ExoClick’s Ultimate Optimization Guide for Publishers

We are constantly helping you, our Publishers, to grow your business by working with you to monetise your traffic, optimise your ad zones, stay Google compliant, give you business tips and ultimately improving your revenues. We have put together 11 great problem solving solutions using ExoClick’s Publisher platform tools/features to overcome 2020 challenges and to improve your bottom line, providing you with the Ultimate Guide for Optimization!

1. Push Notifications just got bigger

Problem – Push Notifications have lost the hype from last year and the formats revenues are decreasing

Solution – In addition to the 192x192px size, ExoClick has introduced a second Push Notification format size with a 720x480px image that can be used for both the icon and the main creative image, plus we have now integrated Carrier and IP Range targeting for advertisers for this format. To take advantage of the new 720×480 campaign demand, Publishers just need to update the worker.js file which is available in the code snippet section within your Admin Panel.

Benefits to you – Remember, larger image formats mean higher CTRs for advertisers which in turn rewards you with higher CPM bids. This ad format is even more valuable to advertisers now because ExoClick has added Carrier and IP Range targeting to enable end users to more easily purchase an advertiser’s offer with carrier billing. Read more

2. Beat browser restrictions and get more qualified Push Notification subscribers

Problem – Firefox 72 has blocked my website’s notification opt-in prompts to end users, which is not good at getting me more Push Notification subscribers to monetize. Also Chrome has announced the release of quieter push notifications, still in beta, but once it is released it will hide the Push Notification prompts for low subscription rate sites.

Solution – Firefox blocks the opt-in prompts unless the user interacts with your site first (user tapped, clicked, or pressed a key) prior to the site’s opt-in request. This can be worked around by toggling on the soft-ask option in the ad zone configuration in your admin panel. You can set a timed delay before the box is shown to the user allowing the user to have clicked something on your site, in compliance with Firefox. You can further edit the texts shown within the soft-ask box, this way you can be specific with the prompting message, for example, explain the types of offers that the user will expect to receive after he has subscribed.

Benefits to you – Increase the ‘ask to subscription’ conversion rate and win back your Firefox Push Notification subscribers. Read more

3. The Desktop and Mobile Fullpage Interstitials, the Chrome Popunder alternative

Problem – Chrome blocks some Popunders, so how do I monetize mobile users with a high CPM large ad format and stay Google compliant?

Solution – ExoClick’s Desktop and Mobile Fullpage Interstitials are a great alternative to the Popunder format offering a fullpage ad creative for advertisers and the format features a close ad button in line with the Better Ads Coalition and Google. The fullpage ad features an opaque border that allows the user to still feel connected with your site, because he can see your webpage behind the ad. Additionally you can set where and when the user clicks on your website to trigger the Interstitial.

Benefits to you – This format is highly desirable for advertisers because the large creative size enables advertisers to use impactful creatives, either static or animated images, on the small screen mobile device. This format gets you high CPM/CPCs inline with Popunder prices. Read more

4. Another Popunder Chrome workaround

Problem – How can I show the Fullpage Interstitial to Chrome users and Popunders to non Chrome users?

Solution – You can do this by setting the display of the Fullpage Interstitial in one browser and the Popunder in another browser, as both formats have this option available with the toggle button for Chrome enabled. When setting up your Fullpage Interstitial toggle Chrome enabled on, and for the Popunder leave this toggle button disabled. In this scenario, both formats will be integrated within the same page but triggered depending on the browser the user has used to access your site.

Benefits to you – If you combine this implementation with Chrome-disabled Popunders, you’ll be able to monetize all browsers without increasing publicity on your site and stay compliant with Google!

5. More Fullpage Interstitial and Popunder combinations

Problem – How can I further monetise users with both the Popunder and the Fullpage Interstitial ? 

Solution – Take advantage of ExoClick’s triggering and frequency capping flexibility when setting up your ad zones with both the Fullpage Interstitial and Popunder. You can set both formats to trigger after a certain number of user clicks or after a certain amount of time. 

Benefits to you – You can generate more revenues by montising 1 user with both large ad formats at different stages of his journey on your website. Option 1 – Triggering both formats after a number of user clicks: So let’s say you set the Popunder ad format with Frequency Capping 1x24h, then the Fullpage Interstitial set to be triggered in the 3rd click and then after every 15 clicks, both set with the Click on Links method. So now the end user will see the Popunder triggered on their 1st click and then the user will see the Fullpage Interstitial in their 3rd click and 15 clicks later see the Interstitial ad once again. Option 2 – Triggering both formats depending where the user clicks: You can also place triggers within the webpage to show both ad format when a user clicks on different thumbnails or when he clicks on a video to play or to pause a video for example. This works by using the feature ‘clicking on links with a specific class’ by setting up the classes accordingly for each ad format. Read more

6. Monetise ad block traffic with Popunders

Problem – How can I monetise ad block users with Popunders, when the end users ad block software won’t allow Popunders to show?

Solution – In addition to our free solution Neverblock which circumvents ad blockers and still shows publishers ads. We also have a second option that Publishers can try based around forcing popunders to show even if the end user is using an adblocker. It’s called our in-line popunder code and is very easy to implement in the <body> tags on a publisher’s website.

