Gal Glikman — August 3, 2017 — August 3, 2017
With Google and Facebook taking the majority of online advertising profits, everyone else has been swimming against the strong current of competition in the hopes of profiting from this potentially lucrative market.
Throw increasingly popular ad blockers into the mix, and the outlook suddenly seems bleak. Your readers need to see ads if you want them to be clicked, but you don’t want to annoy them to the point that they stop visiting your site.
Luckily, there are still ways to grow your online ad revenue while keeping your users happy.
Bring Ads to Their Target Audiences
It isn’t just the quality of online ads that makes them effective; it’s also important to tailor ads to specific audiences. Provide ads people enjoy seeing, not the ones you believe will have the most views. Forbes, for example, now uses a Data Management Platform and Recommendation Engine to create custom advertising packages for readers that suggests content based on reading history. This not only makes for a better user experience, but it also brings online publishers closer to the revenue they’re looking for.
PIRO4D / Pixabay
Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions is a feature that does exactly what the name suggests: it extends your ads by making them bigger and more click-accessible. Ad extensions have been shown to improve customer CTR because they increase the size of available click space in the most effective way.
Google, for instance, provides extensions based on the context of the advertisement, like a large, clickable phone number for a restaurant ad, and show the most highly-performing extensions for that specific category of ad to ensure the best CTR possible.
Grow Traffic to Your Site
Easier said than done, right? Not necessarily. There are many tactics you can use to attract more visitors to your site and keep them coming back. An important one to consider is creating quality content for your website.
This could mean anything from covering trending topics that are connected to your niche to improving the design of the web pages on your site. Storytelling is always a great way to attract readers and to generate more demand for content, as well as create a better overall user experience.
StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay
Use Ad Recovery Solutions
While increasing traffic to your site is essential to growing your online ad revenue, it’s also important that users have access to quality content in the first place. Growing your online ad revenue doesn’t necessarily require that you create new revenue channels or expand existing efforts. The fact is, publishers are leaving money on the table each day when ads on their site aren’t being served to ad blocking users, which may account for as many as one out of every three visitors.
Ad recovery tools, like those of Uponit and Ooyala, allow publishers to bypass ad blockers and choose which ads to display to their ad blocking audience. A recent study by Hubspot suggests this solution may satisfy everyone. Most respondents (68%) said they were fine with ads as long as they weren’t annoying. Another 31% said they were willing to see ads to support websites. Ad recovery solutions tend to avoid displaying annoying ads and provide an overall positive experience for users, which is vital to ensure repeat visits.
Optimize Your Website for Ad Placement
Appearance really is everything when it comes to advertisements. You’ll want the display of your web pages to incorporate enough space for ads to stand off the page, without overwhelming your visitors.
The ideal web page can accommodate the most popular ad sizes, so experiment with layout and design after determining what those sizes are in relation to the niche you’re targeting. Make sure the advertisements provide enough information and still look appealing.
Don’t Forget About Mobile
Most internet browsing these days is done through mobile devices, which is good news for online publishers. There are a number of things you can do to increase mobile ad revenue.
First, it’s important to configure your site so that it’s readable and easy to use on mobile. It’s also important to make sure the ads you display on your site actually fit on a mobile screen. Otherwise, viewers won’t be able to decipher these ads when they view them on mobile.
FirmBee / Pixabay
Optimizing ad sizes and types, overcoming ad blockers, and tailoring ads the right audience are all essential to growing your online ad revenue. By combining these strategies, you’ll be sure to profit from your online ads–and grow your business along with it.
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