10+ AdX Optimization Tips for Publishers to Increase your Ad Revenue

Last updated on April 27th, 2023 at 06:12 pm

DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) is an ad management tool by Google in which the publishers are allowed to set the priorities based on the advertising standards, whether to display the ads from Adsense or from other ad networks. The real-time bidding environment where inventories are sold in a lightning-fast auction at the best price for every ad so that advertisers could be potentially bidding more for an available inventory. Here the publishers can integrate many functions in one ad platform  like schedule online ads, prioritize the ad list, manage inventory, optimize revenues by displaying the ad that will generate the highest income. DFP has two versions : DFP SB which is free & DFP premium, the paid version. Google’s AdX-DFP Unification brought both platforms together to allow seamless transaction in any sales channel with full transparency and control. This powerful product with single efficient UI provides cross-channel and cross-platform sales, targeting and reporting capabilities.

The Need for ADX Optimization for Publishers

Direct access to AdX was reserved only for very large publishers. Small- to medium-sized publishers used AdSense, as getting approval for AdX was difficult. Recently, Google has made it more accessible. Publishers can have multiple floor prices on individual queries, either higher or lower than the target CPM that a publisher provides, but across multiple queries, the average CPM for the inventory will be higher than the target CPM. Initially, publishers used AdX price floors to organize waterfalls, in which each demand partner would compete against the floor price set for it. AdX optimization can specifically keep advertisers away. Open auction pricing rules is DFP’s own optimized pricing only available to specific publishers. The revenue lift for publishers can be anywhere from 5% to 40%. Additionally, value is returned in cost savings, publishers can save money and make their ad-ops and ad-tech engineers spend time on different areas of specialization. There are a lot of ADX partners to try, however, we recommend OKO as our preferred solutions partner for website revenue uplift through ADX and exchange bidding.

10 ADX Optimization Tips for Publishers to Increase Your Ad Revenue

Take a look at the most recommended Adx optimization tips and best practices. If you’re running Adx tags and not using or enabling these features/ implementing these tips, you’re seriously leaving money behind.

1. Enable Dynamic Allocation:

Dynamic allocation in DFP means there are third-party ad networks running on the same ad units, these third-party ad networks will compete for the remaining impressions when AdX is not able to fill spaces. Instead of general targeting granular inventory targeting should be prioritized. Price floor targeting can be broadened by using specific geographical location or devices or by creating a floor for every individual ad unit in the inventory. Dynamic price floors adjust themselves in the real-time optimizing price for selected publishers.

2. Enable Exchange Bidding along with ADX:

The set-up of Ad Exchange and header bidding together, give the opportunity to push up the final CPM and increase earnings. It gives Ad Exchange the chance to win only if it can beat the highest bid from Header Bidding. It happens in 2 steps first when Header Bidding results in a bid higher than AdX can pay & when Header Bidding forces AdX to pay more, the final bid is pushing upwards. Exchange Bidding puts an end to Google’s ability to select the very best inventory for itself but equal footing with the rest of the publishers who can see every bid in every auction. It enables publishers to expose and sell their inventory to more demand partners while getting the highest possible yield for each impression. Also allows multiple demand sources to bid real-time for the same inventory so publishers can expect higher ad revenues and better monetization efficiency. Signup with an ADX partner here (with Exchange Bidding enabled).

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3. Setup Price Floors

A price floor is a minimum threshold price level below which an advertising campaign cannot be served. The lowest winning bid must be equal to or greater than the floor price. To bridge the difference between the highest bid and closing price in second-price auctions, publishers decided on manual price floor optimization by Bid landscape analysis & Recovery partners with 100% fill rate to monetize impressions.

4. Setup Pricing Rules:

Identifying specific buyers, advertisers, or brands and associate a minimum CPM or target CPM with them can efficiently be done by open auction pricing rules. Multiple pricing rules for a given ad request can be applied. This technique is used to expose an inventory to the largest potential pool of advertisers. In an optimal real-time bidding auction with revenue being the most important value, every single impression should be sold to the buyer who wants to pay the most. Many RTB ecosystems are driven by open auction pricing.

5. Compete ADX with AdSense:

Adsense is a product from Google for publishers and bloggers to make money from blogging. It shows contextual ads based on interest. AdSense ads compete for each ad impression or against other advertisers. Creating a bidding war for high-value users means getting the correct price for ads. Publishers when customizing ad styles in AdSense should choose colors that stand out against the background & maximize the ad space with multiple ad units. They can create up to 500 custom channels in AdSense. Running AdX and AdSense in parallel means buyers would be able to buy at the cheaper rate especially when there are some dynamic floors enabled for AdX.

