As mobile devices continue to dominate the process of content consumption, accelerated mobile pages (AMP) have come as a boon for publishers. It is used to develop a website that loads faster on mobile. Also, to improve the core web vitals, user experience, traffic, ad viewability, conversions, and many more across devices.
However, it doesn’t have only good outcomes but trade-offs and eventual impacts too.
AMP restricts publishers from inserting third-party JavaScripts, offers fewer ad slots, accepts few ad formats and sizes, and has a basic UX design. These fallbacks bring serious impacts on ad revenue. But worry not, as we are here to help.
This blog takes you through AMP monetization and the six best strategies to improve ad revenue on AMP pages. By the end of this blog, you will learn how to improve the ad revenue and, at the same time, protect the user experience of AMP pages despite the limitations and restrictions it has.
Table of Contents
What Are Accelerated Mobile Pages?
AMPs are mobile-first pages developed and launched by Google in 2015 to improve the website performance on mobile devices. It stripped down the traditional HTML and CSS in the websites and offered a new way for the publishers to build a website with pages that are lightweight and mobile-focused.
AMP allows publishers to serve content and ads quickly and efficiently. In essence, AMP pages lift the user experience and engagement by enhancing speed and performance.
Why Do Publishers Need AMP?
Google, by introducing AMP, did a favor for you in improving the website performance by improving the following factors:
- Lighting loading speed and lightweight: AMP eliminates the clutters and simplifies the website’s structure to make it lightweight and load faster to meet the speedy content and other demands of the users.
- Good user experience: AMP pages are mobile-focused, easy to surf, and despise unnecessary elements. This increased the overall user satisfaction in consuming the exactly needed content and browsing experience. You, at the same time, will also get views for your ads, and thus, it improves ad viewability.
- Better engagement and conversions: AMP pages improve the browsing experience and engagement. The users who enter your website to consume content will also see ads and might interact with the non-intrusive ads. This can increase the click-through rates and conversions.
- Google promotes AMP pages: Page loading speed is an important SEO factor used by Google to rank the websites. Naturally, AMP pages load faster and will likely rank higher in the search. What is happening here is Google is promoting AMP pages not directly but through the page speed metric that it offers through AMP.
- Improved ad performance: It is obvious that users buzz into the site, which gives importance to speed, UX, and relevant content. It increases the site’s traffic and, therefore, the ad viewability, interactions, conversions, and overall ad performance. Finally, it will positively reflect on your ad revenue.
- Efficient content distribution: AMP pages are backed by top platforms and content distribution channels such as Google Search, Google News, and Twitter. So, effective content distribution is at your fingertip.
Although AMP pages enhance user experience and ad performance, it does not support efficient ad serving. You can see the maximum yield only if it allows you to serve ads better on the site. To break the limitations posed by AMP and increase the yield, AMP monetization solutions come into the ad tech ecosystem to rescue you.
What Is AMP Monetization? Why Is it Needed?
AMP monetization is the process of implementing strategies, best practices, and optimization in the elements of ad serving, such as ad placement, format, ad refresh, floor prices, etc., to increase ad revenue and achieve maximum yield.
This feature is born to tackle the problems in the AMP pages with audience tracking, campaign output measuring, and especially in achieving maximum yield. Here are the few demerits of AMP that stress the need for AMP monetization.
- First, AMP does not allow third-party JavaScript tag insertion and uses its library files. Even though the amp script is there to insert custom JS, it does have its limitations. You cannot add a script that weighs more than 150 KB.
- AMP is not compatible with all ad types, only a few. You will be forced to choose only the AMP-compliant ad networks, which potentially affects your fill rate.
- Compared to Non-AMP pages, AMP pages support few ad formats and placements. It limits ad type to give good UX, but it badly reflects on the ad revenue.
- AMP strives to balance the importance between ad viewability and user experience.
- You will lose control and flexibility over the ad placement and format
- Since it eliminates many unnecessary elements, the website will look lifeless to the users without visually appealing elements. This might cause a reduction in user traffic. You have to strive hard to stand unique from your competitors who use AMP.
Strategies to Increase AMP Revenue
Maximum ad revenue can be achieved with a continuous process of optimizing elements of the web page. You just have to know what those factors are and how to optimize them. This section educates you on that.
