Former chairman of IAB, Shelby Bonnie writes a piece called “Let’s Kill the CPM” for TechCrunch.

His basic argument: selling eyeballs causes publishers to sellout and load each page up with way too many ‘impressions’ (coughTechCrunchcough), which inevitably return less (zero) value to advertisers as well as stifle creativity in the innovation department. And of course, lead to disenchanted users. see: AdBlock Plus.

This camp is in whole agreement. Two points to make - a caveat and an idealistic solution.

1) The caveat. Exposure branding. Sure, not all ‘converted’ impressions tangibly lead to a conversion. Some pay off down the road, invoke brand loyalty and perhaps conversions offline. Exposure has taken a lot of flack and is usually the first fat trimmed in impulsive recessionary marketing budgets. (allowing the rich to get richer - market share leaders buy that same exposure for less).

2) The CPM is ultimately a measurement and not a process. Yes, the measurement drives the process more times than not - but honing the process might be where the solution lies.

i) One idea would be to buy/sell ad-space as a fraction of the screen (measured in pixels); which, when used with a “# of other advertisers on page” metric, could comprise a telltale duo . This could potentially spawn into a metric to stave off dilution and achieve singular focus (without obtrusive roadblocks/pre-roll ads).

(this idea to an extent was in the comments of the TC article).

ii) Combine that with a Relevance factor — a living, breathing and evolving Artificial Intelligence’esque metric to rate Context perhaps. It could be a third party controlled algorithm and take similar shape to the Adwords’ Quality Score which matches advertiser ad + landing page with publisher content. That would introduce an accountability to the ad servers as well as a barometer by which to judge campaigns and publishers. Some could still be intentionally mismatched.

Utopian?