6. Set Up Opt-in and Opt-out Rules:

Opting-in is the process by which a user takes an affirmative action to offer their consent. It can be used in a variety of situations, getting consent to use cookies, or allowing users to agree to the legal policies. Opting out is the process by which a user takes action to withdraw their consent. There is pre-emptive opt-out where users can uncheck a marked box or otherwise undo a confirmation.  Another is consent withdrawal. Most common is the famous “unsubscribe“ link. Any business will need to employ both methods to remain compliant with the law and appease their customers.

7. Sell Inventory Directly with ADX Buyers:

Publishers depend on ad networks to bring a wide pool of advertisers to buy their inventories in return of which networks take a revenue share or fixed price fee. Programmatic sales are certain and have the ease of managing, reporting, monitoring, and optimization with tools. But there are certain reasons where direct sale of inventories are preferred more:

• Publishers get more revenue as they can keep the entire share of revenue to themselves and also publishers of any scale can get as much as five times more the amount with direct sales, for the same inventory sold programmatically.
• Going direct to the advertiser significantly reduces this risk and helps to serve safe malware free ads on the website.
• Direct selling enables creative control of ad campaigns.

But this is a laborious and time consuming process, there are things to keep in mind.

• Content and traffic quality of inventories.
• Niche-specific engaging content
• Dedicated resources to handle sales and ad ops on the domain.

8. Setup Experiments

Experiments is used to monitor actual network traffic that how a change will impact revenue. The impression traffic allocated to the “experiment” group can be compared with the traffic allocated to the “control” group to see which performed better during the experiment. Data collected from the experiment is displayed for review after it has ended. Several metrics are present for comparison of the performance of the control and experimental groups in graph form. For native style experiments, the group with a higher CTR wins the experiment. A high CTR is an indication of long-term performance.

9. Bring in More Demand to Increase Competition

AdX has the monopoly of every impression, with increased competition it will be pushed to pay more. Advertisers engage in a dynamic game, whose equilibrium determines the market characteristics. They require bidding strategies to optimize the allocation of budget to incoming impressions in order to maximize cumulative profits over the length of the campaign. Sometimes advertisers have similar targeting criteria and bid for the same inventory of ads. Thus, by the dynamic bidding strategy, an advertiser impacts the competitive landscape for other advertisers in the market. The optimized competition enables to improve overall yield on inventory eligible for dynamic allocation across Ad Manager and Ad Exchange, through increased competition between direct and indirect sales in an easy & automated manner. This opens up to an opportunity of more revenue for publishers as they bring in additional demand which can directly compete with ADX and increase the ADX CPMs. OKO is a one stop solution for bringing in more demand partners apart from ADX. You can sign up here with them.

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10. Use a Price Floor Optimization Partner:

Exchanges know what the top price can be from a given auction and implement their “dynamic price floors” which will beat any inference based system. With less perfect knowledge the automated price floor vendor algorithm has to guess at the right floor vs. exchanges. Optimization partners will help with growing ad revenue, strategizing across many areas including setup & maintenance.

11. Other ADX Optimization Rules

• Most efficient of other optimization tips is “ Branding”. It is marketing practice in which a product or a service of a company become easily identifiable and can be distinguished from other products and services. Publishers set up a branded minimum CPM, buyers who are targeting their domains need to bid at least that minimum CPM to compete in the auction for their inventory or else they will be ineligible to win that impression.
• Prioritization of ads according to the dynamic price floors, DFP target CPM, open auction prices, etc.
• Blocking specific publishers/ advertisers for a particular time span to filter out based on activities, interests, niche, etc.
• Opportunities are weekly projections of past data records where a small change affects impressions.

Roundup

Traditionally, an advertiser directly buys ad spaces by negotiating deals with a publisher by signing a guaranteed contract. These deals usually take the form of a specific number of ad impressions reserved over a particular time horizon. In the growing market of Ad Exchanges, publishers face new challenges in choosing between

the dynamic allocation of contract-based reservation ads and spot market ads. The publisher should take into account the tradeoff between short-term revenue from an Ad Exchange and the long-term impact of assigning high-quality impressions to the reservations measured by the CTR (click-through rate). Hence the main objective of AdX optimization remains to allow the highest CPM bidder to get the most impressions.

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