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The “holy grail” question for online publishers is how do you increase ad revenue? Here are six great ways to address that question
1. Make audience segmentation a top priority
It makes sense to concentrate on partnering with advertisers that share your brand values as a publisher. If you run a culinary website, you probably target food advertising. Home renovation firms are a good fit for a real estate publisher, whereas large consumer electronics brands are suitable for a tech site.
However, in today’s competitive market, increasing ad revenue necessitates attracting new audiences that may help you extend your advertising customer base. Audience segmentation, or the practice of splitting your audience into subgroups based on criteria such as interests, geography, behaviour, and preferences, is required to do this. The amount of complexity you construct for your campaigns is entirely in your hands. For example, you can segment your viewers and target them with sports-related ads if your site has a sports section.
If many of your readers are from a particular geographic region, you may want to promote local events or companies. Segmentation allows you to build a more personalised experience for your readers while also increasing the effectiveness of your ad sales.
2. Find new audiences
After you’ve gotten a sense of your present audience, you may begin looking for new ones to whom you can pitch your advertising. A vital first step is to identify your target audience. You’ll have to think about how you’ll interact with possible new clients—what will they want, and what will you be able to provide? Fortunately, you have a strong starting point because you’ve analysed your current client base.
Audience extension is one technique to reach new audiences—it allows your advertisers to reach their audience beyond your website. You may monitor your viewers and sell the information to advertisers, who will use it to target advertising on other sites. This type of audience extension allows for more precise audience targeting and can help you land more advertising clients.
Semantic language processing technology can provide detailed information about what your audience finds interesting. This data is valuable from both an editorial and a revenue-generation standpoint.
For example, a personal finance publisher would utilise a semantic categorization tool to discover that articles about “top travel and reward credit cards” drew the greatest reader attention. The publisher may discover that a significant portion of the engaged audience is female, aged 24 to 54, and that they frequent luxury hotels and high-end clothing sites by pulling that data into a DMP and layering it with your site’s data and other high-quality data like demographics and purchase history.
Sales and ad ops teams may use this additional data to develop two new audience groups that target advertisers outside your niche: boutique hotel chains and luxury handbag firms. Because this new audience is more likely to convert on the targeted advertising, their cost per mille/thousand might be greater, resulting in more value and diversified income streams.
3. Add a subscription system to your site
With the support of your most devoted fans, digital subscriptions can help you earn additional revenue. Consumers are inundated with publisher options, so if you can persuade them to sign up for a premium membership, you’ll have more audience engagement as well as revenue. Furthermore, digital subscriptions de-emphasize page visits, preserving the quality of your articles and avoiding clickbait headlines.
Many publishers use a metered method, in which casual readers are allowed to read a certain number of articles a month before hitting a subscription wall. This method will enable you to turn your most engaged readers into paying clients without alienating your non-paying readers. Even though they are unlikely to subscribe, it still allows them to “taste” your products and read a few articles.
4. Boost participation
The amount of pageviews a person has during a session on your website is referred to as engagement. High engagement, similar to the value of loyalty, leads to more ad impressions and, as a result, more revenue.
You can improve user engagement by including related and recommended material at the bottom of your posts. From within your articles and posts, create internal links to other pages. You can improve your recirculation strategy by developing a sticky header menu that allows people to traverse your website intuitively and easily.
Be sure to also use a commenting platform to increase time-on-site as well as content engagement like trivia and polls.
5. Make use of a variety of ad networks
The ad network you select is perhaps the most critical factor influencing your ad income. The explanation for this is simple: certain networks pay more than others.
That isn’t the only reason, however. The finest ad networks will have a large inventory of high-quality ads across various categories. Even if all other aspects are optimised, if the advertising you display on your website is irrelevant, it may detract from your website visitors’ experience.
You can see if an ad network is a good fit for your website by utilising it for a period and tracking your CTR and eCPM rates.
If these measures aren’t yielding positive results, it could be time to switch ad networks.
Additionally, you may experiment with combining various ad networks to determine whether this yields better results than utilising just one.
6. Adhere to display advertising best practices
To ensure that your ad experience is as seamless as possible, try applying the following suggestions:
- Avoid cramming too many ads onto a single page.
Using too many advertisements can confuse your visitors, reducing the impact of all other advertising, lowering your CTR, and driving people away from your site.
Instead, limit the number of ads on a page and keep the content to no more than 5 or 6 lines. There should be no more than three items above the fold.
- Make sure to use different types of ads.
Static advertisements, video ads, popup ads, and more are all examples of display ads. Given this diversity, experimenting with different sorts of advertising to discover which ones are well accepted by your audience can be a smart idea.
There are three types of advertisements that you can integrate into your website: in-page push ads (floating banners), responsive banner ads, and automated sticky ads.
In-page push advertising, also known as floating banners, are ads that resemble the push alerts we receive on our mobile devices. In-page push advertisements, like banner ads, appear immediately on the publisher’s website. This allows them to achieve high-performance rates without the subscription restrictions that traditional push advertising imposes.
The standard, rectangular banners we’re all accustomed to are responsive banner ads. These advertisements are not intrusive to visitors and are pleasing to the sight. This vintage ad type is usually a winner if you don’t use too many of them.
Sticky ad placements are ads that stay on the screen when the user scrolls up and down the page. Increase your website’s ad performance and income by having a high exposure and interaction rate.
Each of these ad formats is effective on its own, but when utilised together, you may obtain even better results than before.
- Use a variety of ad sizes.
One of the most adjustable types of advertising is display ads. Most ad networks provide their advertisers with various ad sizes to design and place on their websites.
Publishers can experiment with different ad sizes as well. Ad networks will usually make sure that the ad size matches the container that the publisher has created.
Specific banner ad sizes and layouts are appropriate for different departments: Some boost ad impressions, while others improve CTR or provide a more engaging user experience.
It’s vital to test several sizes and determine which one brings you the highest revenue, depending on the payment mechanism employed by your ad network (CPC/CPM/CPA).
Wrapping Up
All of these steps can be laborious, but you will be well on your way to increasing ad revenue by following these guidelines. Need help? Contact us, and we’ll help you find an ad solution that works for you.
