Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

First, I agree with Harry that there's far too many open ended questions for ANYONE, no matter how many "standard" assumptions/models they might have, to estimate ad revenue. It's not a modeling exercise - that's simply the wrong approach in this case. Here's what I would do instead to get a GOOD handle on this:

Survey the sites of PUBLICLY-TRADED COMPANIES whose thrust (in terms of content) and advertising rates closely approximate your own. In other words, companies that are similar to what yours will be. Because you're looking at public companies you can see exactly how much they earn from advertising revenue. You may have to purchase one share of stock to get the data, but in most cases it's freely available (just search with google to see).

Once you've assembled a list (I'd use no fewer than three companies) you can the load the data into Excel to see how the numbers play out. From there it should easy to project what the ad revenues for the new company (high/low/median) might be.

Good luck!

Lloyd Merriam
Transforming raw customer data into refined business intelligence.

Tip - go to websites such as this one and look for their "media packs" - these tend to list advertising or sponsorship rates on a cost per X basis.

Use this info to understand what you might charge advertisers for your content as delivered. How you estimate traffic is a tough question.

Being realistic, if the content is valuable to your niche and there is no similar content out there, you should be able to generate some traffic. However you may need to market the site in order to generate this traffic - i.e. a seeding strategy.

Hmm... i agree with others that its quite open ended, but seems that it can only be open ended from your side. So lets discuss it with various options. You can actually go for AdSense and some other ad retail client, but in the long run you will need the advertisers to give ad to you directly, so make sure there is provision for advertisers to opt for one.

The only two ways you can get a data is by borrowing data from others or by simulation. I will vote for former. You can actually buy the click data reports online. Or as Lloyd suggested you can gofor companies with public data.

Even if you take AdSense, you will have to configure it to ur "channels" so as to use selective ad data for better targeting. Even when you give your report to ur seniors, u will have to incorporate many options. What u can also do is to contact the people using AdSense in their blogs dealing with similar topic as of urs. Bloggers will be more open to share data than companies

Don't know what you mean by the "basics I have under control"...The spreadsheet is easy to set up. The assumptions are difficult. Here's an example.

Set up one column for CPM revenue. First row is "thousands of visitors per day". Next row is "negotiated CPM". Next row is a simple calculation of the first two rows called "revenue". Next row is an entry for number of "banners". Next row is a calculation of the above two called "aggregate revenue". Next row is "commission" which will be used if you are employing an ad network to find you advertisers. Finally a row calculating above two called "total CPM revenue".

Example: you have 4 thousands visitors a day and you are running 4 different ad banners thru a media buyer who keeps 50% and you negotiated $5 CPM.
Thousand of visitors = 4
Negot. CPM = $5
Rev = $20
Number of ads = 4
Agg. rev = $80
Commission = .5
Ttl CPM Rev = $40 (per day).

Of course if you negotiate four different CPM rates then you need 4 separate columns.

Then repeat the set up for a PPC calculation. Everything is the same except you need a click % estimate and a Negotiated PPC. Here's an example
Visitors = 4000
Click thru = 1%
Clicks = 40
Negot. PPC = $0.50
PPC rev = $20
Commission = 0 (unless not covered in negot. PPC)
Total PPC rev = $20 per day

Note here there is no adjustment for # of campaigns as that is covered in the click-thru assumption.
There are also ways to make this calculation a lot more complex but i'm not sure you need that at this point (since the site's not even built yet!).

Your job of course is to get a good estimate of daily visitor flow and check CPM rates for similar "niche" sites.