AMP Ads Optimization
AMP ads or AMP HTML ads are frameworks designed for publishers to serve faster and lighter ads. It runs based on the JS of the AMP workforce and eliminates the third-party JS to load the ads fast and give better performance.
These ads are made of AMP HTML ad specifications and will be validated before displaying. Utilizing AMP ads will make users stay longer on your site and be likely to engage with your ads, which potentially reflects on ad revenue.
According to AMP developers, the publishers using AMP pages achieved a 3X rise in daily ad revenue. For instance, EL Pais witnessed a 90% reduction in ad loading speed, driving up the CTR by 32%. Also, Time Inc. witnessed 13% higher revenue with AMP HTML ads. They were 3X lighter and loaded 6X faster than the normal ads.
While giving this great example, it is indeed to infer that platforms like EL Pais and Time Inc. would not have achieved these numbers without optimizing ad placements, units, sizes, and slots. So, on the happiness of using AMP ads, you should not forget to optimize it. You can try these suggestions:
- Choose the best ad placement that aligns with your content and gives better viewable CPMs and user experience. Showing the premium ads just above the fold works great.
- Try placing video ads as it is the most attractive format of ads. Auto-playing should not be engaged. It has to be less intrusive and come with non-invasive elements, such as the option to stop the video or close the video.
- Try different combinations of ad sizes and formats that gel naturally with your content and give value to the users. By offering different ad sizes, you are giving bidders multiple choices and increasing your demand.
- Since AMP pages allow limited ad formats, you must make the best use of available formats and iterating combinations to keep the competition awake on your ad inventory.
AMP Ad Refresh
As I have said above, AMP pages only allow limited ad formats and ad slots. In that case, it is smart to use the ad refresh mechanism. It is a way to refresh ads on the site every 25 to 30 seconds (ideal ad refresh rate) while the user is engaging with your site for a longer time.
The two points that explain why ad refresh is important in AMP monetization are
- Since AMP pages give good UX, users stay for a long time. So you get ample time to refresh ads.
- Because users are engaging longer with AMP pages, the limitation of limited ad formats can be overcome by refreshing ads. It will only hike up the revenue and not disturb the user experience in any way.
AMP ad refresh gives a procedure for Google Ad Manager slots to refresh on a time basis and fetches and renders a new ad creative. Ad slots will be refreshed only if they are in a viewport for at least 50% of pixels and more than 25 seconds.
Offer Different Ad Sizes
Ad size matters a lot. Each demand partner focuses on different sizes. So, choose the ideal ad sizes and try different combinations for every bidding. AMP pages offer different ad sizes, including static ad sizes measuring 300×250 and 320×50.
AMP also allows fluid sizes. Here, publishers don’t need to specify the size. The ad size will be determined while the ad creative is being rendered. This allows demand partners to access multiple sizes and will increase your revenue by expanding the creative pool.
It relieves you from the work of choosing the size of each slot. You can also use a fixed-aspect ratio responsive ad that syncs with their sizing framework. By utilizing the different combinations of ad sizes offered by AMP pages, you can give what advertisers want and increase the value of your ad inventory.
Ad Block Recovery
Users want privacy in browsing sites. They use ad-block to filter annoying ads.
You need to use ad block recovery only when users block your website ads. But according to the backlinko stats 2023, 42.7% of internet users use ad blockers. Hence, it becomes one of the most important issues to govern. Simply follow the tips mentioned here.
- Create content that gives value to the users and their experience. Try to write well-researched and formatted content to make them trust and keep them engaged.
- Serve ads that come under the acceptable ads criteria. Adblock Plus, the most trusted ad blocker in the industry, framed an acceptable ad standard that can be exempted. Try to put your ads in that criteria to earn extra revenue and user loyalty.
- Ask people to whitelist your site. This is the most straightforward way to ask your users. Just display the pop-up below and ask them to disable the ad blocker or whitelist your website. You can also inform them about how the ad gives revenue to you and how you can’t run sites without that.
- Install anti-ad blockers on your website. When there is a solution to stop ads, there will eventually be a way to block ad blockers. Platforms like Lockthrough, Uponut, and Blockadblock may help you with this.
Above all, if you are not a technical person who can implement this all, join hands with ad tech, who can redeem your revenue from ad blocker users with the best ad block recovery mechanisms.
