The past two years have thrown us all in for a loop – impacting ad revenue and yield. Seasonality is something we look at for our yearly projections. No one could have predicted COVID-19 or how it would have such an impact on the entire world, much less the ad tech ecosystem.
With the start of a new year, it’s a pivotal time for you to get your ad revenue in order. Here are a few of Freestar’s offerings that you can implement to maximize ad revenue from now until the end of the year.
Up-to-date Ads.txt
Ads.txt, developed by the IAB Tech Lab, increases transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem by providing a flexible and secure method that publishers and distributors can use to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory. Ads.txt requires participating publishers to post their list of authorized sellers to their domain, allowing buyers to create a filter to match their ads.txt list against the data provided in the OpenRTB bid request.
It’s important to have your ads.txt file up to date so that all eligible buyers can bid on your inventory. Not to mention, the Freestar Revenue team is continuously working to add more demand connections for you to take advantage of. For a more hands-off approach, use Freestar’s cost-free hosted ads.txt solution which automatically updates your ads.txt file as we add new demand sources.
Ad Refresh
There are many techniques that you can use to maximize yield and ad revenue. A commonly used technique is ad refresh. At Freestar, we use a managed refresh feature that auto-enables viewable ad refresh for all ad placements without requiring any code changes from you, the publisher. Our team can activate this for you without requiring any additional time or resources on your part.
Managed refresh is a great technique that publishers can use to gain additional viewable impressions as it’s been seen with increasing impression volume, viewability, and revenue. The guidelines state that the ideal refresh rate is 30 seconds. This is a guideline and may be worth exploring other refresh rates on specific in-view ad units (sticky footer for example). For best ad refresh results, a publisher’s property should have more demand partners/sources competing in their ad stack to have positive participation rates and increased fill.
Industry CMP
With new privacy industry standards in effect, it’s important that your sites remain compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations by using a consent management platform (CMP). Consent management is a process that allows websites to meet the necessary regulatory requirements regarding consent collection. With a CMP in place, websites have the capability to inform visitors about the types of data they’ll collect and ask for their consent for specific data processing purposes. When you employ a CMP, it can help protect you from breaching any regulations relating to consumer privacy.
Freestar is partnered with Quantcast to provide our publishers with a cost-free hosted CMP solution compliant with current and upcoming privacy regulations and industry standards. Freestar’s hosted integration of Quantcast’s CMP includes options for publishers to implement a “Do Not Sell My Information” link for CCPA, along with a module covering GDPR.
Anchor Ads
Our team is continuously strategizing with our publishers to ensure they are getting the most out of their ads and increasing yield, and one placement we highly recommend is desktop and/or mobile anchors. Anchor ads, as the name suggests, remain at the bottom of the user’s browser window, wherever they go on the page.
As anchor units allow ads to be on the user’s page for the entire duration of their site visit, your viewability values increase when they are enabled. Anchor units capitalize on the full user session duration. Anchor units are a streamlined way to create additional, highly valuable inventory. They offer the benefit of being always viewable (an incentive to advertisers), and the ability to blend into most website themes and designs. If it’s distracting to a user, they can simply choose to “x” out of the ad session.
Video Ad Formats
Another great way to maximize yield is by using another ad format. Tap into video monetization even if you don’t have content by running a video ad placement like outstream or a video adhesion product. It’s been known that video ads tend to perform better than static ads whether you’re judging by engagement or clicks. You may have experienced it yourself when scrolling through a web page or social feed and a video catches your eye. Freestar knows this and we know that our publishers are always looking for ways to optimize and maximize their revenue, while simultaneously improving user experience for their readers.
Optimize Mobile Viewability
On mobile devices, consider moving the first in-view ad unit to below the fold (sticky / adhesion units being the exception). This will increase viewability and increase the likelihood that an ad load before a user has scrolled past the slot on the page. Mobile users browse differently than desktop.
Follow Your Users
Take a look at how your users interact with your website. It’s important to determine where users spend the majority of their time on the page by device type and make sure there is at least one ad in view there.
Well, there you have it — just a few ways to maximize your yield in 2022! We know you want to earn as much revenue as possible and these are just some of the ways you can do just that.
If you’re an existing Freestar publisher, send a note to our Publisher Success team at accountmanagement@freestar.com and we’d be happy to get you optimized for Q4. Not currently a Freestar client, but have questions about how we could help you maximize yield? Reach out to us at pubops@freestar.com.
