What, Exactly, Are You Selling?

I was on the telephone with a publisher last week, talking about their forthcoming digital-only launch. It’s a great project – one that will do quite well.

But in talking with their sales team, it became obvious that the packages they were taking to market were based on a CPM sale, which is a bad idea in most cases. CPM prices were developed when click-through percentages fell through the basement. High numbers of impressions sound good to advertisers and the salespeople don’t have to admit how bad the clicks are.

But digital magazines are the opposite. They will have fewer visitors than websites (which doesn’t help CPMs) and they will have dramatically higher click-through rates (which aren’t part of the CPM calculation).

Wise writers have said the same thing about print and what’s interesting is that we’ve proven it’s also true with digital magazines.