How to Improve Programmatic Ad Viewability Without Affecting User Experience
The constant struggle to balance ad viewability and maintaining a positive user experience remains an ongoing challenge. As advertisers strive…
One of the biggest shopping days of the year, Black Friday is nearly a week away. But as we are living in strange, frightening times at the moment, and we are all being forced to adjust, the same trend is being felt in the advertising industry. Due to that fact, preparing for this period in exactly the same way as in years before would most probably not bring the optimal results. Let us take a closer look at how things might be different for Publishers this year in terms of the (probably) highest grossing day for most of the ad fueled website owners.
Don’t want to read? Watch an in-depth expert discussion!
Less ad money or more ad money?
On the usual Black Friday, shoppers are in the habit of lining up outside stores waiting for the doors to open and the sales to begin. The reason is to nab those amazing limited deals and offers.
Those deals will not be happening this year most probably because of the social distancing requirements and business limitations imposed by many countries. However, advertisers will still surely raise the excitement stakes by offering similar or even better deals online, fighting for the e-commerce shoppers and their wallets to deliver their annual sales goals and get rid of the merchandise.
It means that even though this year started relatively bleak for the digital publishing industry, and will end in the same way for some unfortunate verticals, and advertising channels such as Cinema, or OOH, most of the digital Publishers may be in the end fortunate enough to benefit even more during this period from the previous years. This means the proper preparation of the monetization strategy for this special period is more important than ever.
Extended campaigns
One key difference forecasted by many experts is that rather than big one-off sales and discounts concentrated in only a few days, we may expect to see businesses extend the sales period beyond Black Friday.
We can see many deals already starting, days before and they are expected to stay in place even several weeks after Black Friday.
This is good news for all involved. Shoppers will have more time to get what they want at a good price. Advertisers will keep customers coming back for more, and publishers will be able to benefit from higher buy-side competition and maintain a big number of campaigns running on the sites.
Shift in the pool of biggest spenders
Normally while getting ready for this period we would analyze which Brands used to spend the most, and increase their bids on our Publishers inventory the highest in the last couple of years, to set some brand-specific UPRs for them couple of days ahead.
But this year many consumers are having a tough time making ends meet because of the pandemic, which is why the focus is more likely to be on essential items and good-value items. Luxury items and lavish spending will probably not be on their mind and those marketers are aware that spending a lot of money or offering high CPMs to get on the users’ screens will not change it to a big extent.
Advertisers need to be aware of what is important to most consumers right now, and Publishers need to figure out who may try to benefit from the pre-holiday spree the most and what kind of special deals may have the biggest chance for conversion in the pandemic holiday season, which will translate to their market share and the importance of the proper approach to those specific advertisers.
Some things never change
We are always looking to avail of floor prices and avoid their reduction even in the period of the minimized demand which we noticed especially in the Q1 and first months of Q2 2020. Such reductions can both negatively impact the User Experience and decrease the inventory value in the long term which is now observed by Publishers having problems to make advertisers pay them pre-pandemic rates for their inventory.
Having that said we still believe that a very short-term reduction in such specific seasons can benefit revenue without impacting long-term performance. Considering this, you can try lowering the levels of your UPRs to the minimum necessary so as to keep poor quality ads at bay. If direct campaigns and your PG/PMP delivery are not compromised, then you should retain this level for a couple of days so as to benefit from the higher density of Black Friday campaigns. But make sure not to keep it in place for longer than a couple of days before and after the “B” day even if the demand will still be looking good.
More content, and different content
During the Black Friday period, people are usually to be found seeking out recommendations for the best possible offers. When doing so, they will also come across plenty of negative press about how Black Friday and Cyber Monday prey on the naive and the gullible. In order to engage people and generate more traffic for your site, you can address in a forthright manner all the positives and negatives of jumping on the Black Friday bandwagon. Even if such issues represent a divergence from your usual content, you should promote your most popular pieces so as to increase the number of PVs, which are especially valuable in this period.
During the Black Friday period, people are usually to be found seeking out recommendations for the best possible offers. When doing so, they will also come across plenty of negative press about how Black Friday and Cyber Monday prey on the naive and the gullible.
Writing a short overview of the changes in your industry in relation to the Black Friday in the pandemic season can also be a popular topic among your users. Which is proven by the fact that you are reading this very sentence.
Smart approach always pays off
If you are dead set on sustaining your floor prices at a high level for part or all of your inventory some revenue growth can still be achieved, by making small adjustments. Traditionally advertisers bid using round numbers, and so in order to generate a slight increase in demand and achieve fill-rate, try offering 0.98 cents instead of 1 dollar. You may find yourself being positively surprised by the outcome, having avoided the necessity of giving a real discount.
Premium transactions for premium period
Despite the craziness of 2020 our ace-in-the-deck option which is a set of special Black Friday Preferred Deals and Private Auctions for our partners on the buy-side, allows us to boost the competition and average programmatic eCPM, and then to achieve campaign despite higher competition on the market.
Even the day before it’s not too late to come up with the last-minute offer and give them a chance to buy PD’s on only 20-20% higher CPMs than on the Open Market.
Make the Black into Gold
Most of those insights have yielded us, and our Publishers significant results in the past making the Black Friday period one of our top seasonal revenue opportunities but with the pandemic combined with all the changes taking place in the industry, we cannot be sure that things will pan out this year in the very same way. That is why we are trying to understand the differences in the consumers’ habits, buyers’ behaviors, and advertisers’ strategies to not put all our end in the same good old basket.
Following our own advice, we are planning to test and retest all the described adjustments and later scale them on the specific parts of the inventory. If you think it makes sense let’s try to close this year well and benefit from the unique revenue opportunities that Black Friday presents.
Let’s all meet the challenges and benefit from the unique revenue opportunities that Black Friday presents!
