck-on-application-pages/