How to Auto Refresh ADX Ad Tags via Google Ad Manager

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Last updated on July 21st, 2022 at 11:20 am

Google Ad Exchange is arguably the biggest Ad exchange which is synced with 100s of other exchanges, DSPs and programmatic environments that lets publishers earn higher revenues. While Google’s revenue share for AdSense is 32% and publishers retain 68% of the net revenue and advertiser spends, the revenue share of Google on ADX is 20%. So, publishers share comes to around 80%. ADX is only given to premium publishers who are doing more than 50 million page views per month. However, sub-ADX accounts are provided by Google ADX approved partners. They typically take a cut of 15-20% of your revenue, but still, your overall revenue would be at least 20%-25% higher than AdSense since the CPM rates are much higher in Ad Exchange where only big buyers and DSPs bid for impressions.

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  • While auto-refreshing of ads is banned in AdSense, the same is allowed for Google ADX publishers if it is declared by a rule in the ADX. In this tutorial, we are going to discuss how you can use the auto-refresh feature of ADX to increase your overall ad revenue. In this tutorial, you will learn

    • Benefits of Auto Refreshing Ad Tags
    • A Stepwise Guide to Auto Refresh Ad Tags via DFP
    • Impact of Auto Refresh Ad Tags on Overall Revenue
    • Recommended Tips while Auto Refreshing Ads
    • How to make Ad tags sticky on WordPress

    Benefits of Auto Refreshing Ad Tags for Publishers

    Auto-refreshing ADX ad tags can help publishers increase their overall revenue. However, this is particularly possible on websites where “user time on site” is quite high. If a user is spending 5 mins on a website, he/she can be showed 5 ad impressions which can be refreshed at an interval of 60 seconds, thereby increasing the overall impression count by 5 times. However, we suggest using only 1 auto-refreshing ad units per page since auto-refresh units necessarily need to be sticky to ensure high viewability. Thus, enabling auto-refresh ad tags will help you increase your site’s revenue. Now, we will discuss how you can get started with Auto-refreshing ad units.

    Stepwise Guide on How to Auto Refresh ADX Ad Tag via DFP

    Firstly, you need to get in touch with an ADX partner who can provide you with ADX ad tags. Generally, your site will be screened by the ADX partner before they approve you for ADX tags. For this, you need to make some modifications on your site as instructed (like having a privacy policy, ensuring site menus not overlapping on ads etc). After the internal screening you site will be submitted to Google ADX approval and once approved, you will be able to receive ad tags. This process typically takes 48-72 hours and depends on how quickly you make the changes. We do provide ADX tags.

    Also Read:  Ad Network Arbitrage 2023

    Once you have the ad tags, you need to contact your ADX partner requesting them to declare a rule to make the require ad unit sticky and set a time-based refresh interval of 60 seconds. You have the option to declare the refresh rate anywhere between 30 seconds to 360 seconds. However, we recommend that you start with 60 seconds refresh interval. Once the refresh rate is declared, you now need to setup auto-refresh. For this, you will be needing signing up to DFP.

    Login to your DFP account. Once logged in, go to Inventory tab and click on Ad units. Now click on “New Ad units” and scroll down to populate the fields. Include the name and code, the size of the ad unit and make sure to override AdSense setting. You wouldn’t want AdSense ads to be shown here, so uncheck the box which remains check by default. Now click on the save button and get the ad code. The code should look like

    <script async=’async’ src=’https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js’></script>
    <script>
    var googletag = googletag || {};
    googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || [];
    </script>

    <script>
    googletag.cmd.push(function() {
    googletag.defineSlot(‘/XXXXX/Beamingnotes.com_336x280‘, [336, 280], ‘div-gpt-ad-XXXXXXXX-0’).addService(googletag.pubads());
    googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
    googletag.enableServices();
    });
    </script>

    <!– /6418929/Beamingnotes.com_336x280 –>
    <div id=’div-gpt-ad-1512397593848-0′ style=’height:280px; width:336px;’>
    <script>
    googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1512397593848-0’); });
    </script>
    </div>

    Copy and paste the section which is bold in the code above in a notepad. Now, you need to create a new Order and a Line item. Under Delivery tab, click on New Order. Create a new line item and add the inventory size. Under settings, the type should be declared as Ad Exchange type. For this, you need to ask your ADX partner to link your sub-ADX account with your DFP. By default, DFP assigns a priority of 12 to Ad Exchange type line items. Now, you just need to select the ad unit from the list and click on save button. This will setup your line item. Futher, you just need to add a creative which is a ADX default and click on the Approve button to make the line item ready. Once the line item is ready, take the ad unit code which you pasted in the text editor and place it on the website with refresh capabilities. DFP offers refresh capability on ads which can be attained by making some changes in the ad code.

    You can get in touch with us to setup Auto-refreshing ad units via DFP or consult with your developer for the same. 

    Impact of Auto-refreshing Ad Tags on your Overall Revenue

    Auto-refreshing of ad tags is only recommended when visitors spend considerable time on your site.  There are three types of auto-refresh triggers that can be declared in Google Ad Exchange.

