Ad Rates Drop: This Can't be Good for Web 2.0

Allan Mutter pulls together six-month data from PubMatic, showing that online ad rates dropped 14% since the beginning of the year. In particular, he shows how big and small sites (though not medium sites) are being hit by this. PubMatic optmizes ad sales for 4,000 publishers that work with ad networks.

PubMatic’s new monthly data up today for June v. May shows a monthly decline.

Small size Web sites (less than 1 million page views per month) in June dropped a significant $0.32 from May, landing at an average eCPM of $0.81, down from $1.13.

Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month), however, made a moderate $0.13 jump from $0.33 in May to $0.46 in June.

Large Web sites (100 million+ page views per moth) also rose, but only slightly, moving from May’s $0.21 to June’s $0.23.

Oh and not good news for news or social networks…

The biggest drop in the verticals, by far, was News; it went from $1.10 in May, to less than half of that, or $0.48 in June. Social Networks, the lowest performing category already, went down another $0.05, going from $0.32 in May to $0.27 in June.