Optimize Floor Prices
Optimizing your floor price is the smartest way to increase competition for your ad inventory, either on AMP or non-AMP pages. A strong price range will increase the bidding price of your ad slot. Here are some tips to increase the demand.
- Diversify the competition by monetizing your ad inventory across all sales, including direct and indirect campaigns.
- Take advantage of real-time configuration to run actions in real-time and increase demand.
- Compare the price of your ad inventory on both AMP and non-AMP pages and adjust it accordingly to maximize the demand and, thereby, ad revenue.
- Test different mixtures of price floors to increase the fill rate. Try soft, hard, or dynamic floor prices. Try a soft price in case your fill rate is very low; you will get a high fill rate and decent money. If the inventory has high demand, utilize only the hard price floor.
- Dynamic floor pricing is an advanced one, where it automatically optimizes floor prices based on demand partners’ performance history. You can achieve a high fill rate and increased ad revenue at the same time. But you need to scan dynamic floor pricing to check whether it is changing according to the changing behavior of demands.
Header Bidding Wrapper with RTC
Header bidding is the process of adding the JS code to your webpage header and running an auction. This is possible in non-AMP pages but not AMP pages, as it does not allow third-party JS.
Due to the limitation, monetizing the AMP page by diversifying the demand has become difficult. As a solution to this, the Google AMP team developed real-time configuration (RTC). This mechanism allows you to connect with five demand partners in maximum to run the auction and get the best price for your ad inventory. RTC runs auctions and retrieves ads through the fast fetch mechanism to protect the original nature of the AMP page, i.e., maintaining good UX and speed.
The problem here is that RTC allows you to connect with only five demand partners. You must connect with ten or more to get maximum value for the ad slot. The RTC mechanism does not have wrappers or containers. You need to get help from the developer to remove or add demand partners every time. It also does not have reporting capabilities to analyze and optimize the bidding data.
Five call-outs are already less. So, along with sending requests to demand partners, if you send requests to viewability providers or DMP platforms, the chances of maximizing the yield of your ad inventory are impossible.
That is why ad tech platforms found a way to use a header bidding wrapper with RTC. It is an RTC-enabled wrapper with a separate ad server to the wrapper. On connecting the wrapper to the RTC AMP page, only one call out from RTC is enough to send a bid request to the wrapper.
From there, the wrapper will take over the auction. It will send bid requests to the maximum SSPs connected to it, run the auction, select the highest bid, and send it back to the page’s ad server. Further, the ads will be rendered on the page. So, through this RTC-enabled wrapper, you will get the chance to connect with more than five demand partners and increase the ad yield.
For detailed information, refer to header bidding on AMP.
Thus far, we have discussed many strategies before wrapper, such as optimizing ad formats, sizes, floor prices, ads refresh, and ad block recovery. Even all of the strategies will work only if you get to connect with more SSPs. A header bidding wrapper that works with RTC is the ideal option for that.
So, utilizing an RTC-enabled header bidding wrapper is the first strategy you need to work on. Technical complications are there in implementing the wrapper. It is better if you have a team managing it. Connect with the trusted managed header bidding wrapper providers. They will take care of setup and implementation.
Moving Forward
AMP monetization is still a feature that is growing. If you want to utilize the AMP page and want to increase your yield at the same time, we suggest you use a header bidding wrapper on AMP. It will serve as a strategy and a way to use the other AMP monetization strategies mentioned above and improve the ad revenue. So, start utilizing the wrapper now and scale bit by bit to achieve maximum yield.
Automatad’s Header Bidding Wrapper on AMP
Automatad’s header bidding wrapper lets you monetize the RTC AMP page with the S2S auction. One call from the RTC is enough. We will connect you with extensive demand partners such as PubMatic, OpenX, AppNexus, and Rubicon Project. We also ensure an effective bidding process without harming UX and page latency.
In brief, we support your auction process with the following:
- We can help with the complex technical setup and implementation of the header bidding wrapper to run effective auctions.
- We connect you with top-performing demand partners and increase the competition of your ad inventory.
- We help in tracking the ad performance and provide a transparent reporting dashboard for analysis and optimization.
- You can even run video ads on AMP pages with our header bidding wrapper.
We start from the groundwork to maximize your yield gradually. So, if you need expert advice and professional help on AMP monetization, connect with us now.
