Digital ad pricing is structured on a Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) basis. In other words, if your average CPM for a campaign was $12, that means that it cost roughly $12 to deliver your ad 1,000 times to your target audience.
This CPM cost is comprised of many small components that add up to the total CPM rate. Some of the components may be:
- Data cost associated with identifying your target audience
- Measurement cost to determine where your ad was actually seen, and for how long
- Anti-fraud costs to ensure your ads only serve to real humans, not bots
- Brand safety costs to ensure your ads are delivered in brand-safe environments, on top-tier sites and apps
- Premium placement costs to get your ad at the top of the page or in a primetime non-skippable unit
- And of course, the raw placement cost that the publisher charges to deliver the ad to your target audience on their site, app or channel
Digital ads are bought on a Real-time Bidding (RTB) Auction—think of it like a trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange—and prices can fluctuate heavily minute by minute, or even mili-second by mili-second! Basically, each time someone loads a website, there is a behind-the-scenes computer bidding war that takes place to determine which ads load on that particular user's screen in that particular moment.
The Turn It Blue Ads platform takes your preferred audience parameters and constantly searches for the best inventory available that your target audience is also browsing simultaneously. If there is ad inventory available that matches your provided creative types, the platform will bid on that inventory and serve an ad in real-time to that target audience. The platform is making, literally, millions of bids every second to place your ads in prime inventory that your targets will engage with. The aggregate of those winning bids are then averaged together to get your final CPM cost that is shown in the Analytics tab of the Turn It Blue Ads platform.
While we can't guarantee any particular CPM—it varies based on many factors, including how many targeting parameters you have, how competitive the inventory is, time of year, time of day, and what type of creative asset you are trying to place—we offer our Estimator Tool to help you anticipate how far your budget will go and how much you'll need to truly achieve your goals. To use the estimator tool, just log in to your ads account and scroll down on your main dashboard until you see the "Campaign Checklist."
Still have questions? Reach out to our Success Team at success@turnitbluedigital.com.