Benefits to you – You can expect an increase in revenues and impressions, check out the ‘Read more’ link below to see how much 3 publishers increased their revenues after using our in-line popunder code and a full tutorial of how to implement the code. Read more

7. How to generate more In-Stream video revenues

Problem – How can I further monetise my most engaged users who stay longer on my site watching video content?

Solution – You can increase your revenues from video content by adjusting the frequency of showing your In-stream video ad zones. The In-Stream default frequency is set to show 1 video every 12 hours and the Skip button is set to 5 seconds. Our recommendation is to keep the Skip button at 5 seconds and then customize your frequency to show 1 video every say 15 minutes, so if the same user stays in your site watching videos for longer than 15 minutes another in-stream ad will be shown.

Benefits to you – By changing this setting, your video impressions will increase while still targeting high quality users. The 5 second Skip button ensures that the user can close the ad for a good user experience. Read a tutorial

Read our Publisher case studies

8. Video Slider or Instant Message? That is the question…

Problem – Should I use the Video Slider or the Instant Message format on the bottom right of my web page?

Solution – ExoClick has introduced a new feature that allows you to customise the Video Slider ad zone to your preferred maximum screen density between 20% and 30% in order to display a bigger or smaller video screen size. More and more advertisers are using video ads to convert their offers, we are seeing a greater demand from advertisers to use the Video Slider format for Dating. Video Slider has significantly higher CPMs for Video Slider compared to Instant Message on both mobile and desktop, here we show the higher average CPM percentages that Video Slider has over the Instant Message ad format across different continents:

Benefits to you – The Instant Message has traditionally been used for Dating offers by advertisers, but this can be restricting when it comes to monetising the bottom right of your webpage. Using the Video Slider allows advertisers to target not just Dating offers, but VoD, Paysites, Games, etc giving you greater opportunities to attract advertisers for this ad zone. Additionally CTRs are much higher for Slider on Mobile compared to IM, so why not test combinations of both formats on different web pages on desktop and mobile to find the perfect sweet spot between both formats. Read more

9. Increase the value of your Native ad zones

Problem – How can I increase the traffic value of my Native ad zones?

Solution – When setting up a native ad zone you have the option to allow advertisers to include a title, a description and an image. ExoClick has introduced a new feature that allows advertisers to only target native ad zones where the publisher has allowed a title to be shown. The reason for this is that Native ads that have a title have a higher CTR. 

Advertisers can also integrate Dynamic Keyword Tokens which allow the texts in titles and descriptions to dynamically change depending on the end user being targeted, for example, the {city} token displays the localized city name of the visitor: e.g. London (great for localised dating offers) or the {language_name} token shows the text in the localised language of the visitor. e.g. Español

Benefits to you – By including the title, your ad zone will be available to advertisers who want to get a higher CTR by using a title in their ad creative, and a higher CTR increases the value of your native ad zones. Read more 

10. Don’t let your ads weigh you down

Problem – I read that Google will start protecting end users from resource heavy ads in Chrome by blocking any heavy ad on a website, they are testing this now and it will come into full force at the end of August 2020. How can I guarantee my site will not be penalised by Google?

Solution – Don’t use ad networks or TDS’ that serve heavy ads, not only will Chrome block the ads affecting your revenues you will also be penalized with your Google ranking. ExoClick automatically optimises advertiser creatives by compressing and converting them to a lighter weight, with no loss of quality.  

Maximum file weights are now set at:

• Static banners and video banners -150KB
• Mobile Fullpage Interstitial – 300KB

These lighter weights are in line with Google and the IAB’s industry guidelines.

How do we do it? Static banner PNG files are converted to lighter JPG files,

Banner GIF creatives are converted to lighter, HTML5 video versions. HTML5 Video is up to 90% lighter than GIFs, that’s why Twitter and Giphy convert to this format too and it is 98% compatible with all browsers.

Benefits to you – Your ad zones will load quicker which has several positive effects for your business:

• Better user experience: A faster loading site is more end user friendly.
• Higher Google ranking: A fast website will rank higher in search queries on Google, bringing you more organic traffic to monetise.
• Lower bounce rate: According to studies 40% of web users bounce from pages that take more than 3 seconds to load.
• Mobile first growth strategy: With mobile users representing 75% of all web browsing, it is important to compensate page loading from often slow mobile 3G and 4G networks.

11. We make you 100% Google compliant

Problem – How do I ensure my ads are Google and Better Ads Coalition compliant?

Solution – Use an ad network that rejects non compliant ad campaigns from their network. ExoClick’s Compliance team works 24/7 manually checking ad creatives and landing pages. Then once a campaign is approved it will run on our network, however some unscrupulous advertisers may attempt to change the ad creatives or landing pages whilst a campaign is running on our network, so all campaigns are also subject to further scrutiny and for this we utilise a range of automated scanning tools, such as AdSecure to detect any issues with ads that are running.

Benefits to you –  Your ads are clean and totally compliant with Google and the industry saving you from Google penalisation and ensuring your ranking is high, not only are you protected as a publisher but you end users are also protected ensuring your good reputation as a content source and ensuring a great user experience with the ads shown on your site. Read more

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