This article has been penned down to discuss ad CPM rates in the UK. The UK digital advertising ecosystem has been growing steadily in the last few years with programmatic and video advertising taking up maximum share. Additionally, there has been an increasing trend in in-app purchases. A considerable number of advertisers and marketers are competing for the UK traffic lading the in-app CPM rates to increase for top-performing ad units gradually. Today’s app developers enjoy higher CPM rates for top ad formats like video ads, rewarded video ads, interstitial ads, and native ad units.
Auctions, Media Buying, and CPM Rates
CPM (stands for Cost-Per-Mille) is an advertising payment model that suggests charging advertisers for every 1,000 impressions of his ad inside mobile app publisher inventory. It’s the most common method for pricing mobile ads and the most popular among mobile publishers due to its focus on impressions and not clicks, which benefits publishers in a big way. Advertisers calculate CPM rates for both banner display and video advertising; the most prominent advertising platforms for the latter are YouTube and Facebook.
There is a vast gap in inventory buying, rates, quality conversions, and more. If you are using AdSense revenue profile or have used the AdSense lab tools, you have a fair idea of this. This means, essentially, buyers are paying higher rates for some clicks, and an appropriate volume of impressions are taken at flat rates. However, almost most of the time, these pricings and optimizations are determined by Google’s smart pricing algorithms or other techniques that define the CPC or CPM rates on individual websites. So, based on traffic, conversions, viewability, and other factors, these rates keep changing. Therefore, it is difficult to predict the CPM of a website entirely.
Understanding Network CPM Rates
Every publisher knows that impression CPM rates vary from one site to the next. Attentive publishers will also be well aware of the daily variation in impression CPM rates, even on the same ad unit. While these effects are well-known, the factors that influence the change in CPM are not always as clear. Understanding what affects CPMs is the key to forecasting and even improving them.
The short answer then is that your CPM rates are decided by:
- The price advertisers are willing to pay, AND
- The number of advertisers willing to pay that price
The vast fluctuations depending upon the niche of site and traffic volume makes it difficult to predict even an approximate CPM for sites. This data is still beneficial since you’ll have a fair idea of the CPM range within a specific geography and is more country-specific. So let’s go ahead and discuss the CPM rates across display, native and video ad formats for UK traffic.
Display Ad CPM Rates in the UK
Most display and online advertising campaigns are charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis. That is to say, every time the user on a search engine clicks on your ad, you’ll get charged an amount based on your overall bidding strategy. They can also be used for retargeting campaigns. This is where ads are served to users who have already visited a specific website. The aim is to “retarget” them and encourage them to return to the website to take the same action (or an action at a different stage of the funnel).
The display ad CPM reaches its highest potential on a header bidding auction environment wherein the impression is sold to the highest bidder. This results in rates that are typically higher than Google Ad Exchange by almost 30% and more. For general purpose sites like news, entertainment, etc., the UK display CPM is around USD 1 to USD 2.
ADX CPM Rates in the UK
Recently, ADX has moved to the first-price auction, and publishers witnessed some fluctuations in their ad revenue. ADX works best on sites that have high volume traffic, and advertisers get maximum benefits from it. The ad exchange CPM rates hover around USD 0.75 to USD 2.5for UK traffic.
AdSense CPM Rates in the UK
AdSense CPM rates can vary depending upon the category of the website. It is usually USD 2 to USD 5 and can go as high as USD 10 and above for niche websites. Google uses its technology to serve advertisements based on the content of the site, the user’s geographical location, and a few other factors. Since the number of clicks drives the rates, you need to have an optimized ad placement to ensure the revenues are higher. You can also allow Google to handle your Ad placements and optimize them on your behalf, so you can sit back and watch your revenue soar.
Native Ads CPM Rates in the UK
Native ads can give a steady widget RPM of USD 2 in the UK. The rates vary further based on the traffic quality and the conversions for the advertisers. Overall, what determines the significant difference is the type of content on your sites. Sites that are in the entertainment, gossip, news domain tends to perform quite well with native ads.
Video Ads CPM Rates in the UK
Video CPMs generally refers to the amount paid by advertisers to have their ads shown. For many publishers and content creators, the effective RPM can be much lower since:
- Video supply is higher than demand, and the ad won’t show with every view of the video.
- Using a network instead of a direct sales team, the ad network takes a cut of the gross revenue in the range of 40% – 50%.
The UK video market has seen robust and steady growth in the last few years, and the video CPM rates for UK traffic vary between USD 5 to USD 10 and may go higher for general, entertainment, tech, software, and gadgets sites. It is always suggested that you run a daisy chain model for your video ads so that you can generate the highest CPMs for your video inventory.
Summing Up
I hope this article on ad CPM rates in the UK gives you an overall summary of the current CPM rates across the various digital ad formats, which includes a display, video, native. We will continue adding up new ad formats like VR, podcast, in-app, and others to the list shortly. So feel free to check back this article after a few days for the latest version.