It’s a bit of an estimate, but according to a recent post at Venturebeat, Friendster made $700,000 in revenue in December on 6 billion page views. This equates to making $0.12 per 1000 page views. I checked and they look to average about three ads per page, meaning they’re really making $0.04 per 1000 ad impressions, giving them an effective CPM of $0.04.
Is this good? I’m sure that low of a number shocks some people, probably bloggers and other niche publishers who get really high CPM numbers from targeted advertising, Google Adsense, or Yahoo Publisher Network.
Social networks are a different animal though, as contextual advertising doesn’t work as well when there isn’t a strong context to grab from a page. In the cases of most social networks, display banner-style advertising generates higher rates. But is $0.04 good?
I know the data of some other social networks, and I can say that this isn’t THAT shocking, but I definitely think there is room for improvement. I have some ideas on how I’d improve Friendster’s advertising revenue, but first I’d like to see if any of you out there have any suggestions. Speak up!