In this context of macroeconomic crisis and cut of advertising expenses, publishers need all the keys to limit their unsold inventory. In this new article, you will find 7 tips that can help you fill your remnant inventory at its maximum capacity.
Tip #1 – Exploit all the formats and media types
First, for all display placements we recommend using all the sizes, formats (MPU medium rectangle 300×250, larger one 336×280, leaderboard 728×90, half page 300×600…) and media types (display, native and video outstream) that are available on your ad server, and thus, maximize your monetization as it will open your inventory to a larger demand.
Tip #2 – Improve your ad viewability rate
Improving your viewability rate and displaying it on your media kit and on your DV360 marketplace profile will allow you to attract more advertisers willing to pay more for the most viewed ad spaces. Remember that the higher the viewability, the better your profitability for that placement! Try reaching at least 70% of viewability rate on desktop and 65% on mobile. There will be more buyers for your inventory, and you’ll increase your RPM.
Read: Advertising viewability: your best ally in boosting your eCPMs
Tip #3 – Reduce your price floor value
Lowering your price floors will help improve your fill rate, by decreasing the number of unfilled impressions. But this change requires a constant manual monitoring from your side to ensure a CPM per request as it will probably have another effect of decreasing the average eCPM too ; Which is not always easy to do if you don’t have the time or the right resources. This is why an automatic price floor solution able to calculate dynamically the real value of your inventory is the best solution, such as the one Opti Yield provides.
Discover: 6 Reasons to Deploy Dynamic Price Floors for Your Ad Inventories
Tip #4 – Increase your floor and run a second ad call
In 2022, the volume of unfilled inventory has increased across all publishers because of the energy and inflation crisis. Samewise, the unsold rate grows when you implement an automated UPR tool pushing minimum values in the bid requests. This side effect happens because not all buyers will afford to pay a higher price. That’s why we highly recommend completing a dynamic floor price with a second ad call at a lower price in order to offer a real change in value proposition.
Fallback, backfill or second ad call is the process of filling or backing up an ad space with another advertisement when the first bid request has failed to be sold. Also called “unsold recovery”, it is a second chance to fill the remnant inventory with default campaigns. The value of a second ad call is generally lower than at the first bidding level.
Your fill rate will soar, so will your advertising revenue. Our technical team has recently released a new second call feature which allows publishers to convert 50% to 70% of remnant inventory into filled one. To know more about automatic price floors and second call ads, feel free to reach out to us.
Tip #5 – Give access to your inventory to more bidders
It is important to open your inventory to several demand partners in order to boost competition and optimize the filling of your ad spaces. To know which ones are really bringing extra revenue to you, we recommend regularly measuring their incremental value by running A/B tests. Also remember to frequently check in with SSPs to benefit from all they can bring you such as new formats they may offer, deal IDs they can plug in, or original features they may enable.
Tip #6 – Optimize your consent rate
One of your best allies in your monetization, especially since reinforcement of data privacy laws in Europe and in the USA, is to optimize your consent rate. If you did not set up a CMP yet, this is essential to your monetization in those geographies. SSPs bid according to the user consent: If users agree to share their personal data, advertisers are able to target them better according to their browsing behavior and pay a higher price to reach their targeted audience. On the contrary, users who do not accept to share their data will only be targetable through alternative ways such as context or user IDs.
So how to optimize your consent rate?
- Send a specific message to the users that refuse to consent to make them change their choice into positive consents. It can be done through consent recovery campaigns served through an alternative cookieless Ad Server such as Opti Digital Ad Server.
- On the consentless audience, display your message on a floating banner, degrading the user experience. It may help change people’s minds. Always keep an eye on your bounce rate as it may impact your traffic.
- Restrict access to your content to consenting users via a paywall offering consent or pay options.
Tip #7 – Segment your audience
Help advertisers reach their targeted audience, so they spend more advertising budget on your media: With cookies and positive consent strings, you’ll be able to offer behavioral targeting capacity. Unfortunately, approximately 30% of the inventory is now cookieless, on Safari and Firefox users. Try to offer visitors an extra service through a registration wall: Segment your inventory by user types, offering a better browsing experience to logged-in users for instance. Such a registration will enable you to convert hashed email address or cell phone number into alternative IDs and to send them through the bid request. Though these IDs are not used in open auctions, some publishers report greater RPM thanks to them on private deals.
As you see, turning remnant inventory into sold impressions requires constant efforts and solid technology.
If you have any doubts about how to convert those tips into actions or if you need any custom advice from dedicated experts, we would be happy to know your situation. Leave us a message here.
