👋 Today, we're putting a knife through CPM data by vertical, because "what's a good CPM" is the most-asked, worst-answered question in our inbox.

Audience pricing aside, let's dive in! 🚀

This week we crawled across our HubSpot, ~2,600 deals deep, and pattern-matched what sponsors actually pay by audience type. Where our internal data was thin (looking at you, biohacking), we backstopped with public benchmarks from IAB, Sounds Profitable, and beehiiv. Every assumption is flagged. Let me know if you'd rather I run this kind of edition more often, or never again...

What Sponsors Actually Pay For Your Audience

📖 Setup

I'm guilty of this too.

For two years I've been telling people "newsletter CPMs are roughly $40-60." It's a fine answer for a cocktail party. It's a useless answer for a publisher trying to price next quarter's inventory.

So this week I went into our HubSpot. Around 2,600 deals across newsletters, podcasts, and creator placements. I pattern-matched the publisher names against audience type and pulled the spread.

Caveat upfront: this is our book, not the universe. Where our sample was thin (health mainly) I cross-referenced public benchmarks. Sounds Profitable, IAB, and beehiiv's creator reports lined up directionally with what we see internally. Where they didn't, I trust our HubSpot.

Here's what's actually happening.

[GIF placeholder: a sponsor staring at a media kit, eyes slowly widening as they realise the CPM is double what they were ready to pay]

🎯 The numbers (newsletter placements, our HubSpot)

These are direct-sold, host-read, premium placement CPMs. Not programmatic, not display.

📊 Broad tech audiences

$25 to $45. Median around $35. Heavy supply, lots of competition, the workhorse vertical.

📊 Investing, finance, crypto 

$40 to $85. Median around $60. Buyers in this space have CACs that justify the premium. Surprising.

📊 AI-native 
$45 to $95. Median around $68. Smallest sample, fattest premium. Sponsor demand outstripping publisher supply right now.

📊 Founder and startup 

$55 to $80. Median around $65. Density of founders seems to be a big factor.

📊 General news 

$18 to $38. Median around $28. Lowest CPM tier. Scale economy. Volume wins, premium doesn't.

📊 Health and wellness 

$28 to $60. Median around $42. CPM pops when sponsors are high LTV subscription products.

For context, podcast CPMs in the same period sit at $20-30 broadly per Sounds Profitable, with tech and health pockets running $24-29.

🔑 Why such a big variance?

From my vantages the variance in CPMs for the same audience, sometimes at 100%, is down to a few things:

• Audience quality - breakdown and engagement

• Content quality & type - personal brand content can charge more

• Marketer’s negotiating skills - being frank, most pubs will discount if asked

• List price - simply put, if you start high, you’ll sell high, within limits.

💡 The audiences nobody is selling well yet

Three pockets in our data and conversations where ad supply is thin and buyer demand is deep:

CTOs. Technical decision-makers are harder to reach than founders, control bigger infrastructure budgets, and have almost zero direct media built for them. An even 5k CTO list could probably hold an $80+ CPM floor on day one.

Biohacking and longevity. Deep consumer interest, supplement and fitness brands desperate for trusted context, and mainstream health media largely won't touch the category. Likely $50-70 CPM territory.

AI for X. Every category is being re-skinned with an AI angle. Sponsors are building separate AI budgets. The first publisher to credibly own "AI for X" inside a vertical is going to print money for 18 months. AI for founders, AI for engineers, etc.

P.S. Need help selling more sponsorships? My agency Ad Sales as a Service helps new media companies do just that.