ChasNote

Om talks to Yahoo about the dearth of premium online CPMs: The web needs more quality content and something that makes the content unique. For example, the GigaOM sites!

I couldn’t agree more, Om.

Except when you say GigaOM competes with the ad networks. The GigaOM sites — sold individually to brands that want to associate with the premium, exclusive content in the rarefied context that is reading a site like GigaOM or New Tee Vee — live at the top of the media-pricing pyramid. That’s not to say that unsold inventory on those sites can’t be sold as part of a blind ad network like AdSense or Blue Lithium. Publishers such as GigaOM, FM, or ESPN offer one kind of value (building brand value through association with quality), and ad networks offer another kind of value (low-cost clicks that answer a direct-response need). The two can use inventory from the same sites symbiotically, if both entities understand the value they bring to the marketplace.

(Disclosure: The GigaOM sites are part of the FM family so I’m biased when I say you should buy ads on them.)