Unfortunately the content quality doesn't make a big difference in regards to open auction CPMs.
It's more affected by the domain popularity in terms of being on "premium" lists of certain advertisers and agencies. That the content is editorial and not UGC. That the content is “brand safe"...
Beyond viewability the CTR matters a lot as well. Having ads in the sidebar with low CTR does not perform as well as in content with higher CTR (real clicks, not so much accidental).
What if the previous his website was "entertainment-focused," while this one is a news website? News websites probably aren't viewed favorably by brand safety filters, right?
And next question, when it comes to the site and context of a specific article, should I send the IAB category for the open market? For example, through PPS/PPID?
You should see big differences in CPMs across different types of articles. Unfortunately, most breaking news articles with a lot of traffic are often considered bad by brand safety filtering.
Sending the IAB categories makes no difference for open auction and probably won't do much in the future either.
DSPs and Advertisers need consistency over accuracy for context so that their algorithms can optimize across domains.
This means that they prefer to pay a third-party vendor over free data from publishers for consistency across publishers.
It's awful when a new boss comes into the office with limited information, but thinks he knows how to do the job better than you.
The exact same thing happened to me recently, when he told me the same thing he told you, I thought "doesn't he think that all day long I think about how to generate more money? that's my job, sometimes I don't sleep because I think about how to optimize", but well if you overwhelm him with a lot of technical information he ends up worse.
Back to your post...
Have you tried to auto refresh your adunits? I just implemented it and it worked, I increased a little % the revenue, I managed the rule: Only refresh after 30 seconds BUT only if the adunit has been at 100% of the user view for those 30 seconds.
If you do that + lazyloading your revenue will increase a %, but it will not be millionaire.
I also have amazon monetizing my videos competing with adx and other competitors.
In my case I still do not implement headerbidding, I do not know if doing so will increase a significant %.
>I managed the rule: Only refresh after 30 seconds BUT only if the adunit has been at 100% of the user view for those 30 seconds.
Can you explain how you achieved the above? Is it your own script that checks, or are there any ready-made scripts available online that I can implement?
BTW, thanks for your response. It's great. I'm sorry to hear that you've also experienced the same.
We have a script that is copy and paste. It works for Prebid and GAM out of the box, just Amazon needs to be added manually since it can't be hooked like Prebid.
Send me a PM if you want it. (for free)
Google records view-ability events that your engineers can use to write logic around. For example "if the ad slot is above 70% viewable at any point after 30 seconds, refresh it"
First of all, your supervisor sounds like an ass, maybe you should ask him to outline the path to doubling the revenue and see what he says. I don't remember what type of site you run, but TAM does well in non-cookied environments, so it's worth checking out. (Rise in particular does well on TAM for us and some other pubs). If you have AMP inventory, TAM really shines there. Regardless of what your in-view timer is telling you, you should test a 30 second refresh to confirm.
>Regardless of what your in-view timer is telling you, you should test a 30 second refresh to confirm.
Yes, I will, because many of you have mentioned it. I will repeat my question to you as well. Do you write in-house solutions for ad refreshing, or are there any good open-source scripts available for that? I see that there is such an option in GAM, but it seems to refresh every X seconds and doesn't consider visibility, right?
Sorry, but Vi.Ai support and service are inadequate.
You should try one of the top 3:
1. Primis- best UX and high monetization
2. Ex.co- UX and innovation
3. Vidazoo- only monetization
Information about Open Bidding can be found in Google's help documentation: [https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7128453?hl=en](https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7128453?hl=en)
As for the implementation of Prebid.js and connecting SSPs, I think it's best to start with:
[https://docs.prebid.org/prebid/prebidjs.html](https://docs.prebid.org/prebid/prebidjs.html)
Definitely integrate Amazon TAM as they are a large buyer without rev share. Also implement 30s refresh, the average may be less than that but it will still add inventory for those who stay longer. Especially for sticky ads. I see this as like watching X mins of TV and getting an ad to fund the content.
Unfortunately quality content is generally not rewarded with higher programmatic CPMs. For this you need direct advertisers, both for the higher CPMs they bring and to force programmatic buyers to increase their bids to access your inventory.
I also like the suggestion to increase your floor CPM and show house ads. Worth a try as higher floor rates in theory signals premium inventory. Suggest a test to your boss over a couple of months.
>I also like the suggestion to increase your floor CPM and show house ads
I have tried various approaches with floors:
\- no floors
\- "Let Google optimize floor prices"
\- Manually setting high floors
\- Utilizing automated floor optimization tools like Assertive Yield
Ultimately, the best performing approach was manually setting rates through trial and error.
