If you have a real estate business and you are looking to buy advertising on another related real estate website, there is some important information you should know first before you put your money down.

First, like all industries there are certain average ad rates you should be aware about. There are countless sites who prey on people’s lack of knowledge about online advertising and overcharge for buying advertising space on a real estate website.

Understanding CPM

CPM stands for cost per 1000 impressions. So a CPM of $10 means that a website is charging $10 for every time your advertisement gets an “impression”. This doesn’t mean that you get 1000 clicks for $10, it simply means that you will have your advertisement visible to 1000 people. So depending on many factors such as relevancy, niche, supply, ad placement, ad type and ad design you may or may not see much traffic from your advertisement.

So if you paid $10 CMP for an add which was viewed 10,000 times you will have paid $100 for that ad. If your ad was good, well placed and on a relevant site you may have been able to capture a 5% CTR (Click Through Rate) which would mean 5% of the 10,000 site impression clicked on your ad. This would mean that you got 500 click throughs for $100. Now depending on your Conversion Ratio (CR) and product price point, this may or may not be good. If you make $200 per sale, and you sell one product every 500 visitors than you would have made a $400 profit from buying this ad space. However, if you have a $20 price point and you sell one product every 500 visitors, you would be $80 in the hole on your advertising investment.

So what is a good CPM to pay for real estate sites?

There is no hard fact number that is published on this statistic and the numbers vary greatly. A reputable company known as AdKnowlege recently published that the average CPM is $30, but this statistic was based off rates sheets and didn’t take into consideration negotiations. When most people buy advertising space on sites, they negotiate either a little more of an offering or a little less of a price. So to answer this question the best that can be offered in a range. We would say you should expect to pay between $10 CPM and $60 CPM for ad space on related sites. That being said you can get much lower, but also much higher. Your main goal as a real estate advertiser is to ensure that your ad is an investment, not an expense. You want targeted leads and high profile placement. It’s also important that in all cases you ask for proof of website statistics. Many sites can even offer you a log in page where you can check your real time traffic stats from your ad.

Buying adspace on real estate websites can be the best investment of your life. If your business is converting properly (leads into paying customers), then all you need is more leads at a level that is above your break even point.

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