• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 10, 2013

Which Web site category recorded the highest average CPMs last year? If you don’t know, you’re not alone. In a recent poll, 75% of advertising and marketing professionals could not properly identify the correct category. (It’s finance/insurance and investment.)

Neil Klar, CEO of research firm SQAD, said the lack of CPM expertise remains common Industrywide.

“We are finding that many ad buyers are still in the dark about how much they should be paying for display ads, despite the proliferation of online advertising over the past decade,” Klar said.

“The opposite is true with broadcast advertising,” according to Klar.

Indeed, far more (58%) of industry professionals were able to correctly identify which prime-time television program had the highest 30-second ad price in the first quarter of 2013. (Yes, “American Idol” it is.)

According to SQAD’s WebCosts database, the average CPM in 2012 was about $22 for all sites in the finance/insurance and investment category.

At 30%, most respondents assumed that the entertainment category attracted the highest CPMs. By SQAD’s calculations, however, the segment’s CMPs averaged out at about $9.50, last year. “The industry needs to make display ad costs more transparent so advertisers can make the right marketing decisions,” Klar added.

SQAD recently conducted the survey at the 2013 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.