AdTech Bytes #03 - Can there be a thing such as a “good ad” experience?
It’s cricket season and I wanted to quickly check the scores for the England vs India Test match. So, I opened Cricbuzz and this is what happened.
I clicked on the ad by mistake and quickly closed the tab. I am sure I am not the only one. How many times has this happened to you? When you accidentally click on the ad, an ad click is generated but because you closed the tab before it loaded, it won’t be recorded. Everyone loses - the advertiser, the publisher, and the user. How can the publisher fix this one thing and it benefits everyone?
This is what I wanted to cover - Good ad experience. Let’s get to it.
Core Web Vitals For Better Ad Experience
Core Web Vitals will directly impact search engine positions for publishers starting May 2021.
It essentially consists of three metrics - ( LCP) Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the page loads), (CLS) Cumulative layout shift (how fast is the page stable), and First input delay (how fast is the page interactive).
CLS is the easiest offence publishers can commit. When publishers allow different height ad-units to serve in a single ad slot to maximize competition in programmatic auctions. Because ads are loaded after the content, the story often moves up and down. Reserving adequate ad space before actual ad load and fixed ad height can help publishers prevent a CLS-killing “jump.” Most importantly, Publishers who fix jumpy layouts will be well-positioned atop the search engine results list -- a place of power for both readers and advertisers. How publishers can minimize layout shift? Read this article.
How NY Times is Driving 20% Ad Revenue with First-Party Data
Two big assumptions that have been shaken to their core -
- Charging a premium for content is not a good idea.
- If charging for content, it should atleast be an ad-free offering
We want paid subscriptions to be ad-free. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Premium, and Spotify Premium are all ad-free. But wait - step back. There is no rule that says that.
That’s the case with NY Times. Being a subscription-first business, NY Times has always focussed on improving the user experience. So what did they do?
- Times stopped running open market programmatic ads in apps in 2020,
- Removed low-quality ads from the website, and
- Showed much more personalized ads basis the information they collected from the users. And these ads perform better for the advertisers. Targeting is more accurate and relevance is maintained for the readers. More details on how and what - here.
A win-win for everyone - the advertiser, the reader, and of course NY Times. The growth in ad revenue coming in from first-party data is expected to grow as there are plenty more potential subscribers.