Lookery.com

According to PaidContent.org, Bebo plans to offer App Developers a 40 cent CPM guarantee for running ads on their apps. 40 cents is a BIG number in the world of social media – more then even what Google guarantees MySpace.

Given the overwhelming success of Lookery’s own guaranteed CPM announcement (3 billion impressions a month and growing), it’s certainly easy to see why Bebo might want to make such a public guarantee. Especially one with such a high payout that folks are likely to wonder if it’s too good to be true. Nothing like a good PR stunt to jump start the app developer program.

And given the current details – it’s more a stunt then developer bonanza. First, it’s only for the first 3 impressions. With 2 ads per page and an average range of 6 to 10 pages per visit – that means only 15-25% of an app’s impressions are even potentially eligible. So on an average basis your eCPM is no longer 40c but likely as low as 10.25c if the non-guaranteed impressions are earning a 5 cent CPM. 10 cents isn’t much better then the going rate for most quality apps as it is. Second, the guarantee only applies to US impressions – given that Bebo traffic is less then 25% US – that lowers the number of qualifying impressions and oversized earnings even more.

For Bebo’s guarantee to be a big winner for app developers and for real wow factor – a 40 cent Global guarantee that covered all of an app’s available impressions would be the way to go. Now that would be game changing.