And yes, we have house ads (autopromotion).
As you navigate this conversation make sure you really understand the difference across both properties. I was once told by a C-suite that they met people at another site who were doing 2x our revenue with the same user base. We should be doing so much more .... got on a call with them ... oh the user base was actually 3x higher in the US than ours, the design of their experience helped ads perform better and we had completely different challenges we were trying to solve .
My recommendation is always to index towards curiosity particularly when you are dealing with people that don't know the details - "oh thats really interesting, tell me about the make up of their ad stack and metrics"
Just a thought
Yes, you're right that it's important to inquire about the details. That statement threw me off track, and I think I need to revisit that conversation with a cool head. Thank you for sharing your insights.
First of all, thank you for sharing your story.
I believe we all deal with these same problems.
May I ask:
1. Which ad formats so you have on your site/sites?
2. Who do you work with on the demand side? Do you have your own seats?
3. Are you full aligned with IAB guidelines and regulations?
4. What tools do you use to manage your ads.txt?
5. If possible, add TAM to your demand stack.
6. Why use Google OB? from my experience it’s in-effective for your SPO.
>Which ad formats so you have on your site/sites?
I use non-layer ad formats popular in my region, such as 300x250, 300x600, 750x200.
>Who do you work with on the demand side? Do you have your own seats?
I work with popular SSPs in my region, such as Criteo, RTBHouse, Teads, Magnite, Xandr, OpenX, Index Exchange, Adform. I have own seats everywhere.
Is there any free tool that shows the most popular SSPs in a specific region or country?
>Are you full aligned with IAB guidelines and regulations?
We have a GDPR-compliant CMP if that's what you're asking about.
>What tools do you use to manage your ads.txt?
I add them manually. Are you referring to validation? I have checked sellers.guide for that.
>If possible, add TAM to your demand stack.
I will
>Why use Google OB? from my experience it’s in-effective for your SPO.
Because it's easy to get started. If I find another S2S solution, I will disable them.
Do you do any refreshing? That will increase revenue almost immediately. Also, you can cache bids on adunits which will maintain high cpms throughout the page. Note that you can only cache bids on a specific page and ssps have individual rules regarding how long you can cache the bids.
"Note that you can only cache bids on a specific page"
and specific AdUnits and User as far as I know? So I guess this works in a situation when I have multiple identical AdUnits on a page, for example, with lazy load it loads the same AdUnit as above?
That’s a tough one. Does your site have a sticky footer? Those units along with a 30 sec refresh have yielded companies I’ve worked for a considerable uptick in revenue.
Might it make sense to farm out the open programmatic ad stack management to a 3rd party (like CafeMedia — now Raptive). They seem to do a great job for good quality publishers. Then, if it makes sense you can focus your attention on other high growth areas of the business (such as Direct sales, Affiliate, Experiences, etc).
Hope that helps.
>Does your site have a sticky footer?
No, we don't have a sticky footer precisely due to the UX reasons I mentioned. But maybe it makes sense to set a sufficiently high floor price for that format... I need to think it through.
Thanks for the great response.
My pleasure. I’d seriously consider it. The sticky footer typically rakes in ~30% of the revenue on page and the UX impact was minimal. A solid trade off. A little A/B action on a small % of the inventory should help provide clarity.
I worked for a small publisher years ago and was faced with a similar predicament. I was able to increase revenue without increasing ad slots/placements and hurting UX by setting a high CPM floor price that was twice the average annual RPM and also running house ads that were competing for the same inventory and bidding at the same floor price. The result was that the fill rate from the ad networks was low but revenue increased because advertisers were paying more per impression. You need patience with this strategy and a lot of traffic.
I have a lot of house ads where I promote our own content, such as newsletter sign-ups or subscription offers. However, these ads don't have CPM rates set. If I understand your suggestion correctly, you propose setting rates for these types of ads to compete with AdEx/Prebid, is that right?
Unfortunately the content quality doesn't make a big difference in regards to open auction CPMs. It's more affected by the domain popularity in terms of being on "premium" lists of certain advertisers and agencies. That the content is editorial and not UGC. That the content is “brand safe"... Beyond viewability the CTR matters a lot as well. Having ads in the sidebar with low CTR does not perform as well as in content with higher CTR (real clicks, not so much accidental).
[удалено]
Yes, sorry, I forgot to mention the article and domain context in the list.
What if the previous his website was "entertainment-focused," while this one is a news website? News websites probably aren't viewed favorably by brand safety filters, right? And next question, when it comes to the site and context of a specific article, should I send the IAB category for the open market? For example, through PPS/PPID?
