Fairfax Digital Media has slashed its advertising yield for June in what appears to be a desperate bid to fill unsold inventory.

The publisher has offered its advertisers a series of deals aimed at drumming up business in a slowing market. In some cases it is offering cpms (the cost of an ad being served 1000 times) for as low as just $3. In better times some sites had achieved in excess of $100.

The package was emailed out to media buyers this afternoon.

Among the offers in what it has labelled to advertisers as its “advertising stimulus packages (June)” are to discount by one third reruns of OTPs (over the page ads). Rather than a discount against ratecard, the discount is against the previous price paid, meaning Fairfax will be giving many advertisers the high profile ads at well below half rate card.

The company has also slashed rate card for a day’s OTP on a national home page for the smh.com.au or theage.com.au from $90,000 to $50,000. Based on its claimed 8.5m impressions, this equates to a CPM of less than $6.

The price of a standard sized medium rectangle daily buyout on the business pages has been slashed by more than half from ratecard of $34,000 to $15,000.

Run of network second medium rectangles are being offered at just $5,000 per 2m — equivalent to a cpm of just $2.50.

Similar bargains are to be had in terms of bundled audience (groups such as AB males or females or main grocery buyers) on medium rectangles or leaderboards with a ratecard $76,000 per 2m impressions slashed by more than 70% to $20,000. This is equivalent to a $10cpm.

Within the media owner’s Domain website, postcode targeted medium rectangles are being offered at an 85% discount to ratecard, with 5m impressions for $15,000. This equates to a cpm of just $3.

The publisher is also offering to pay all of the ad serving costs.

Tim Burrowes is the man behind mUmBRELLA.