Publisher case study: Increased earnings with In-Stream frequency capping settings
Squeezing extra revenues out of engaged users boosts not only your ad impressions but your revenues too. On a video content site, an engaged user will spend a prolonged length of time exploring the videos that you have on your site, therefore the best way to get more revenues out of this user is to show him more In-Stream video ads.
ExoClick’s In-Stream ad zone setup allows you to experiment to find the perfect sweet spot between monetizing engaged users and providing a great user experience.
How it works
In your admin panel, when setting up or editing your In-Stream ad zone you can adjust the frequency capping. The default frequency is set to show 1 video every 12 hours. There are some pre set options: 24 hours, 12 hours, 6 hours 3 hours and 1 hour. But you need to experiment with the Custom setting. Now look at your site analytics to investigate what the average time is of an engaged user, although as a starting block we recommend you try between 10-15 minutes. If you set the frequency to show 1 video every 15 minutes, if a user stays on your site watching videos for longer than 15 minutes another in-stream ad will be shown. This will continue every 15 minutes.
Key benefits
Increased revenues – In-Stream eCPMs are of a higher value compared to banner eCPMs, therefore you have a greater potential to earn more revenues from your In-Stream ad zones
Additional inventory – Your video impressions will increase and you will be able to offer advertisers more volumes for your In-Stream ad zone.
Better traffic quality – Engaged users are a high quality traffic source for advertisers, compared to a short stay end user.
Still a great user experience – This will not be damaging to the user experience because he is more likely to accept that he is watching free video content so an ad every 15 minutes is an OK price to pay. To ensure that the user has the option to close the video ad, ensure that the Skip button is set at 5 seconds.
Keep your engaged user for longer – If you have the technical capability, keep your user further engaged by suggesting more content related to what he is watching, similar to what Youtube does. The longer you keep the user engaged the more opportunites you have to show him more video ads.
Case studies
We asked two publishers to test out the customized frequency capping feature for their ad zones. We asked them to compare revenues and impressions across 10 of their best performing GEOs.
Case study 1
“Initially I set up 1 video ad shown every 6 hours to all traffic, I was serving an average of 33,844,958 impressions of video ads each day, the month’s earnings (June) for In-Stream was $10,928.57. I changed the frequency capping to 1 video ad every 10 minutes during the month of July, which boosted my daily average impressions by to 50.79% to 51,036,223 and my In-Stream monthly revenues increased to $19,428.78, an increase in revenue of 77.78%. At the same time the traffic quality remained stable, the CTR increased from 8.70% to 10.83% and the views decreased slightly from 18.32% to 16.64%.”
You can see the publishers top 10 GEOs comparing June with July below:
Case study 2
“I originally set my frequency capping to 1 video impression every 30 minutes for all traffic, from the top 10 countries on my site I earned $1,906.77 in June. For July, my account manager suggested changing the setting to 1 every 10 minutes, and I’m so glad I did because it more than doubled (+129.45%) my in-stream revenues to $4,375.21.
Overall, the traffic quality remained satisfactory, CTR dropped slightly by 1% from 10% to 9% and the views fell from 32% to 27%. It is expected to have a lower view ratio on longer user visits with multiple video views, but the quality of these engaged users is normally higher.”
You can see the publishers top 10 GEOs comparing June with July below:
This is just one of many optimization tips ExoClick’s platform allows to help publishers increase their bottom line. For many more tips check out our Ultimate Optimization Guide for Publishers.
