To start the year, we’re recapping some of our latest solutions and resources to help all publishers get the most from their advertising in 2023.
While 2021 was far from a return to normal, publishers found ways to adapt, innovate and thrive in a rapidly changing environment. To help you keep your business on track in 2022, we're recapping some of last year's biggest tips and resources from Google Ad Manager.
We know from previous years that the holiday season and the end of year bring increased internet traffic and advertising spend. But this year, people have already started their holiday shopping. According to research we ran with Ipsos over the summer, over 25 percent of U.S. holiday shoppers said they had started shopping for the season as of the end of August. This means publishers have an opportunity to jump-start their seasonal monetization strategies now.
As people search the web to look for inspiration and research ideas for that perfect gift, publishers can review their content strategies, get their sites and apps ready for fluctuations in traffic, and of course adjust their advertising plans to make the most of the increase in marketer demand. Here are some tips and optimizations Google Ad Manager partners can start applying today to ensure they’re ready for the 2020 holiday rush:
Start optimizing your site’s performance as soon as possible. Our Web Vitals initiative identifies three key aspects of performance for you to start with: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. We’ve started surfacing the Web Vitals in all of our most popular tools, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools. You can also quickly improve your pagespeed by optimizing your top Google Publisher Tag (GPT) calls, limiting calls to third-party servers, and compressing images.
You can also work to maximize your site’s ad viewability. Viewability is a measure of whether an ad had a chance to be seen by a user, and marketers are generally willing to spend more money for viewable ads. You can get started improving your site’s viewability with these best practices, such as using responsive design, lazy loading and vertical ad units.
Google Analytics is a good place to start when you’re looking to learn more about your audiences. You can use Analytics core functionality to better understand how your users are engaging with content across your sites and apps, then use those insights to take action, such as improving your UX, optimizing your editorial or content strategies. Analytics also features several seamless integrations with Ad Manager.
Another free tool you can use to learn more about your visitors is News Consumers Insights (NCI). NCI can benefit all types of publishers by providing insight on which readers drive value and how to improve engagement with personalized business recommendations. Download the NCI playbook to learn more.
Incorporating new ad formats and sizes can help increase competition for your inventory. Some good options include; Native ads, which match the look and feel of your site or app, Sticky ads, which stay visible on the page while the user scrolls through the content, and In-feed and in-article video ads, which allow you to serve outstream video content that can appear in articles, social feeds, or in between levels of games.
Another way to increase competition is to make sure you aren’t limiting your demand through potentially unnecessary category blocks—for instance, blocking general categories is not recommended. Instead, try blocking sensitive categories, a specific advertiser URL, a sub-category, or reassessing the block altogether.
For more information on ways to increase competition for your inventory, Ad Manager partners can also check out their Opportunities & Experiments recommendations throughout the holiday season.
Keep a close eye on your unified pricing rules throughout the holiday season to make sure you’re not missing out on demand. The pricing rules insights card on your Ad Manager dashboard shows the bid landscape data for your top five rules by revenue, and helps you search for your other rules. If you notice that a large number of bids are coming in below your unified pricing floor, you may want to consider lowering it.
During the holidays, advertisers are looking for quality inventory where their consumers are spending the most time. This year more than ever, they’re prioritizing deals on premium inventory early in the holiday season. Take advantage of this high demand to set up deals with your advertisers usingProgrammatic Guaranteed. Our new features allow you to negotiate special sponsorship deals with advertisers for day part or share of voice during high demand periods, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
To achieve the best results with Programmatic Guaranteed, run regular reporting on your inventory like placements, creative types, and audience segments. This will help you identify and market inventory that is in high demand. Keep an eye out for audience segments that match consumer trends, and proactively flag these to advertisers.
While we may not know all the trends this year’s holiday season will bring, we do know that shoppers have already begun their search for the perfect gifts. By starting to optimize your site and account early, you’ll be better positioned to drive more traffic to your site and offer marketers valuable inventory at a premium price.
We know from previous years that the holiday season and the end of year bring increased internet traffic and advertising spend. But this year, people have already started their holiday shopping. According to research we ran with Ipsos over the summer, over 25 percent of U.S. holiday shoppers said they had started shopping for the season as of the end of August. This means publishers have an opportunity to jump-start their seasonal monetization strategies now.
As people search the web to look for inspiration and research ideas for that perfect gift, publishers can review their content strategies, get their sites and apps ready for fluctuations in traffic, and of course adjust their advertising plans to make the most of the increase in marketer demand. Here are some tips and optimizations Google Ad Manager partners can start applying today to ensure they’re ready for the 2020 holiday rush:
Start optimizing your site’s performance as soon as possible. Our Web Vitals initiative identifies three key aspects of performance for you to start with: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. We’ve started surfacing the Web Vitals in all of our most popular tools, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools. You can also quickly improve your pagespeed by optimizing your top Google Publisher Tag (GPT) calls, limiting calls to third-party servers, and compressing images.
