Consumer lists lead drop in average CPM

Almost all major list categories, particularly consumer lists, have continued their steady drop in rental prices, according to Worldata's Spring 2009 List Price Index. The index is released quarterly and is based on cost per thousand (CPM) for lists.

Consumer list rental prices have dropped the most since this time last year, falling $29/M, or 19.33%, but consumer magazines were not far behind, falling $7/M, or 6.54%, since last spring.

“The consumer side of e-mail list rental has really become oversaturated with supply of new lists while existing lists on the market have cut pricing significantly to stay attractive to marketers in this down economy,”  said Ray Tesi, SVP of Worldata, in a statement. “These two factors have lead to a steep decline in consumer e-mail list pricing year over year.

Bucking the trend, the attendees/members category had a slight increase in price, from $128/M to $129/M. Permission-based international e-mail was the only category to remain flat from last quarter — data from last year is not available on this category.

“On the positive side,” Tesi continued, “international business e-mail files are holding their averages, the ROI is clearly still high on marketing to those files. The supply is still very limited in this category due to the difficulties in gathering data in certain regions outside of North America.”

Reflecting the falling value of consumer e-mail lists, permission-based e-mail b-to-b emerged as the highest-priced list category, at $290/M. Last year, it was $294/M. There is a large gap between this category and the second-highest-priced category, public sector, which fetches average prices of $173/M. Donors, at $83/M are the lowest-priced category, and have gone down $1/M since last year.