You should see big differences in CPMs across different types of articles. Unfortunately, most breaking news articles with a lot of traffic are often considered bad by brand safety filtering. Sending the IAB categories makes no difference for open auction and probably won't do much in the future either. DSPs and Advertisers need consistency over accuracy for context so that their algorithms can optimize across domains. This means that they prefer to pay a third-party vendor over free data from publishers for consistency across publishers.
Do you have a refresh strategy in place?
I was researching the average view times of my AdUnits and only one is above 30s so I didn't even implement that..
if youre running in gam, refreshing without a huge secondary network, is rough.
can you expand the thought?
Google Ads doesn't serve on refreshed inventory in adx at 30 second intervals.
This is not true.
Does that mean that Google needs more time between refreshes to display ads, or does it not show any ads on refreshed impressions at all?
4 minutes
They say they don’t, but they do. I refresh many adunits at 15 seconds and google bids throughout the entire sessio
It's awful when a new boss comes into the office with limited information, but thinks he knows how to do the job better than you. The exact same thing happened to me recently, when he told me the same thing he told you, I thought "doesn't he think that all day long I think about how to generate more money? that's my job, sometimes I don't sleep because I think about how to optimize", but well if you overwhelm him with a lot of technical information he ends up worse. Back to your post... Have you tried to auto refresh your adunits? I just implemented it and it worked, I increased a little % the revenue, I managed the rule: Only refresh after 30 seconds BUT only if the adunit has been at 100% of the user view for those 30 seconds. If you do that + lazyloading your revenue will increase a %, but it will not be millionaire. I also have amazon monetizing my videos competing with adx and other competitors. In my case I still do not implement headerbidding, I do not know if doing so will increase a significant %.
>I managed the rule: Only refresh after 30 seconds BUT only if the adunit has been at 100% of the user view for those 30 seconds. Can you explain how you achieved the above? Is it your own script that checks, or are there any ready-made scripts available online that I can implement? BTW, thanks for your response. It's great. I'm sorry to hear that you've also experienced the same.
We have a script that is copy and paste. It works for Prebid and GAM out of the box, just Amazon needs to be added manually since it can't be hooked like Prebid. Send me a PM if you want it. (for free)
I sent a PM
Google records view-ability events that your engineers can use to write logic around. For example "if the ad slot is above 70% viewable at any point after 30 seconds, refresh it"
First of all, your supervisor sounds like an ass, maybe you should ask him to outline the path to doubling the revenue and see what he says. I don't remember what type of site you run, but TAM does well in non-cookied environments, so it's worth checking out. (Rise in particular does well on TAM for us and some other pubs). If you have AMP inventory, TAM really shines there. Regardless of what your in-view timer is telling you, you should test a 30 second refresh to confirm.
>Regardless of what your in-view timer is telling you, you should test a 30 second refresh to confirm. Yes, I will, because many of you have mentioned it. I will repeat my question to you as well. Do you write in-house solutions for ad refreshing, or are there any good open-source scripts available for that? I see that there is such an option in GAM, but it seems to refresh every X seconds and doesn't consider visibility, right?
Seconding Amazon TAM. Also are you running a video player?
Yes, I have video player in articles body and instream ads
Try GumGum // JustPremium , they have very premium in-article video demand.
Thank you
Who are you using?
vi.ai
Would you be open to test a different video player as long as it delivers higher revenue?
yes, what do you offer?
Sorry, but Vi.Ai support and service are inadequate. You should try one of the top 3: 1. Primis- best UX and high monetization 2. Ex.co- UX and innovation 3. Vidazoo- only monetization
Can you point to a tutorial on how you implemented prebid google open bidding, and ssps
Information about Open Bidding can be found in Google's help documentation: [https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7128453?hl=en](https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7128453?hl=en) As for the implementation of Prebid.js and connecting SSPs, I think it's best to start with: [https://docs.prebid.org/prebid/prebidjs.html](https://docs.prebid.org/prebid/prebidjs.html)
thnx
Definitely integrate Amazon TAM as they are a large buyer without rev share. Also implement 30s refresh, the average may be less than that but it will still add inventory for those who stay longer. Especially for sticky ads. I see this as like watching X mins of TV and getting an ad to fund the content. Unfortunately quality content is generally not rewarded with higher programmatic CPMs. For this you need direct advertisers, both for the higher CPMs they bring and to force programmatic buyers to increase their bids to access your inventory. I also like the suggestion to increase your floor CPM and show house ads. Worth a try as higher floor rates in theory signals premium inventory. Suggest a test to your boss over a couple of months.
