The Rubicon Project, a leading yield optimisation specialist, has released data that points to significant rises in its publishers' CPM rates for the second quarter.

CPMs across the Rubicon 20 Index, our newly introduced index that tracks the performance of a group of the Web’s most high-traffic premium properties across a variety of factors, have risen by an average of about 40 percent vs. the first quarter. Meanwhile, publishers in the music, arts & hobbies, and women-centric content verticals also saw their ad prices increase -- in some cases, by nearly 270 percent.

The key findings of the report include the following:

- Display ad deals are shifting from being targeted around verticals to true “audiences,” resulting in a rise of audience-based display deals
- Music sites were among the top-gaining properties, with CPMs up nearly 270%
- The travel vertical took a hit, with CPMs down by more than 36%

Although there are no numbers relating to the EMEA market, Rubicon is bullish about the prospects of the region's top publishers boosting CPM rates – pointing to some recent success with a UK publisher as evidence of the efficiencies still to be found in optimising unsold inventory.

Preliminary data from a well-known U.K. news publisher shows that we were able to bump up CPMs on their non-U.K.-based traffic by more than 19x in just one month. This data clearly demonstrates why we’re bullish about the high-growth international market potential for publishers.

This is ecouraging news for hard-pressed publishers, but there are still very few - if any - reports and case studies available on the ad network optimisation success in the European market. It will obviously be much easier to convince the region's publishers to use these platforms when EMEA market reports are produced.

This shouldn't detract from the important service yield optimisers, like Rubicon, Admeld and Improve Digital, are providing cash-strapped publishers.