Pubmatic: Online ad prices stay flat

Prices for ads on news and gaming Web sites dropped from May to June, but they rose for entertainment.

(Credit: Pubmatic)

Online advertising prices remained roughly flat in June compared with April and May, but some categories of sites fared better than others, according to data released Tuesday.

Overall, the cost of online ads, as measured by effective cost-per-thousand impressions, dipped a bit from 38 cents in April to 37 cents in May to 36 cents in June, said Pubmatic, which sells technology designed to help advertisers fine-tune online ad campaigns. The company measures ad prices through its network of more than 4,000 customers that place ads on various Web sites, largely in the United States.

Of the five categories Pubmatic monitors, games and news fared worse than average. News plunged from $1.10 in May to 48 cents in June, and games dropped from $1 to 80 cents. The entertainment category, though, rose from 29 cents to 40 cents. The lowest-price category, social networks, dropped from 32 cents to 27 cents.

For large Web sites--those with more than 100 million page views per month--ad prices increased from 21 cents in May to 23 cents in June. Medium sites, with traffic between 1 million and 100 million page views, rose from 33 cents to 46 cents, and small sites dropped from $1.13 to 81 cents.