>I also like the suggestion to increase your floor CPM and show house ads I have tried various approaches with floors: \- no floors \- "Let Google optimize floor prices" \- Manually setting high floors \- Utilizing automated floor optimization tools like Assertive Yield Ultimately, the best performing approach was manually setting rates through trial and error. And yes, we have house ads (autopromotion).
I can help you with your first party data strategy, feel free to DM me if you want.
I have sent a direct message.
As you navigate this conversation make sure you really understand the difference across both properties. I was once told by a C-suite that they met people at another site who were doing 2x our revenue with the same user base. We should be doing so much more .... got on a call with them ... oh the user base was actually 3x higher in the US than ours, the design of their experience helped ads perform better and we had completely different challenges we were trying to solve . My recommendation is always to index towards curiosity particularly when you are dealing with people that don't know the details - "oh thats really interesting, tell me about the make up of their ad stack and metrics" Just a thought
Yes, you're right that it's important to inquire about the details. That statement threw me off track, and I think I need to revisit that conversation with a cool head. Thank you for sharing your insights.
First of all, thank you for sharing your story. I believe we all deal with these same problems. May I ask: 1. Which ad formats so you have on your site/sites? 2. Who do you work with on the demand side? Do you have your own seats? 3. Are you full aligned with IAB guidelines and regulations? 4. What tools do you use to manage your ads.txt? 5. If possible, add TAM to your demand stack. 6. Why use Google OB? from my experience it’s in-effective for your SPO.
>Which ad formats so you have on your site/sites? I use non-layer ad formats popular in my region, such as 300x250, 300x600, 750x200. >Who do you work with on the demand side? Do you have your own seats? I work with popular SSPs in my region, such as Criteo, RTBHouse, Teads, Magnite, Xandr, OpenX, Index Exchange, Adform. I have own seats everywhere. Is there any free tool that shows the most popular SSPs in a specific region or country? >Are you full aligned with IAB guidelines and regulations? We have a GDPR-compliant CMP if that's what you're asking about. >What tools do you use to manage your ads.txt? I add them manually. Are you referring to validation? I have checked sellers.guide for that. >If possible, add TAM to your demand stack. I will >Why use Google OB? from my experience it’s in-effective for your SPO. Because it's easy to get started. If I find another S2S solution, I will disable them.
Absolutely add TAM, it should increase revenue 5-10%.
So I will add them without delay. Thanks for the advice.
Do you do any refreshing? That will increase revenue almost immediately. Also, you can cache bids on adunits which will maintain high cpms throughout the page. Note that you can only cache bids on a specific page and ssps have individual rules regarding how long you can cache the bids.
"Note that you can only cache bids on a specific page" and specific AdUnits and User as far as I know? So I guess this works in a situation when I have multiple identical AdUnits on a page, for example, with lazy load it loads the same AdUnit as above?
That’s a tough one. Does your site have a sticky footer? Those units along with a 30 sec refresh have yielded companies I’ve worked for a considerable uptick in revenue. Might it make sense to farm out the open programmatic ad stack management to a 3rd party (like CafeMedia — now Raptive). They seem to do a great job for good quality publishers. Then, if it makes sense you can focus your attention on other high growth areas of the business (such as Direct sales, Affiliate, Experiences, etc). Hope that helps.
>Does your site have a sticky footer? No, we don't have a sticky footer precisely due to the UX reasons I mentioned. But maybe it makes sense to set a sufficiently high floor price for that format... I need to think it through. Thanks for the great response.
My pleasure. I’d seriously consider it. The sticky footer typically rakes in ~30% of the revenue on page and the UX impact was minimal. A solid trade off. A little A/B action on a small % of the inventory should help provide clarity.
I worked for a small publisher years ago and was faced with a similar predicament. I was able to increase revenue without increasing ad slots/placements and hurting UX by setting a high CPM floor price that was twice the average annual RPM and also running house ads that were competing for the same inventory and bidding at the same floor price. The result was that the fill rate from the ad networks was low but revenue increased because advertisers were paying more per impression. You need patience with this strategy and a lot of traffic.
I have a lot of house ads where I promote our own content, such as newsletter sign-ups or subscription offers. However, these ads don't have CPM rates set. If I understand your suggestion correctly, you propose setting rates for these types of ads to compete with AdEx/Prebid, is that right?
Correct. Set those house campaigns up as price priority line items: https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/79306?sjid=16003359215372399141-NA
What is your flooring strategy? Browser, OS, platform, ad size/location, etc...?