$50 CPM for 468×60 banners - does that sound like a publisher/affiliate’s pipe dream? That sort of price was regularly achieved by many sites just prior to the dot-com bubble bursting.

I was reading a post from someone reminiscing about easily making $75 CPM (per thousand impressions) for banners they ran on their site and thought “eh, dreaming”; but then I remembered that it really wasn’t all that long ago when those prices were possible - particularly prior to May 2000. By autumn of that year things had gotten so bad, high flying dot-coms heavily dependent upon ad revenue were falling over left, right and center.

Here’s a bit of a look at historical banner CPM average pricings since 1997:

1997
“According to the OAR, the average CPM in December of 1997 was $37.21″
Clickz

1998
“The average Web rate card ad rate was $40 per thousand impressions in May, 1998, according to research from Focalink Communications” (Focalink no longer exists)

1998/99
“The major web category experiencing the largest drop in average CPM rates between Dec. ’98 and Dec. ’99 was computers and technology, which dropped from a web-high rate of about $45 to about $39″
MediaLife magazine

1999/2000
AdRelevance, a data tracking subsidiary of Jupiter Media Metrix, asserts that the average cost of a full banner ad in the fourth quarter of 2000 fell to $25 per thousand impressions (CPM), a relatively modest decline of $5 from the $30 mean banner CPM in the second half of 1999.
Content Intelligence

2000/2001
“In the third quarter of 2000, online advertising shrank overall for the first time, dropping 6.5 percent, to just under $2 billion dollars. The average price of a banner ad toppled from a $50 CPM to less than $5.”
MediaPost

2001
“CPM = $10 (a typical rate for general, not-very-targeted websites)”
WilsonWeb

“The general consensus seems to be that the average effective banner ad CPM today is somewhere in the neighborhood of $10.”
Content Intelligence

2002
“Today, you can buy a run-of-network banner for $2 CPM or less”
Clickz

2003
“CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) have sort of found the bottom’ said Gary Stein, an analyst with Jupiter Research. The average Internet CPM is now $1.13–down from a year-2000 norm of $4 or $5, and when some very targeted sites enjoyed as much as a fat $100 per CPM. ”
AllBusiness

2004
“As of 2004, prices range from $1/CPM for a run-of-network to about $50/CPM or more for specialized targeted runs”
Wikipedia

2005
Fifty-five percent saw prices rise for run-of-network inventory, even though as much as half of available inventory on larger networks such as Yahoo! remains unsold, or goes for as little as $1 to $3 CPM
Media Buyer Planner

2006/2007
Judging by the conversations I’ve had with various publishers and agencies I’ve been communicating with over the last 12 months,- prices average have been anywhere from 20c for very untargeted space, e.g. general social networks; to $20 CPM (and higher in some cases) for highly targeted, top shelf sites

I often kick myself for not having started Taming the Beast.net just a couple of years earlier than I did. I think it was December 2000 when I started getting into affiliate and general web marketing seriously - just as the crap was really hitting the fan - brilliant timing :). Ah well, it was positive from the viewpoint of wading into the digital bloodshed, learning about the mistakes that others had made and then trying to avoid the same.

Related:

Making money from banner ad networks