Category is important, but targeting is the key. For example, gambling:
UltimateCasino.com
TheSportsBook.com
Both are for gambling. Both are excellent .com domains, around the same length. If the people paying for the links, the advertisers, are bidding high for the term "sports book" and not so high for "casino", then TheSportsBook.com probably will generate the higher cpm. If "casino" has the higher bids, then UltimateCasino.com will generate the higher cpm.
In general, the higher cpm's that I get happen when the domain name is very close to a high bid term. I get my highest cpm on a domain name for athletic shoes, not for gambling. It just happens that it is a very good domain in terms of cpm, although it does not get huge traffic.
The real ideal is when you get high traffic combined with a high cpm. My best domain is related to credit cards. It gets around $50/cpm, but it also gets very good traffic. Note that the DomainMonetizer people only want domains with 30 uniques/day.
domainweb said:
thanks for letting me know. can you please tell me what categories would pay $85 to $200/cpm on DomainSponsor. would it be loans/gambling?