The DEMO Conference: Calculating the ROI

Right now, somewhere in the desert a bunch of startups paid 18,000 bucks apiece to demo their products to seven hundred people. We’ll assume INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE, like Michael Arrington, Om Malik, and Matt Marshall. If you break that down into the standard measurement of the internet, CPM, and calculate the ROI, well kids, you’re paying $22,500 per thousand impressions. By contrast, Myspace gets a CPM of 2.5 cents.

Let’s assume, that not everyone is a journalist. Perhaps only a hundred attendees are journalists. If each reaches an audience of 10,000 people then you get 1 million impressions for 18,000. That’s a CPM of $18. That’s pretty good. And cheaper than an ad in the Wall Street Journal.

Let’s just hope they like your product.