pubCenter Blog

Recent Shifts in eCPMs for Publishers in the pubCenter BETA

posted Thu, Apr 30 2009

by Kevin McCabe - MSFT

4 comments

We want to address the comments from the publisher community concerning recent shifts in eCPMs.

Microsoft is building a new marketplace for both publishers and advertisers with the goal of helping publishers achieve competitive yield and helping advertisers see better performance from their ads. We are in a beta to test and learn the best methods to achieve this goal by fine tuning our systems along the way. We will apply those learnings as we develop pubCenter into a mature product offering.

As with any beta program, it is too early to gauge success. We anticipate that publishers may see fluctuations in performance and may experience some growing pains along the way but we are confident that they will reap the rewards that come with product maturity.

Microsoft pubCenter is growing rapidly as we move to the public beta phase. Many exciting new features will launch within the next month that we expect will improve the marketplace. Addressing your needs and requirements is one of our top priorities and will continue to be. Please continue to provide your valuable feedback.

-Kevin

Filed under: publisher, beta, earnings, cpm, ecpm, performance, testing, Categories:Publishers:pubCenter:Reports, reports

Comments

Thu, Apr 30 2009 05:10PM

*** Microsoft?

I have seen a 90% drop in revenu as a publisher in the last 10 days. This is a little more than 'growing pains'. I was hoping that you wouldn't be going the same way as adsense and YPN - but it sure seems like that now? Why punish your publishers?
Thu, Apr 30 2009 06:23PM

Chris Norred - MSFT

We can't address your situation, but one of the factors affecting users is the fine tuning on our beta system. We've heard the feedback these shifts are causing concern. But rest assured, the goal is to grow a rewarding marketplace for publishers and advertisers and we'll continue multiple efforts to achieve that.

Thanks for your feedback and your time spent on the beta.
Mon, Jun 15 2009 05:07AM

denali

Good morning Everybody!

As a publisher it would be important to know what share of the pie you will receive. Microsoft could trigger this new era by publicly announcing what percentage of the bid you will get. It sure will draw Adsense publishers on Microsoft's side since Google is playing the game of 'adjusting' publisher's revenue at their sole discretion. I can't tell how Yahoo is doing it but it sounds like it is the same.

I am sure most publsihers will support this fact. Google keeps comforting its major pubslihers by payiing them higher and more consistent and meanwhile gets kind of disconnected with the base - - it's like bail-out the CEO's and leave small businesses at their own. That never worked before (at least long-term) and will not in the future.

So, is there a chance that pubCenter will tell what share publishers will get? Any other businesses in other industries is doing that as well, right? Book authors and artists make a contract and know what they will get... even Affiliate programs do it (which is a kind of wonder). But the list is long. Imagine your boss would not tell you as an employee what you will earn the next month, even if you excel in your job. Speaking as a publisher: we need to be motivated to put more effort in the websites we create. And we get disappointed if our revenue drops even if our site has more PI's than ever and quality is improved.

That's what happened with Google and what is frustrating: first you see that your revenue is going up and you out many hours in the improvement of your site... then Google takes it away! Sounds harsh but proof me wrong. Observing Google's latest statements, especially in their publisher emails, it can be sensed that their intention must be to draw as much money as possible. Have you read..., they even came up with a feature that "allows" advertisers to "make a payment"... so to speak a pre-payment in order to avoid multiple charges to their CC. That's funny, because if they payment threshold would be high enough there wouldn't be a necesarity for advertisers to 'pre-pay'. Months ago, when a major drop in revenue on publisher's side happened they sent out a friendly comforting motivation email "how important their publishers are to them....etc.etc." - however, it's clear why they sent it.

Why I am saying this is because we, the publishers, need more transparency and I hope the market is going that direction and that Microsoft does things different than Google (and may be Y!).

Any comments?

One more other thing: we are a design and IT consulting agency and encourage our clients to start advertising with Microsoft as well, as a second channel to Google Adwords. Hope others do that as well because Microsoft still needs more advertisers. From publisher's perspective the ads which are displayed often do not match the content of the page and therefore the page CTR is lower than on Adsense. This can probably be resolved by having more advertisers at hand.

Regards!
Tue, Jun 23 2009 12:00PM

Chris Norred - MSFT

Hi denali,

Thank you for the thoughtful posts. The transparent bid share is a logical discussion and one that I'm sure will continue. I'll work on getting our business leaders for pubCenter to discuss it in more depth here.

We greatly appreciate your efforts to promote adCenter and completely agree this is in the best interest of pubCenter. Be sure to register for the forums, if you haven't already. The instructions to register are in the pubCenter Help. Some users in the forums have shared advice on where they see relevancey improve or decline and we are using that feedback to improve the system.

-Chris