What should I value my advertising at?

I have am iOS app I am trying to monetize and want to get a rough idea the value before I approach local businesses. I am currently on AdMob network and the eCPM is horrible (like $0.62). I want to move away from AdMob because I think it is worth a lot more than what I'm getting from them since the app has a pretty niche user persona. It is a bus transit app and as you will see from the picture below, most of the users are students. Any rough estimates? @Sythe? Relevant statistics below. All images represent stats "from past 7 days".

 

Traffic is about 33.5k impressions (30 sec refresh rate) per 7 days, or app daily engagement of 1 day and 12 hours. This is pure banner ad. Ideally businesses like clubs would probably get me best CPM since most of my user base is college and university students, but I don't really know where to price my CPM. I am looking for businesses that would get the best value from my user base (students).

 

Are you able to choose what niche of products/services are advertised to your target demographic?

If you do then at the very least choose ads that appeal to both male and female students. It appears more girls are using your app so any products a teen and young adult female may be interested in?

As well as monetizing your traffic, do you have any ways of upselling them? If you do then affiliate marketing to the female students of your demographic would be most profitable in my opinion

 

Generally when developing a product you should research your market and monetising if that is your intention. I personally paid quite a substantial amount of money to a 'friend' owned market research company who provided me with every angle I could attack from as well as contacts who would be interested in advertising to my users.

Without the marketing knowledge of funding to get professionals then you need to start with the basics. Learn what sort of interests your market would have, seek local interest from business and consider their costing to their own advertising and expected yield from impressions.

Once you gauge that idea you can move onto offering these businesses opportunities to advertise through your application. As well as providing as much information as you possibly can with regard to the data you have on your advertising stream.

Using Sythe as an example, he attracts the business that offer in-game currency to the users that have a particular interest in their service. Where'as you need to sell your position to the businesses and what they could expect from a business relationship with you.

Niche quiet markets are typically the best, luckily for me I dominate a quiet market and offer some-what the best advertising tool these businesses could have. As well as offering multiple applications in this area for a combined effect.

EDIT on a side note;

Try to think outside the box on your advertising as well. Sometimes using the standard banners aren't the best way. They clutter your application and lower it's use value. My only suggestion if you do use banners is to offer removal of banners for some other sort of acquisition; be it a facebook share or an IAP to remove them. Also consider pop-ups that force the user to a full screen advertisement they can close after 5 seconds or so. This will increase your click-through ratio as well as offering a higher end advertisement opportunity for an increased cost to your potential advertisers. Always consider the user experience before advertisement gains as you can potentially ruin your application if not considered.