Better Monetize a High Traffic Website with Ad Revenue Optimization Tools

Websites with highly engaged visitors can push their ad revenue up to 534% with ad refresh and header bidding solutions

Analyzing Ad Monetization Potential of High Traffic Website with Long Sessions

For the websites that already have high traffic and long sessions – people spending more time on the website – focusing on bringing even more traffic does not make sense. Instead, making efforts to optimize the current ad delivery for improving ad monetization can get far better results. To understand this, let us go back to the basics taught in the Eisenberg brothers’ ad optimization hierarchy pyramid.

Image 1: Eisenberg Brothers’ Ad Optimization Hierarchy Pyramid

Starting from the base of the pyramid, most of the websites can track and ensure that the ads displayed are functional (work properly) and accessible (responsive). The challenge arises as we move higher in the pyramid. The next stages, i.e., usable, intuitive, and persuasive, require the ads to deliver VALUE. They should be relevant, non-intrusive yet eye-catching, and legible.

For these, people need ad revenue optimization tools, which ensures relevant ads are served to the visitors with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. When it comes to ad revenue optimization for high traffic websites with long sessions, there is an argument that needs to be considered: why serve only one ad to the visitors when they are spending so much time on your website? Increasing the number of ads served in a single session seems logical in this case to increase ad revenue.

This article discusses various strategies that a high traffic website with long sessions can implement with the help of an ad revenue optimization tool.

Challenges with Serving Multiple Ads in the Same Session

Let us understand the scenario of a standard website without any ad revenue optimization features. The visitor requests the webpage that triggers the ad server to load ads in the available slots, and so the process ends. There is no further communication between the ad server and website till the time the visitor refreshes the website.

Now, if the website is using an ad optimization technique like auto-refresh, the ad server will load new ads based on a predefined logic in the same session on the webpage. The logic can be

• User action – search/scroll/click,
• Event – countdown/ticker, or
• Time – 30/60/90 sec

Auto-refresh is best suited for publishers that experience above-average session time, like web-based gaming or educational certificate websites, on which it is understood that users will likely stay on a single webpage for the entire duration. At first glance, this sounds promising since if we go by standard calculation, this can help publishers increase revenue-per-session. However, there are particular concerns and challenges to consider.

For the buyers of the ad slots, the auto-refresh is not a preferable process since they expect the ad not to change until the user refreshes the page. With auto-refresh, they end up paying the full price for an impression that gets interrupted by an auto-refresh trigger.

There are some concerns for the publishers as well.

• Auto-refresh do help publishers grow their overall ad revenue by increasing revenue-per-session, but CPMs tend to decline with each successive instance of the refresh.
• Auto-refreshing will lead to higher bandwidth usage as well since the webpage will make new HTTP requests to the ad server that consume data while fetching the new set of ad creatives.
• Apart from operational challenges, there might be a drop in user experience since most users will notice when ads refresh, resulting in the webpage appearing jerky or flashy.
• The process of implementing and managing ad revenue optimization tools is complicated and time-consuming.
• The practice of pushing ad inventory to the networks that offer the highest rates first and then to others ignores the value these ads are delivering to the visitor and may lead to low ad yield.

Conclusion

For a high traffic website, whose visitors spent more time on the website, it is logical to opt for the ad revenue optimization solutions like ad auto-refresh and header bidding. However, most of the solutions available in the market have a complex, time-consuming configuration process. Also, such optimization tools may hamper the performance and user experience of your website.