If you’re a publisher who thinks that you are going to strike gold in an ad supported business, you’re going to have to get more creative than just relying on ad networks. And here is the proof, PubMatic has released its monthly PubMatic AdPrice Index, an industry-wide measure of online ad network pricing for publishers. The index for August indicated that News and Technology-focused online publishers were able to sustain ad pricing levels compared to the previous month while the rest of the industry showed significant decline. Both the News and Technology site categories maintain some of the highest average online advertising prices at $0.48 and $0.61 eCPMs, respectively.

Key Findings:

• The News and Technology vertical categories remained relatively flat, with News having the same average eCPM of $0.48 in July as it had in June and Technology dropping 3 percent from an average eCPM of $0.63 in June to $0.61 in July
• Although Gaming sites saw a significant decline of 34 percent, it is still considered one of the most profitable publishing sectors with an average eCPM of $0.53 in July
• Social Media and Entertainment have had the lowest overall performance for eCPM in the industry the past month, falling to $0.19 and $0.23, respectively
• Overall decline in eCPM was 25 percent from June to July

“There’s certainly a concern with online advertising because of the overall decline, and supporting data from other sources that shows this is a trend,” said Rajeev Goel, cofounder and general manager of PubMatic. “We’re hopeful that some of the major events slated for the latter half of the year, namely the current Olympic games, presidential election, and the holiday shopping season, can trigger positive activity in online advertising.”

The data released today is part of a series of monthly releases of the PubMatic AdPrice Index. Pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks’ share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers. Complete August 2008 data from the PubMatic AdPrice Index is available at www.pubmatic.com/adpriceindex.

PubMatic works with online publishers to automatically find the highest paying ad across hundreds of ad networks, and optimize how ads are displayed in real-time. It uses over 50 targeting parameters to optimize every ad impression, enabling over 90% of its publisher customers to dramatically improve overall revenue. The company works with a publisher’s existing ad strategy and connects them to hundreds of ad networks while making it simple to manage them through one consolidated revenue dashboard.