I've been put in charge of trying to get a few new ad spots sold on the site I work for, but I'm having trouble trying to figure out what a reasonable CPM number would be. (Basically, people have told me numbers ranging from $2 to $9.) I was just wondering if there's a good site out there that has a rough guideline? Such as "Sites with X unique visitors in a month usually get X CPM..." If anyone can help or has any advice, I'd really appreciate it. (Note: we're looking at selling to specific people such as EA and Microsoft, so they're likely to pay more for targeted traffic than the generic CPM services.)
I think it really depends on how well your traffic converts. What matters the most though is what advertisers are willing to pay.
I disagree with your first statement. CPM banners, skies and MPUs are rarely used for conversion purposes in my experience. They are more commonly used for branding purposes or, in the case of someone likie EA, to promote awareness of a new game or product. Now obviously this will eventually lead to a conversion but it is likely to be in a shop or from an online shop like Amazon etc... So I would say the value is all down to how targeted the traffic is to the advertiser.
CPM banners are used for branding, but also they still want traffic. If they didn't get traffic then you will not even have advertisers wanting to advertise on your site. The amount you should get depends on your CTR, niche and the amount of exposure you can give.