How to stay in the digital advertising business as a publisher

We have a new Head of Publishers in our team, Emanuele Pezzulla. To introduce him to the public we sat down and discussed some key issues for publishers in the digital advertising industry. We also talked about some of the standout features that sets Adcash apart from other similar platforms – from a fully customizable service to higher competitive rates due to effective fraud filters and to a self-service platform with live support and account managers available.

First things first. When a publisher gets started, how should they choose the right ad format for their traffic?

It really depends on the publisher’s needs. I’d suggest following these factors when considering a suitable format:

• the vertical of your website;
• website functionalities and content;
• how your visitors use and navigate the site;
• amount of unique visitors;
• geolocation of visitors and the device used;
• average time spent on the site by a single user.

It’s also important to take into account how the website’s users experience may influence the expected earnings.

How do you measure the effectiveness of an ad format?

Performance metrics, of course, can be measured in numbers, like fill rate and eCPM which result in earnings. Depending on the format, our publishers have access to various metrics and filters for a deeper understanding of the stats. Analyzing and comparing these metrics with your own traffic can give a pretty clear picture on how users can react to the format.
However, if you feel that your chosen format is underperforming, contact your Adcash manager or our support team who can look into this. Keep in mind as well, that the full Adcash optimization will need about 48h to kick in, so give our algorithms time to do its magic.

How does adblock feature into this?

Adblock is a serious threat for the business flow of both, the publishers and advertisers. We have managed to develop a solution, though, that can bypass adblock and help you monetize your audience more efficiently. This solution is a great opportunity to take back control of that section of the traffic that many webmasters consider as “lost by default”.

Let’s give some tips to our readers on how to maximize the features we offer. Let’s start with how to work with frequency capping.

In case of full-screen ads such as the site-under, frequency capping must be set depending on what you want the user experience of your website to be like. You should consider the average time spent on the site and the number of average page views per user.
Additionally, if the website hosts content that changes many times during one day (like news, videos, images, music, reviews etc), it is important to understand what is the average return rate in a timeframe and apply a capping that would monetize the user every time they create a new session.
In the opposite case, like native ads, we advise unlimited frequency capping since by definition such ad formats are synonymous with good user experience.
If you are planning to work with only one ad network then the frequency can be higher as well since the user experience won’t suffer as much. I would always recommend keeping a balance between the optimal user experience and expected earnings.

What is black and whitelisting and how it works?

Our tags allow every campaign related to website’s thematics to be submitted by default. However, every publisher might have different needs and may want to exclude or target only specific campaigns or creative behavior. This can be set up only by your Adcash manager or customer support team. So once you’ve figured out what you need, feel free to get in touch and make your request.

What about native ads, how to place the widget?

Visibility is the key and for this it is important to customize the widget correctly. A successful native widget will blend so well it looks like the content on your website, resulting in higher performance. We give our publishers all the tools for full customization: background colors, text, font, format, numbers of creatives etc. Again, don’t be afraid to get in touch with us if you need any help with customizing the native widget.

What is the state of the market for publishers at the moment? What are the trends in online advertising to look out for? What to think about the Google initiated Better Ads coalition and should that influence the choice of formats?

One clear trend is the rise and rise of native ads and our native technology is one of the most advanced on the market. We are talking about a monetization solution, which is user-friendly, engaging and doesn’t really look like an ad.
Regarding the status of site-under, we’ve been keeping a close eye on Google’s policies in this area to be compliant. We’ve been a market leader for 11 years already and we are confident in helping our publishers to still monetize their audience through this high-performance ad format.
The market, in general, has clearly become segmented and is moving towards a specialization. We place ourselves as one of the major players with a focus on a consolidated business area and we always move forward with the next big trends.

Keep in mind that any new feature that we launch for our advertisers will end up providing better monetization to our publishers.

Transparency and user experience are the current keywords in the market. We have already moved forward on this by offering our advertisers new products within our recently launched Performance DSP+. Take the example of our automatic traffic fraud filters and the recent release of CPA target. Both benefit you as a publisher since fraud filters result in higher budgets and payouts from advertisers, while the CPA target makes it easier for them to manage and keep their campaigns active. This will directly result in higher revenue for you as a provider of clean and legit traffic.

Become a publisher with Adcash!

Still wondering why choose Adcash as your partner? We’ve been providing quality services globally for more than ten years already. We have valuable experience and we’ve put time and resources into developing our bleeding-edge technology that sets us apart from the rest.

Start monetizing your traffic today! Sign up here.