Dave Morgan on why CPMs might be slipping

Have your Web site CPMs been slipping downward lately? In a funk because it looks like your site's ad revenue won't grow by 50 percent this year? Dr. Dave Morgan explains why in his Online Spin column on Mediapost. Silliness aside, Morgan (as usual) provides an interesting take on the subject, and this being online media, the answer to why parts of the online ad market are softening isn't as simple as you think. Morgan specifically focuses on the plight of destination sites, noting that there's been a shift on the part of marketers from "higher-priced contextual pages on branded destination sites to much lower-priced inventory aggregated by networks" (like his own Tacoda). But what should be concerning across the board is that we're beginning to hit that wall called "there are only 24 hours in a day." As Dave says, online usage in the U.S. has been pretty much flat year-to-year, and ever more fragmented. My guess is that we all live online as much as we can or want to, and so usage can't travel inexorably upward. Anyway, go read Dave instead of some silly blog. Picture via Mediapost.