New Tool: Ad Rate Calculator
A few days ago, a friend asked how much he should charge for someone buying a typical 125×125 ad block on his blog. I had just answered a similar question in a forum and realized that I’d often asked myself the same question over the years. And the funny thing is that there is very little information out there to help anyone make that determination. Over time, I’ve done some unscientific research and have determined what I think is the “average” rate charged by most blogs for a 125×125 ad block that is positioned “above the fold” in their sidebar. Using that information, I decided to create a new tool that everyone can use to answer that question that my friend recently asked…”how much should I charge”?
So, I’ve created the free Ad Rate Calculator for everyone to use. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling ad spots on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The time period doesn’t make a difference. You just need to determine the average amount of ad impressions the ad will receive during whatever time period you’re charging for. If you have the ad in your blog’s sidebar, that probably means it will appear on every page and post, so you just need to know the number of page views you average for each time period. Use your stats program (like Google Analytics or Clicky) to determine this information.
That’s the only piece of information you have to supply. The tool uses a default CPM rate*, but you can certainly change it to whatever you think is appropriate. If you are selling 300×250 ads instead of 125×125 ads for instance, you can charge roughly 4 times the rate because it is roughly 4 times the size, so adjust the CPM rate however you wish.
This calculator is only a tool. There is no standard rate out there. You can charge whatever the market will bear. However, for many of us, we don’t have an inkling of where to even begin. I designed this calculator as an easy starting point for you. I hope you like it. If you do, be sure to let others know about it as well. You can link to it, use it on your own site by using the popup code provided at the bottom of the calculator, or just let others know about it via Twitter, etc. Hopefully, by spreading the word, we can make everyone’s ad rate decisions a little easier.
Try the Ad Rate Calculator now.
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| New Tool: Ad Rate Calculator | |
 | A few days ago, a friend asked how much he should charge for someone buying a typical 125×125 ad block on his blog. I had just answered a similar question in a forum and realized that I’d often asked myself the same question over the years. And the funny thing is that there is very [...] |
17 Responses to “New Tool: Ad Rate Calculator”
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[...] Ever wondered what you should charge for a 125×125 ad in your blog’s sidebar? There is no "right" price, but this calculator is a great place to start. You can find out more about Donna?s free Ad Rate Calculator at: DazzlinDonna ? New Tool: Ad Rate Calculator [...]
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This is a great tool! We were just talking about this problem in my office last week. Thanks for sharing.
Nice tool and great starting point. Of course the value of the content/type of readership also comes into play so some people can command a lot higher $ for advertising and can charge more than just $1.50cpm
This is awesome DD! Thanks so much!
Right, Jason, and that’s why the cpm rate field is editable. But there needed to be some kind of average starting point to help those who had no idea where to begin.
Interesting tool Donna, I’m always getting asked this and it’s not really a familiar area for me. Aside from the Affiliate ads, I tend to use the spare space for internal company adverts.
One question though (and sorry of this is a bit daft). The rate, is that per day?
No, Nick, the rate has nothing to do with a time period. It’s a CPM rate which is related to traffic. So after you plug in your traffic numbers, the $amount that is returned is the price an advertiser would pay for whatever time period that traffic occurs in. Usually bloggers charge by the month, so you’d plug in the typical page views (or ad impressions, really) for a month. If you’re selling by the week, however, you’d plug in the page view numbers for a week’s time. Make sense?
Completely, thanks Donna
Wow, this tool sounds amazing Donna!! Nice work!!
Donna, can you make a non-popup version of it? I’ll sent it around to some of my display friends to bookmark directly.
Cheers,
Mike
Mike you can use the popup version as a non-popup just by going directly to it’s url at http://www.dazzlindonna.com/ad-rate-calculator/ad-rate-calculator-125×125.html
Thanks for the useful tool Donna. Still a little fuzzy on the CPM rate you came up w/ for an average, but it’s a starting point at least.
The rate is definitely not too difficult to figure out once you play w/ it a few times & read the directions clearly
DD, now I know that an ad can run for an entire year and I should charge $5. HA! Seriously this is awesome and even if you use it backwards to determine how much traffic you need in order to charge the amount that you want. Thanks for all of the work you put into it for everyone.
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That’s a good idea, Ileane. Great for making big plans.
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
This is brilliant, there are so many times when it can be a bit puzzling on what to charge and this will certainly help, cheers
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Is the ad rate calculator based on weekly or monthly as the page views are shown monthly.
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Time doesn’t matter. As I mentioned in the post, “The time period doesn’t make a difference. You just need to determine the average amount of ad impressions the ad will receive during whatever time period you’re charging for.” So, if you want to charge by the month, then determine the number of page views per month, and use that number. If you’d rather charge by the week, determine the number of page views you get per week, and use that number, etc… And when I say page views, I really should say “ad impressions” instead. If you are sharing an ad spot with 10 ads, for instance, showing one advertiser’s ad every 10 page views, then he would really only be getting 1/10th of the number of page views for the month. But if an ad is exclusively showing in one ad spot with every page load, then page views would equal ad impressions.
Twitter: DonnaFontenot