Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where I would really understand the difference is if you can tell me what you were able to do in terms of CPMs. I’ve had a blog for 10 years, so I know exactly how blog advertising and ad networks have evolved. The CPMs are real shit. If you tell me that what you did has really impacted the CPM, that would actually give me more concrete understanding of what’s going on here.

Roy Peleg: We have done a few things along the way to improve the revenue. The CPMs you could expect from AdSense at that time were around a dollar to dollar and a half.

Sramana Mitra: A dollar to dollar and a half was what AdSense was generating?

Roy Peleg: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What were you generating?

Roy Peleg: About the same.

Sramana Mitra: So what is the case for using your product?

Roy Peleg: The use case involved tailoring the ad products to the right opportunity. The idea was not to replace the ads on the site. That, in the beginning, didn’t give value. The idea was to supplement the site with additional ad products. Usually when publishers try to monetize sites, they look at the website template, try to predefine the areas that will probably appear throughout the site, and then enter the code.

That’s, more or less, how the site stays. What we try to do is look at the website in a more granular way and say, “Longer pages have more opportunities than shorter pages. Image galleries present different opportunities than textual pages. Smartphones should be treated differently than very high-definition desktop monitor.” The idea was to come up with the right ad product for the right opportunity without technical resources.

Sramana Mitra: What were you able to achieve in terms of your publishers getting a lift in inserting you in their monetization mix?

Roy Peleg: They would get a separate revenue stream that they didn’t have before. It varies depending on the website and how well the site was optimized. Some got 30% and some got more than 100% increase in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: How many of these were you able to get? When you started this company, how many of these were willing to work with you?

Roy Peleg: In terms of publishers?

Sramana Mitra: Yes.

Roy Peleg: You can probably count them on two hands. We started it, initially, with a SaaS model. We thought that they would be able to put their own tags within the ad products that we create and they’ll pay us a subscription fee for utilizing the platform. That was the initial model. We had three plans – $19, $99, and $349. Within the first year, we got around 10 publishers and around two were using the $349 plan. I started it on my own. Then I actually started hiring employees. In the beginning, I did it with my own money. I didn’t take any salary.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io
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