Does Initial Ads Outperform Other Placements?

When designing an ad layout, our team often looks to come up with innovative solutions that complement Publisher websites and content. Aside from standard ad formats, we apply additional types of ads that on the surface may look conventional; but in fact the process behind them is more technical.

Yep, that’s it. This small, typical rectangle ad is the canvas of today’s article from Yieldbird’s UX team. We call this an Initial ad. Let us explain how you can benefit from its usage, and how to properly implement it on your website. This format is unfortunately only usable on desktop, so if you are looking for something on mobile, you can check out a lot of different articles relating to this matter on our blog.

What are in-content ads?

Initial rectangle ads are a part of a broader category, usually referred to in display advertising as ‘in-content ad placements’. In order to better understand the concept of in-content ads, let’s look at a typical eye-tracking heat-map.

As we can see, the user’s attention is mostly focused on the left side of the page, where the content resides, and is similar to an F shape. This is what we call a content space. Benefiting from our knowledge of user-reading patterns, we can strategically place certain types of ads. There is a special type of in-content ad that out-performs other ad types; and that’s an initial ad.

Why do we call it an initial ad?

Our UX team is always trying to come up with names for a lot of different ad placements. This stems not only from our desire to organize our work better but also to make them more memorable. One of our UX team members noticed that these ads bear a resemblance to the initial letters found in newspaper articles: a stretch, some may think, but that’s how the name was conceived.  

How it performs?

In-content ads retain a special value in inventory. Based on user behavior patterns on desktop traffic websites, in-content ads tend to get higher results in Viewability and CTR metrics than their out-of-content counterparts.

This depends on the country of the website’s origin; but in the majority of instances rectangle ads gain the most attention from Advertisers. Since it remains the most popular ad format, it runs on the highest number of campaigns. The supply for rectangle ads is never-ending, and the proper placement of those units is highly recommended. We have noted that, in most cases, initial rectangle ads have up to 30% higher RPM than other placements above the fold and of the same size. Our analysis consisted of 3 domains with a similar user base and different traffic sizes.

How it performs?

Working for the largest publishers in Poland, we know exactly what happens behind the scenes of content creation; and how many people are sometimes involved in a single article publication. It’s important that everyone is on board and understands how they can structure their content in order to work well with the ad layout.

For users to engage with an ad, the ad needs to be conceived on the basis of processes. The ad won’t simply be viewed just because it is shown. Our ad-layout design process takes this into account. Finding a suitable placement is time-consuming and initial ads are not always easy to implement. They require an analysis of the existing content and the finding of patterns in article elements so that initial ads can respond to them. 

Since your content doesn’t follow an exact length pattern and may change based on the article topic, you need to take control over ad visibility. To show ads only when they should be displayed, you can use a “destroy slot” function. A funny name, right? You can see an example of this below:

// The calls to construct an ad and display contents.
var slot1 =
googletag.pubads().display(‘/1234567/sports’, [728, 90], ‘div-1’);
var slot2 =
googletag.pubads().display(‘/1234567/news’, [160, 600], ‘div-2’);
var slot3 =
googletag.pubads().display(‘/1234567/weather’, [160, 600], ‘div-3’);
// This call to destroy only slot1.
googletag.destroySlots([slot1]);
// This call to destroy both slot1 and slot2.
googletag.destroySlots([slot1, slot2]);
// This call to destroy all slots.
googletag.destroySlots();

This probably won’t work for everyone. So if you are looking for a proper implementation method, please contact us. Our Adops team will be happy to provide a solution that matches your website’s needs. Here are some examples of proper initial ads by Yieldbird:

Who will benefit most from in-content ads?

There are several different types of Publishers that use and benefit from this format. All types of news websites, blogs and review sites can implement initial ads based on their content structure. They work especially well with long-form articles, where the possibilities for multiple placements are greater

Other ads that go-well with this format

In order to keep your ad inventory in a healthy state, we propose additional placements that will accompany initial ads.

Leaderboards
Another popular in-content ad format is the leaderboard. Leaderboard placements play an important factor. They work pretty well in the middle sections of an article or at the end (as close to the Comments Section as possible). This ad format is especially popular among advertisers in the US and other western markets.

Sticky ads
Since sticky ads are visible for a longer time, they work well with other high visibility ads. Google serves creatives based on specific ad metrics not based on the cumulative site-viewability score. But similar viewability results for specific ad units may result in “catching” the same high revenue campaigns. Additionally, keeping the viewability metric high for all ads can only positively affect your direct sales.

Native ads
This is a topic for an entirely different article, but it’s worth mentioning that adding different ad types to your site is a must-do these days. Since those ads resemble well-known elements on your site, they are not so invasive (if well designed, that is) to the user at first glance. If you are going for a minimalist ad layout, you can rely on them to increase the scope of your inventory.

As you can see, we at Yieldbird are also content creators. Since in-content ad formats are increasing in popularity, you should consider them in your ad layout.