Maximizing Ad Revenue as a Digital Publishing Business

TIP OF THE WEEK

by Vahe Arabian, Founder of SODP

Publishers can quickly get ads up and running on their site by signing up with a solutions partner with the appropriate technology and expertise. Onboarding can be completed in as little as a week, with the publisher’s biggest technical contribution being inserting a tag into their site’s header.

That’s not to say there aren’t strategic considerations that need to be weighed up, however. Maximizing ad revenue comes down to getting the foundation right before optimizing performance further down the track.

Here are some of the factors publishers should consider:

1. Ad types: Publishers can team up with any number of solution providers to show ads on their sites or apps, but it’s important to understand the different sizes and types available. Picking the most suitable ads will go a long way to improving audience engagement.
2. Target audience: Identifying the target audience is crucial for effective ad placement. Publishers need to align their ad content with the interests and demographics of their audience to maximize engagement and revenue.
3. Pricing strategy: There are several different pricing models that publishers can select when signing up with an adtech partner (CPM, CPC, CPA, CPI), with each having its pros and cons.
4. Tracking and optimization: Publishers with a robust plan for tracking and optimizing ad performance are far more likely to see their revenue grow than those without.
5. Legal considerations: Digital content providers must be aware of and comply with laws and regulations related to online advertising. This includes adhering to privacy regulations, avoiding deceptive practices and respecting IP rights.
6. UX: While most publishers will be tracking some website performance metrics to understand how engaged their audience is, it’s important to understand that ads can also impair a site’s user experience (UX) and reduce its SEO.
7. Load speed optimization: Publishers need to optimize ads to minimize their impact on website loading times. Slow-loading ads don’t just frustrate users, but they can also affect a page’s SEO.

PubTech2024 – Grab Your Pass!

Join us for the second annual PubTech virtual event for digital publishing and news media professionals.

The program features five days of 1-hour sessions: presentations, panels, and workshops. You can register for a single session or for the entire event.

??? 18-22 November 2024

Agenda:

• Day 1: Rethinking Approaches to Digital Product Development and Innovation
• Day 2: Scaling Your Business through Automation in Advertising and Revenue Operations
• Day 3: SEO in the Age of AI: Emerging Opportunities and Battles
• Day 4: How Leading Publishers Capture and Utilize First-Party Data: A Case Study
• Day 5: Gaining a Competitive Advantage through First-Party Data

View agenda and register →

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Sites Seeing Higher CPMs Using Ad IDs & First-Party Data Solutions

Digital advertising is undergoing significant changes. Contributing factors include evolving privacy regulations and the removal of third-party cookies from browsers. The pace of change has created a divide between those adopting new strategies and those relying on outdated methods, with this gap most pronounced among web publishers.

With third-party cookies nearly extinct, first-party data has taken center stage. ‘Identity’ solutions, focused on matching publisher-collected user emails and phone numbers, have emerged as the preferred method to replace the targeting quality advertisers and agencies are eager to maintain. Identity solutions refer broadly to a form of personalized data that complies with established privacy regulations and standards. This means protecting personally identifiable data by securely ‘hashing’ and serializing it, allowing advertisers and publishers to keep user data anonymous while matching users with campaigns via a unique identifier (ad ID).

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Transparency and trust: How news consumers in Canada want AI to be used in?journalism

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and news production, Canadian news consumers want to know when, how and why AI is part of journalistic work. And if they don’t get that transparency, they could lose trust in news organizations.

News consumers are so concerned about how the use of AI could impact the accuracy of stories and the spread of misinformation, a majority favour government regulation of how AI is used in journalism.

These are some of the preliminary findings after surveying a representative sample of 1,042 Canadian news consumers, most of whom accessed news daily.

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Online News Consumption Has Surpassed Television – But Broadcasters Are Still the Most Widely Trusted

More people in the UK now access news online than on television, according to new survey data from the media regulator, Ofcom. This is the first time Ofcom’s annual news consumption poll found online media use ahead of TV news.

The immediate press reaction to the survey suggested television is in terminal decline, with online media replacing TV news. Ofcom itself pitted one format against another by declaring in the study’s headline: “TV loses its crown as main source for news.”

Yet rather than the survey reflecting a “generational shift” in audience behaviour, the truth is it has been going on for decades.

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