BUILDING A HOUSE AD SERVERLeverage the power of Google’s algorithms to boost CTR

on your blog.

CHALLENGE

• Efficiently rotate and A/B test creatives.

• Serve appropriate creative based on funnel position.

• Create a modular employee scope for growing organization.

ALTERNATIVES• Rotate creatives manually.

• Marketing automation software (HubSpot)

• A/B testing tools (Optimizely)

• Plugins?

ROTATE CREATIVES MANUALLY• Pros

• Easy

• No software to research/configure

• Content manager has access

• Cons

• Slow and cumbersome

• Not easily rotated (a/b tested)

• Content manager has access

MARKETING AUTOMATION (HUBSPOT)

• Pros

• Powerful

• Integrates with email

• Set rules to display ads

• Cons

• Cumbersome

• Expensive

• Made to be ‘easy’

A/B TOOLS (OPTIMIZELY)• Pros

• Easy to use

• Separate roles

• Good data

• Cons

• Lots of experiments

• Slow to scale up

• Expensive

SOLUTION?

GOOGLE DFP& HOUSE ADS

WHAT’S AN AD SERVER?• Sell impressions on your website directly to

advertisers

• Cut out the middleman.

WHAT ARE HOUSE ADS?• Imagine you have 100,000 impressions/mo

• You sell 9 packs of 10,000 impressions

• What to do with the unused inventory?

• AdSense or…

HOUSE ADS• …you can fill the unused ad space with “House

Ads”

• House ads are ads served by the publisher (house).

• “Your Ad Here” billboard is a house ad.

THE HACK:• Fire up an ad server.

• Only serve house ads. Act as the publisher and the advertiser.

• Benefit from powerful ad serving features for free.

GOOGLE DFP (AD SERVER)• Rotate creatives based on optimization (CTR)

• Set per asset rotation limit. Show the same creative to the same user no more than x times.

• Advanced targeting. Target ads by behavior, demographics, etc…

• Free!• Easy asset management.

• Build rich media assets.

WHY DFP?• Allows for house ads.

• Powerful targeting features.

• Powerful asset management features.

• Hosted

• Not going anywhere.

• https://google.com/+jordanskole

• @jordanskole

• Message me and I’ll ping you when the complete guide is ready.