The Anime Premium: What Network Data Says About the Web’s Most Loyal Audience
How do you picture a typical anime site visitor? A youngster, not really willing or able to pay for anything? And so, naturally, an anime site seems just a huge pile of cheap, one-off traffic?
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Our research, which includes external sources and our exclusive in-house stats, shows that anime fansites are hubs of genuinely premium users. Surprised? Then look at what we’ve collected below, and maybe your next project won’t be another tech blog, but an anime site chasing the highest CPMs.
What is an Anime Site Visitor?
Let’s look at what marketers call a buyer persona – or, in simpler words, a quick snapshot of who’s actually behind visits and clicks. Here is a profile built from our network data: who anime fansite visitors are, how they behave, and where the money actually is.
Buyer persona
· anime site visitor
Alex, 24
Anime site visitor · mobile-first · global
High-intent niche
Who they are
Age
~24 yrs
Generation
Millennial / Gen Z
Household income
~50% earn $50K+
Education
~60% college+
Gender split
~72% M / 28% F
Device
84% mobile
How they behave
· our network
9.3%
Conv / click
1.9×
eCPM vs avg
5.4×
Exclusive reach
1.4B
Monthly imp.
Where they are
· top CPM
AU $2.31
UK $2.25
CA $1.53
MY $1.44
DE $1.29
US $1.17
Pretty surprising, right? As you see, an average visitor is NOT a teenager, is NOT broke, and is not Japanese in most cases. What we see is a 24-year-old professional with real purchasing power, and also mobile-first, loyal, and worth more than most ‘premium’ categories advertisers tend to chase instead.
At the same time, anime sites are not a niche segment for a narrow audience: the 1.4B monthly impressions hint at exactly that.
Okay, What Does It Mean?
Anyway, a good income and global reach don’t automatically make anime site visitors a golden audience that brings you stable profits. So, why does it make CPMs stronger?
Our research shows three factors that turn anime site users into a premium segment:
- They are exclusive. A lot of anime traffic comes from people the rest of the ad network almost never sees. What’s more, anime sites handle most of the impressions across the whole network.
Here is an example of weekly stats for 24-30 June:
Traffic breakdown
Anime Traffic by Activity Class
| Activity class | Anime | |
|---|---|---|
| High |
|
17.7% |
| Medium |
|
11.1% |
| Low |
|
53.8% |
| Remnant |
|
17.4% |
Bars are scaled to the largest share. Remnant — the part of the traffic left unmonetised by the classes above.
In simple words, anime users aren’t always available at other sites, so traffic buyers treat them as exclusive and willing to pay more for impressions, coming almost exclusively from anime fan sites.
- They are loyal. Many content categories – for example, APK sites – get a visitor once and need to invest pretty much effort to make them return. Anime sites don’t need to hope for that, as fans are pretty sure to come back to the same 2-3 sites on a regular cycle, chasing new content. And what can you expect from a loyal, habitual audience? More tolerance for ads, and more engagement with them.
The thing is, anime users don’t seem to click more than others; but if they do, they are more likely to convert in the end, and thus bring more conversions to advertisers, and higher CPMs for you. Here’s what the stats say: anime fansites have a 9.3% conversion rate per click, and it’s the highest of any category we track:
Category
Anime
9.3%
Conversions per click
0.42
Conversions per 1,000 impressions
Roughly one conversion per eleven clicks — and about one per 2,400 impressions.
- They are rare… in some sense. Most advertisers want placements that are truly brand-safe. Some networks check every site carefully – for example, Monetag does. However, there are some that don’t check much at all. So advertisers prefer to play it safe and stick to a short list of sites they trust.
The basic economics steps in from this moment: when a lot of buyers are chasing a small number of approved sellers, price goes up. So it’s not only about the ‘wealthy’ users, but also about a really rare inventory.
The conclusion? The number of safe, stable places is quite small, while more and more advertisers want them, so no wonder prices go up.
Put these 3 reasons together, and the anime sites’ CPM stops looking like an anomaly and starts looking like an opportunity.
So What to Do With All This?
Numbers are nice, but they don’t monetize themselves. As you already know, anime users are not hard to earn from, but it’s a pretty specific audience you should treat a bit differently. Here are some tips to follow:
- Rely on Onclick. Right now, it’s the leading format for anime sites:
Anime
How Anime Sites Are Monetised Most Often
- Onclick The default choice
- In-Page Push
- Vignette
- Push (subscriptions) Rarely used here
Ioannis Giouroukakis, Head of Publishers at Monetag:
- Don’t treat your audience as a single GEO. Tier-1 markets carry the highest prices, but Taiwan and Malaysia are also strong:
Anime
Top Paying Countries
| Country | CPM | |
|---|---|---|
| Australia |
|
$2.31 |
| United Kingdom |
|
$2.25 |
| Canada |
|
$1.53 |
| Malaysia |
|
$1.44 |
| Germany |
|
$1.29 |
| United States |
|
$1.17 |
| Taiwan |
|
$1.05 |
So, check where your traffic actually comes from and, based on that, localize your site for the top GEOs you see in your stats. Some of the best anime site case studies we’ve seen weren’t in English or Japanese at all:
- We had a Vietnamese anime site with $100/day profit because the owner built it just for Vietnamese fans;
- And also an Egyptian manga site making $3,000+ a month with content written fully in Arabic;
- Or a Brazilian anime site that earned $32,000+ with everything in Portuguese.
And none of them were just translated English sites, but were built for their own audience from the start, so if a good chunk of your visitors speak another language, do the same.
- Design mobile-first, and adapt for where the audience actually is.
Again, anime fansite users are very smartphone-savvy, and you can’t ignore this. If your site isn’t built mobile-first, or at least it’s not very well adapted for smaller screens, you’ll fight your own traffic:
Closing thought
Anime traffic isn’t the scary, low-value inventory it’s made out to be. It’s loyal, it converts, it’s global, and it’s still priced like nobody’s figured that out yet. If you’ve been putting off building or scaling an anime site, let these numbers…motivate you? The audience is already there, and now’s a pretty good time to go get it.
