The days of the eCPM, or “effective cost-per-thousand,” may be numbered, according to Jeff Bander, President North America, General Manager, EyeTrackShop . Speaking at the Search Insider Summit this morning, Bander presented oodles of data and insights showing what happens with a user’s eyes when they’re looking at Web content on a computer screen, and interestingly, they don’t seem to be looking at many online advertising impressions.
“About 50% of all online impressions are not seen,” Bander said, invoking the image of a digital John Wannamaker (you know, the famous retail tycoon who once quipped that only half his advertising worked, but he didn’t know which half). Actually, with EyeTrackShop’s technology, you can know which 50% is working.
As bad as that percentage is, Bander said it’s not much better even when you isolate only the share of online ad impressions that are actually visible on a screen (vs. those that you’d need to scroll up or down to see).
“About 30% of all in-screen impressions are not seen,” Bander noted.
As cool as that data is, Bander said the important part is applying it to advertising effectiveness analysis, and toward that end, he said EyeTrackShop is poised to release a new “real CPM” metric that will enable advertisers and agencies to evaluate only the portion of their ad impressions that people actually look at.
“We’re creating the real CPM so that people are only paying for what is seen,” Bander said. While that goes the so-called “effective CPM” one better, Bander did not go into detail about how the discussions might transpire between advertisers and publishers about what kind of rCPM they pay to get what they actually paid for.