Average Online CPMs Still Lagging Behind Other Media

Mary Meeker, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, seems to always cause a stir with her high-level reports on internet trends. The latest is no different. Of course working at Morgan Stanley gives these reports an air of respectability and it helps when you have a clutch of interns to bring the data together. The blogosphere and digeratti go weak at the knees for this stuff. If you can get past all the media fluff there are some interesting observations and stats buried in her fifty odd PowerPoint presentation. The highlight number is the average CPM price of online advertising compared to other media. NetworTV k remains the highest paying medium with $28 CPM; newspapers and magazines earn about $17 CPM; radio can command $10 CPM; while digital media continues to be the laggard with just a paltry $2 CPM being paid for online inventory. The sheer volume of inventory available online must be considered when looking at these figures. But Meeker argues that ad spend is not matching time spent online when compared to other media. Her synopsis: more money will have to go to digital.

Here's a chart showing the range of CPMs paid for different media (US-based figures):