    • User-actions
    • Event Driven content changes
    • Time Intervals

    Time interval auto-refresh rates can be set to 30s, 60s, 90s, 120s, 180s, 240s, 300s, 360s

    Also Read:  Introduction to Exchange Bidding: Benefits and EBDA Partner List

    As a publisher, you need to test which refresh-rate is generating the maximum revenue on your site. I would recommend you get started with 60 s refresh interval. Since 60 seconds gives a user enough time to engage with the ad and initiate an action (like link click) if required.

    As discussed, always make your auto-refreshing ad tags sticky. This is highly recommended to ensure that your CPMs don’t drop hugely once the auto-refresh time intervals are set. When you declare an ad as auto-refresh, automatically the CTR percentage will drop. However, making it sticky will ensure a 100% view rate and would encourage the user view and interact with the ad.

    We encourage publishers to use auto-refresh ads on websites which have high time on site since this gives the option to show a few ad impressions. However, note that showing ads to the same user multiple times will decrease the overall CPM of the ad unit but still you will make higher revenues out of it.

    So, for the first few days, you will see much higher revenue because of auto-refresh. So, if you set the refresh rate at 60 secs, and on an average, a user stays on your site for 5 mins, your revenue for the particular ad unit will be almost 5X.

    However, a user wouldn’t really interact with all those 5 ad units and since the same user sees 5 ads, the overall CPM would dip a bit. This usually takes 2-3 days for the algorithm to realize and you can see some dip in your overall earnings. However, that ad unit will still give you at least 2x of what it was generating. So, if the ad unit is generating $50 a day for you, that same ad unit when set on auto-refresh will generate you at least $100 if you adhere to all the points listed here.

    We tried auto refresh ads on our blog here at Blognife and the overall performance has been quite good. We were able to generate more than 5 times our overall impression from one ad unit and the revenue we achieved was 3 times higher than we used to for the same ad unit. For the first few days, it was around 4-5 times, but it gradually decreases and setting at 3X. Still, this is quite a good return, and you guys too can dedicate an ad unit for auto-refresh to boost your overall revenue.

    Recommended Tips while Auto Refreshing ADX Tags via DFP

    I would like to reiterate the following points while using auto-refresh ad tags. Please ensure that these criterions are met, and you need to periodically keep an eye on your overall ad revenue and make changes should you feel that the revenue has dropped and changes are required.

    1) Ensure that your auto-refresh ad tag is sticky.

    This is extremely crucial from an overall revenue point of view. The end objective to run auto-refresh ad tags is to ensure maximization of overall revenue. To allow this, your auto-refresh tags should have a 100% viewability rate. This is only possible if you made the ad tag sticky. Also, it gives the user the opportunity to interact with the ad unit in the form of a click or engage with the ad. If the ad unit is not sticky, the user may scroll past the ad unit and still the ad will refresh, and hence it might not be viewable to the user most of the time. This will result in an overall lowering of the ad revenue as algorithms will detect the viewability index and low CTR and the CPMs will drastically fall.

    Also Read:  Refresh Google AdSense Ads, Ad Refresh Rate, and Policy

    2) We recommend using the following sticky ad tags on desktop- 120×600, 160×600, 300×250

    We recommend using separate ad units for mobile and desktop. The ad sizes which you can use as sticky on a desktop are 120×600, 160×600 and 300×250. You can have two rail ads (120×600, 160×600) or a single 300×250 sidebar sticky ad on the desktop.

    3) While on mobile, you can make the following ad tags sticky 320×50.

    On mobile, the best option is to go with a 320×50 auto-refresh sticky ad unit. This can be placed at the bottom of the screen and can be made sticky. We suggest you WP Advanced Ads plugin which has the functionality to make any ad unit sticky on mobile and desktop and also allows users to create separate ad layouts for mobile and desktop traffic.

    How to Make Ad Tags Sticky on WordPress Blogs

    Finally, we come to the end topics of the tutorial that talks about how you can make your ad tag sticky on WordPress. To ensure maximization of ad revenue, we noticed that we require two separate ad units- one for mobile and one for the desktop. This would require setting up of two different ad layouts. This is possible using WP Advanced Ads WordPress plugin. I suggest you buy the premium version of WP Advanced WordPress plugin which allows you to set 320×50 sticky ads on your site. A developer would charge you around $100 to hardcode it and by that amount, you can easily get the plugin and make use of its myriad ad placement features. In case, you want only the desktop ad unit to be sticky, you can use Q2W3 WordPress plugin which can make any widget on the sidebar sticky.

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    If you’re stuck anywhere while setting up auto-refreshing ads, feel free to get in touch over mail and we can help you with the setup. I can be reached at [email protected]. Also, feel free to contact me if you would like to run ADX ad tags on your website, we can help you setup ADX tags. Note, Blognife is a Digimyx Infotech Initiative.

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    Looking to Increase your Ad Revenue: Get in touch with me for a personalised consultation and increase your ad revenue across native, display, video (instream and outstream), in-app and other verticals. I also assist in customized DFP setup, header bidding, and content creation strategy. My skype id is: ronniedey. Feel free to connect!

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