Popunder Rates Falling

June 5th, 2006 by Chris

Over the past 6 months I’ve noticed a steady decline in popunder rates at both Fastclick (now ValueClick Media) and Casale.

There was a time when Fastclick was my primary popunder provider with the most campaigns and the best rates. Then Casale passed them. Now ValueClick (VC), has passed Casale again, but both are much lower than they used to be, under $3 eCPM.

What is causing this?

We know that more businesses advertise online every day and that online ad spending increases every year, so you’d think that rates should be going up. Perhaps ad spending is moving away from popups and more into search marketing. I don’t think that is necessarily the cause either though, because traditionally the types of companies that advertise in popups are not the types who can get a good return with PPC marketing.

Could it be user behavior? Are more users becoming wise to popups and either blocking them or ignoring them? Maybe, except I’m not talking total revenue, but eCPM, and the people who do not know how to block popups are also the most likely I think to be confused by them and so click on them.

If I had to guess I’d say that at the present time advertising inventory is increasing faster than advertising demand. The fact is website publishing is getting noticed, and people are realizing that they can make money doing this, this is especially true in the developing world where they do not need to earn very much to be successful.

No related posts.

Posted in: Ad Networks »  by: Chris

One Response to “Popunder Rates Falling”

  1. Andrew Johnson  Says:
    June 5th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    I suspect that the desireability of pop-unders is playing a big role. From the things I’ve bee reading on the conversion side of things, most people seem very focused on PPC. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything good about pop-unders recently.

    The good thing is that cheaper inventory mean people will start paying more attention to it, and possibly push the prices back up.

Leave a Response








(Email field must be filled in)

Top of page...