Hmm. Color us disappointed regarding Webtoons. Plain ads with nothing else (corporate sponsors, Webtoons subsidy) is not going to earn a whole lot.
Hiveworks pays around $1.50 CPM but that's with a small but dedicated ad team and software that is constantly making changes to keep CPM up. They're very hands on. Plus a large portion of their reader base are Eastern readers who behave much differently than Western readers. Namely they click ads and support advertisers which means that ads pay much higher than here in the West where ads are regarded mostly as an infectious disease. After all, pesky ads get in the way of all of that free content!
$.50 CPM is likely what Webtoons will pay out, and like Tapas, once they have a few months of history under their belt CPMs are likely going to spiral down into the pennies. Webcomic readers simply don't engage with ads, making ads worth very little. Unless Webtoons enacts video ads that require a short watch period, readers will zoom past static ads so they can keep consuming content. Unless Webtoons takes a very hands on approach about doing something to optimize ads like Hiveworks, they're going to find out that the ad revenue program pales greatly in comparison to their $1M Pledge Program.
Other things to consider:
1) If the Webtoons ad arrangement is anything like it is now, with just one ad per page, then earnings will be even less than at Tapas where there are 4 ads per page. 4*.07= Tapas $.28 CPM vs Webtoons $.50.
2) Plus at Tapas readers are OK with one page updates. Not the case with Webtoons. So you have to post even more content which yields even fewer views. $.28*3= Tapas $.84 vs. Webtoons $.50
Unless there are major unexpected changes, Tapas is likely going to pay better than Webtoons.
Coupled with a minimum requirement that may be set so high it can't be reached by most small series, this program may end up benefiting only a few non-Featured creators.
Sounds like a great idea, right?
After hours of trial and error with Google Adwords we finally got a limited number of ads to run on Tapas for our series on Tapas...
Tapas ads for Tapas series grossly under perform. The CTR is around .1% whereas averaged across all websites, our ads do around .4% CTR. Creators who pay money to advertise their Webtoons on Webtoons may end up with the same results and would be better off advertising to the internet at large.
This is why we abandoned our repeated requests to staff to allow Tapas creators to advertise on Tapas. Internal marketing is not cost effective for Tapas creators. They're better off bringing in external readers.