Unless specified, all best practices apply to both AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). In addition, this guide was written for publishers using DFP Small Business. Please talk to your account manager about how you can adapt these strategies to your ad server. 1. Double check your inventory set up to get reporting consistency and granular performance data. • Make sure you are not calling the same ad unit twice on one page. – For example, if you have two 300x250s on your Sports page, make sure that each one is a different ad unit, like Sports_300x250_ATF and Sports_300x250_BTF. 2. Maximize the value of your inventory in real time by leveraging Dynamic Allocation. • Allow AdSense or AdX to compete for your non-guaranteed inventory based on the prices you enter in DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) for your other monetization partners. • You can even leverage Dynamic Allocation against your House ads. – Instead of always running an unpaid House ad at the bottom of your ad serving logic, consider setting a Value CPM for your House ads to capture incremental revenue. – Determine an approximate value for those ads, for example $0.20, and let AdSense or AdX win if the impression is worth at least $0.20. 3. Rank your monetization partners using the appropriate priority levels in DFP • AdSense/AdX can compete against Network, Bulk, Price Priority, and House ads. • It’s important to note that just because you are working with an ad network, that doesn’t mean it’s best for you to set them at Network priority. • If you want to rank your monetization partners by their eCPM, we recommend Price Priority with frequency caps (see best practice #5). Network % Delivers a fixed percent of remaining impressions, offers cost per day pricing Bulk # Delivers based on an impression goal within specified time frame Price $ Delivers the highest paying line item available based on rate entered Offers daily and lifetime delivery caps House --- Delivers only after all other eligible line items, commonly non-revenue generating Publisher Best Practices – Yield Management
Transcript
Unless specified, all best practices apply to both AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). In addition, this guide was written for publishers using DFP Small Business. Please talk to your account manager about how you can adapt these strategies to your ad server.
1. Double check your inventory set up to get reporting consistency and granular performance data.• Make sure you are not calling the same ad unit twice on one page.
– For example, if you have two 300x250s on your Sports page, make sure that each one is a different ad unit, like Sports_300x250_ATF and Sports_300x250_BTF.
2. Maximize the value of your inventory in real time by leveraging Dynamic Allocation.• Allow AdSense or AdX to compete for your non-guaranteed inventory based
on the prices you enter in DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) for your other monetization partners.
• You can even leverage Dynamic Allocation against your House ads.
– Instead of always running an unpaid House ad at the bottom of your ad serving logic, consider setting a Value CPM for your House ads to capture incremental revenue.
– Determine an approximate value for those ads, for example $0.20, and let AdSense or AdX win if the impression is worth at least $0.20.
3. Rank your monetization partners using the appropriate priority levels in DFP• AdSense/AdX can compete against Network, Bulk, Price Priority, and
House ads.
• It’s important to note that just because you are working with an ad network, that doesn’t mean it’s best for you to set them at Network priority.
• If you want to rank your monetization partners by their eCPM, we recommend Price Priority with frequency caps (see best practice #5).
Network % Delivers a fixed percent of remaining impressions, offers cost per day pricing
Bulk # Delivers based on an impression goal within specified time frame
Price $ Delivers the highest paying line item available based on rate enteredOffers daily and lifetime delivery caps
House --- Delivers only after all other eligible line items, commonly non-revenue generating
Publisher Best Practices – Yield Management
4. Troubleshoot delivery by ad unit using the Yield Report, the Line Items view in DFP, or the Publisher Console which will help you better understand how your ads are being served.• Yield Report example: This publisher should check why there are so many
unfilled impressions; you can click on the priority type and it will show you the breakdown by ad unit.
• Line Item view example: From the Inventory tab, select an ad unit, click Line Items, then click “Show unreserved line items” to see all the line items that are competing in that ad unit. (If you’re using AdX, this allows you to make sure you have targeted every ad unit.)
• Running the Publisher Console on the URL where you see ad misbehavior is the fastest and most reliable way to understand why an ad is not serving and/or why another one is being delivered instead. For more information about the Publisher Console search the DFP help center. (Note: the console only works if you have your pages tagged with the Google Publisher Tag.)
5. Leverage frequency caps to increase the fill rates of your other monetization partners and to distribute your most valuable impressions appropriately. • Know how many ad impressions your typical user sees per day and compare
this to how many different ad sources you are running.
