Improving Your Advertising Profit Margins as a Publisher

If you’re a digital ad publisher, it's easy to put your programmatic campaign on autopilot and watch the revenue come in. But taking the time to optimize your site and improve your user experience can yield massive results in your revenue

If you are looking to boost the success of your digital ad publishing, make sure you are focusing on these key points to build a satisfying user experience that is tailored to your audience’s interests.

Improve Your User Experience To Prevent Ad Blocking

Ad blocking is a significant and growing issue facing digital ad publishers. Studies show that nearly 30% of all internet users have ad blockers installed on their web browsers, with about 3 million more users installing each year. 

Most say their reason for using ad blockers is that websites are more manageable without ads. So it's clear just how important your user experience is to your site visitors and your ad revenue. 

If you want to maximize your revenue and prevent users from turning to ad blockers, you need to offer an ad experience that is viewable but not overly disruptive to a user's browsing experience.

Consider your ad placements carefully. Use banners between content, avoid pop-ups or video ads with disruptive audio, and make sure you are placing the quality of your content over the quantity of your ads.

Another important factor is protecting your user’s from bad actors and malvertising attacks. Unwanted redirects, headlines with malicious links, and offensive or shocking content are all tactics fraudsters take to lure users into potentially harmful landing pages.

Ask for user feedback and pay attention to the front end of your site as well as your website and ad revenue metrics. 

If you are experiencing inexplicable drop offs, your site may be experiencing malvertising attacks.

Adding these advertisers to your block list may ease the issue, but it is far from a permanent solution. Sophisticated fraudsters will find a way around your block list and continue to attack your website with malicious content.

If you are finding you are struggling to keep these bad actors off your site, see our cleanAD free trial here.

Our unique software blocks these advertisements on runtime. This allows the ad impression pixel to fire while preventing malicious content, so publishers still get paid and bad actors lose out. 

Not only are you protecting your users, but you are also creating a financial disincentive for malicious advertising groups.

Prioritize The Right Metrics

eCPM is a great starting point when strategizing your ad publishing, but if you want to make the most of your publishing you need to really engage with your audience and take a look at more in-depth measurements.

Understanding your audience, what demographics are bringing you the most revenue, and what kind of content is causing your audience to engage will allow you to dial in successful strategies while weeding out the ones failing to produce significant results.

Make sure your metrics are actionable and goal oriented. Segment your audience, pay attention to your page views, and watch your session lengths and bounce rates to get a sense of what is working and what isn’t.

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Native Advertising

Native ads have some of the highest click through rates of all digital ads. This is because the ads blend so well with the website’s content that it's difficult for users to tell it is an ad at all.

This leads to an unobtrusive advertising style that is also able to pull off high engagement rates, meaning they are some of the most lucrative ads for publishers.

These paid ads will come in the form of sponsored content (i.e. paid guest blogs or paid promotions within your content), suggested articles from other sites or businesses, or related posts on social media.

If you want to get started with these kinds of ads, check out taboola.com

It is important to label this kind of content clearly, as to not mislead your audience. Treating your audience with respect is crucial to building a trusting relationship that will encourage repeat visits to your website.

Be wary though. It is common for these kinds of posts to resort to clickbait tactics in order to draw users in, and can often redirect them to a malicious website looking to steal information.

Dramatic headlines, upsetting images, and harmful landing pages can tarnish your brand's reputation and your customer’s loyalty.

It’s important to stay on top of your advertising by exploring the front end of your website, paying attention to your bounce rates, and making sure your ads are safe for your users.

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Partner With Relevant and Reliable Ad Networks

Keep track of the ads being published on your site and which ad networks they are coming from.

Not only could you find that a network is serving you ads that are putting your users at risk for malicious or upsetting content, but it is also possible to learn which networks are providing you with ads most relevant to your audience.

This kind of knowledge is mutually beneficial to you and your advertisers. You learn valuable data that you can then leverage to advertisers looking to go after your specific audience, while the advertiser sees better clickthrough rates as a result of their targeted ads.

You can then charge a premium for their business, while their related ads grow your engagement metrics as they meet your audience's interests.

Vice versa, If you find that irrelevant ads are showing up on your site and not benefiting your publishing, you can either add them to your blocklist and prevent them from advertising to your website or renegotiate your contract with them.

Optimize For Repeat Traffic and Social Actions

Your content and website quality will always be the main driver behind your ad revenue, so make sure it's something your audience not only trusts, but also wants to rave about. 

Social shares and word of mouth are two of the best ways to reach new users with increased customer loyalty. Users trust their friends recommendations, and that trust will be passed on to you.

Keep track of what kind of content your audience is sharing and focus on what makes it so appealing and actionable. And make sure to leave sharable icons on your content to make it easy for users to link your content. 

If you are struggling to re-engage first time users, create forms and offers so you can capture information and re-target them with future content. And make sure you are sharing your content through your own social media accounts to help build followers and inbound traffic.

Wrapping Up

Taking the time to clean up your website and ad strategy to make sure you are properly targeting and engaging users will yield significant results for your business and ad revenue.

Make sure you are creating content that engages your audience and promotes repeat business, and host ads that are relevant to their interests and not putting their user experience or information at risk.

This way you’ll have a loyal, targeted audience that you can sell to advertisers and maximize the value of your website.