Online ad rates slid 14% since January

The average online advertising rate dropped 14.2% in the first six months of the year, according to a new industry survey.

Demonstrating that even interactive advertising is not immune to the deterioration of the economy, PubMatic, a company which helps publishers optimize their revenues, reports that the average rate for 1,000 ad impressions fell to 36 cents in June from 42 cents in January.

PubMatic says its survey is based on the prices realized by the 4,000 publishers it assists in getting the most revenue for their available ad inventory. The company has been publishing this survey since the first of the year and, in the absence of any other similar ongoing report, the data gives a sense of the direction of the market.

And the direction in the second quarter of the year was down. After climbing in the first three months of the year, ad rates fell sharply in April and continued to deteriorate in May and June, according to the survey.

PubMatic tracks rates according to the volume of traffic at websites. As you can see in the table below, sites with the lightest volume of traffic average higher rates than larger ones.