• For example, if your average user sees 6 ads per day and you have 3 ad sources, consider a frequency cap on each ad source of 2 per day.
6. Consider accounting for revenue share, fill rate, and discrepancies in the price you set for your monetization partners in DFP. Dynamic allocation is based on the net price to you, so also be sure that the rates you enter for your monetization partners are not gross rates. For example:
Network A Network A Impression Report: 9,000 impressions
Revenue Share: 20% Network A Filled Impression Report: 8,000 impressions
DFP Frequency Cap: 3 per user per day Network A Revenue Report (pre-revshare): $8.00 earned
DFP Impressions Report: 10,000 impressions Network A eCPM Report: $1.00
Here, you might set the Rate for Network A at $1.00 since that’s what they report. Instead, we recommend calculating your own eCPM based on how many impressions your DFP says you are sending to them. Reminder, eCPM = (Total Revenue Post-Revshare/ Total Impressions) x 1,000
Network A Total Revenue (pre-revshare) = $8.00 DFP Total Impressions = 10,000
Total Revenue (post-revshare) = $8.00 x (1 – .20) = $6.40 Network A eCPM = $0.64
7. Consider setting different rules for your monetization partners based on geography. • For example, say Network A provides an eCPM of $0.80. But if you look at the
geographic reporting, you might see that their eCPM in the US is $1.00 and only $0.60 internationally. In this case, we recommend setting up two line items in DFP for Network A: one geo-targeted to the US with a $1.00 price, and one excluding the US with a $0.60 price. This way, dynamic allocation will compete against a more accurate rate.
• You might also want to have different business policies for your international versus domestic traffic. Consider leveraging different block lists, minimums, etc. to maximize yield across regions.
8. Set up a passback strategy. Even if your frequency caps and prices for your monetization partners are optimized, there may still be times when a monetization partner can’t fill a particular impression. What do you want them to do in that case?
1. Use DFP Small Business ad units with AdSense Enabled. This is the strategy we recommend to publishers as it is the best balance between overall revenue and minimal latency. Because the call to Google AdSense is coming from DFP rather than directly from the other partner, all of the information about the ad impressions can be sent to AdSense. Keep in mind that this strategy may complicate your reporting, especially when it comes to forecasting, because one impression will be counted as two calls to DFP.
How to set it up: Within DFP, create an additional set of ad units to send to your partner. Create one ad unit for each ad size and for each partner. When creating these ad units in DFP, you won’t traffic any line items through the ad units – simply make sure that the ad unit is enabled for AdSense.
2. Use Google AdSense ad tags. This option may lead to slightly less latency, but may lead to lower overall CPMs because when an ad call goes from one partner to another, some of the original information about the ad impression may get lost along the way, leading to ads that may be less targeted and have a lower CPM.
How to set it up: Within AdSense, follow the same principle as mentioned above: create a unique ad unit for each ad size and each partner. In addition, within AdSense you can also create a Custom Channel for the passback tags for each partner to see how AdSense is performing, broken out by partner.
3. Set up a daisy chain in DFP. We do not recommend using the daisy chain method because discrepancies can offset the increased revenue, and because it can increase the probability of looping (accidentally calling the same partner over and over again). In this process, you’ll call to DFP for an ad and DFP will send the ad call to a partner; if the partner doesn’t have an ad, it will pass-back the ad call to DFP, which will then call to a different partner for an ad, continuing until you get a paid ad.
4. Consider using AdMeld to manage partners and passbacks. Talk to your account manager to see if AdMeld might help with your specific yield management needs.
9. Periodically review your block lists. • Remember that for every buyer, advertiser, technology, and ad format
(including text ads) that you block, you are reducing auction pressure and overall demand for your inventory, and potentially missing out on additional revenue.
10. Start to develop a strategy around data, mobile, and video.• First, monitor who has access to your site
• Review all agreements with 3rd parties (including AdSense and AdX) to understand how they protect or use your data.
• Seek out opportunities to monetize your data. Consider selling it to third party data providers, or consider Audience Extension (sell your audience on other sites to your advertisers).
• Connect with your account manager to explore the various opportunities in video and mobile across AdSense, AdX, AdMob, and AdMeld.
• If you don’t have a mobile site, check out www.howtogomo.com for some tips, examples, and even an option for free hosting!
