Optimizing ad placements is crucial to provide a great user experience. However, just placing ads on a website won’t generate maximum ad revenue. Publishers must optimize ad placements to ensure they’re in the best locations and formats.
This is where ad placement optimization comes in. It ensures relevant ads, better results, and increased CPMs.
How do you know where to place ads? Do you put them wherever there’s a room? Should they be placed above or below the fold? How much space should you allow for ads on the page?
In this blog, we’ll answer all these, along with the best practices for optimizing ad placements for publishers. By following these tips, publishers can increase ad revenue and improve the user experience.
Table of Contents
Factors to Consider When Optimizing Ad Placements
There are a lot of factors to consider when optimizing ad placements. Once you have a strategy, you can take your revenue to the next level. Here are some of the most important considerations:
- Ad position
- Ad format
- Ad relevance
- Ad frequency
Best Practices for Optimizing Ad Placements
Optimizing ad placements for publishers is an important part of maximizing revenue. Several best practices can be used to ensure that ads are placed most effectively.
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Consider User Experience:
User experience is crucial when optimizing ad placements on a website. According to a study,
Delays in website loading can significantly affect user satisfaction and their likelihood of returning to the site. Even a 2-second delay on unfamiliar sites can cause a significant drop in user satisfaction.
Your users are more likely to engage with ads that are not intrusive and do not disrupt their experience on the website. Ads should
- Be placed where they can’t easily be mistaken for a part of the website’s design or content.
- Never interfere with users’ interaction with the page they view.
- Not slow users’ browsing experience or take up too much memory on their device (desktop, phone, or tablet).
Moreover, ad placements should be relevant to the content. As per a report published by GlobalWebIndex (GWI),
Approximately 29.2% of individuals prefer ads relating to their identity or interests.
Another survey (of about 1,000 members) from DISQO stated that,
The majority of respondents, comprising 81%, feel positive, with 51% feeling positive and 30% feeling extremely positive when encountering a relevant ad.
While ads can be made relevant based on the user’s behavioral and contextual data, a privacy-compliant way would be to go with the latter. For example, you may place the ads on multiple locations across the website based on the audience’s interests, such as placing ads for travel deals near articles about travel or sports-related ads in articles related to sports.
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Use Multi-sized Ad Placements:
By using multi-sized ad placements on a website, publishers can improve their ad revenue by providing advertisers with a wider range of ad sizes, thereby increasing the likelihood of ad placements and clicks.
They also enable publishers to optimize their ad layout and placement, ensuring that ads fit seamlessly into the website’s design while still standing out to the audience.
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Use Lazy Loading:
Lazy loading is a technique that optimizes website performance by loading content only when needed. This approach is particularly useful for websites with many images, videos, and ads, as it can significantly reduce page load times and improve the user experience.
By implementing lazy loading on a website, publishers can optimize the placement of ads by only loading them when they are visible to the user. This approach can help reduce the number of ad impressions wasted on users who never see the ad, thereby increasing the value of each impression and improving the overall effectiveness of the ad campaign.
Additionally, lazy loading can help to reduce the load on the website’s servers, resulting in faster page load times and improved user engagement.
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Place Ads in Strategic Locations:
The placement of ads in strategic locations plays a crucial role in the success of any advertising campaign. Publishers can boost their odds of grabbing the interest of their intended viewers and improving clicks and conversions by strategically positioning their ads.
Some of the most effective ad placements include:
- In between paragraphs: Placing ads between paragraphs of content can effectively capture readers’ attention without interrupting their reading flow.
- Above and below images: By positioning ads above or below, it is possible to capture the user’s attention and enhance the ad’s visibility.
- Sticky units: Sticky Ads remain static on the screen, even as the user scrolls up or down the page. This approach can effectively ensure the ad remains in view and does not disappear as the user navigates through the website.
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Test Different Ad Placements:
There are many different ad placements, each with its strengths and weaknesses. A/B testing can compare placements and formats to see which ones generate the most revenue.
For example, you can try a native ad on the right rail and then a display ad at the top of the page. You can also test different sizes of banners or text links against each other to see which generates more revenue.
If you test two different ad sizes, you will show one size to half of your visitors and the other to the different audience segments. The best size will then be used for all visitors in future campaigns.
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Consider Mobile Optimization:
Mobile devices are becoming more popular and an important part of the online advertising landscape. As 5G becomes more widely available, it is projected that mobile advertising will make up 51% of the total ad spending by Statista.
With the increasing use of mobile devices, publishers should optimize their ad placements for mobile devices. This includes using responsive ad units* and placing ads in locations that are easy to access on mobile devices.
*A responsive ad unit automatically changes its dimensions based on the device it is served on. This means that if a publisher uses responsive ad units in their website, they won’t need to make adjustments for mobile visitors (for example, making an image smaller so it fits better on mobile screens).
Another way to optimize ad placement is to serve mobile-friendly ad sizes. This means they’re not too big and don’t have much text or other elements.
Taking Action to Optimize Ad Placement
Taking action is the first step towards optimizing ad placement, and it might not be as difficult as you think. You could increase your content’s engagement, change your website structure, or even employ new advertising techniques.
Ultimately, it depends on your goals and the challenges you’re facing, but the point is that plenty of options are available to you. We can’t tell you which approach will work best for your website. The only way to find out is to take action and measure the results.