You can also work to maximize your site’s ad viewability. Viewability is a measure of whether an ad had a chance to be seen by a user, and marketers are generally willing to spend more money for viewable ads. You can get started improving your site’s viewability with these best practices, such as using responsive design, lazy loading and vertical ad units.
Google Analytics is a good place to start when you’re looking to learn more about your audiences. You can use Analytics core functionality to better understand how your users are engaging with content across your sites and apps, then use those insights to take action, such as improving your UX, optimizing your editorial or content strategies. Analytics also features several seamless integrations with Ad Manager.
Another free tool you can use to learn more about your visitors is News Consumers Insights (NCI). NCI can benefit all types of publishers by providing insight on which readers drive value and how to improve engagement with personalized business recommendations. Download the NCI playbook to learn more.
Incorporating new ad formats and sizes can help increase competition for your inventory. Some good options include; Native ads, which match the look and feel of your site or app, Sticky ads, which stay visible on the page while the user scrolls through the content, and In-feed and in-article video ads, which allow you to serve outstream video content that can appear in articles, social feeds, or in between levels of games.
Another way to increase competition is to make sure you aren’t limiting your demand through potentially unnecessary category blocks—for instance, blocking general categories is not recommended. Instead, try blocking sensitive categories, a specific advertiser URL, a sub-category, or reassessing the block altogether.
For more information on ways to increase competition for your inventory, Ad Manager partners can also check out their Opportunities & Experiments recommendations throughout the holiday season.
Keep a close eye on your unified pricing rules throughout the holiday season to make sure you’re not missing out on demand. The pricing rules insights card on your Ad Manager dashboard shows the bid landscape data for your top five rules by revenue, and helps you search for your other rules. If you notice that a large number of bids are coming in below your unified pricing floor, you may want to consider lowering it.
During the holidays, advertisers are looking for quality inventory where their consumers are spending the most time. This year more than ever, they’re prioritizing deals on premium inventory early in the holiday season. Take advantage of this high demand to set up deals with your advertisers usingProgrammatic Guaranteed. Our new features allow you to negotiate special sponsorship deals with advertisers for day part or share of voice during high demand periods, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
To achieve the best results with Programmatic Guaranteed, run regular reporting on your inventory like placements, creative types, and audience segments. This will help you identify and market inventory that is in high demand. Keep an eye out for audience segments that match consumer trends, and proactively flag these to advertisers.
While we may not know all the trends this year’s holiday season will bring, we do know that shoppers have already begun their search for the perfect gifts. By starting to optimize your site and account early, you’ll be better positioned to drive more traffic to your site and offer marketers valuable inventory at a premium price.
2019 is all but behind us. But before we move forward, we’re taking a moment to look back and reflect on another year filled with partner successes, new learnings and of course, product launches.
Below are some of our top moments from throughout the year.
Success stories showed the amazing work of our global partners. Check out these stories to learn how partners like...
India’s SonyLIV used Ad Manager to grow OTT ad impressions by 5x.
Argentine news outlet Clarín delivered high-impact, custom ad formats programmatically.
DAZN grew programmatic video revenue by over 150% using Exchange Bidding.
See more success stories from 2019 here.
In an effort to help publishers grow and simplify their advertising business, we developed several new features and updated existing ones:
Helped partners demystify large challenges and act on opportunities by delivering insights and research across several critical business areas.
In partnership with Deloitte and the Google News Initiative, we published a global report to help publishers responsibly analyze and activate their data to improve user engagement, increase direct-paying relationships with readers, and drive revenue from advertising.
Produced our first-ever advanced TV inventory report that analyzed how TV broadcasters around the globe are selling their inventory across digital channels. The report also explores which signals will play the largest role in driving demand and pricing as TV inventory shifts towards programmatic.
To ensure our partners are making top dollar for their premium video inventory, we uncovered the role viewability plays on the value of video inventory in our video viewability best practices guide and 3 P’s of video viewability article.
Explore all Ad Manager guides and reports here.
This year we took steps to ensure that our platform and policies are meeting users, publishers, and advertisers evolving expectations.
In August, we began blocking ads served to unauthorized app inventory in both AdMob and Ad Manager using the App-ads.txt standard released by the IAB Tech Lab.
Released a series of blogs covering how we’re working to ensure transparency, choice and control in digital advertising, develop a privacy-safe approach to manage ad frequency, and taking additional steps to safeguard user privacy.
Shared three things publishers need to know to ensure their ads are compliant with the Better Ads Standard based on the extensive research of the Coalition for Better Ads.
Throughout the year we also developed a suite of feature briefs that detail many of the capabilities and benefits that the Ad Manager platform delivers for partners. Published dozens of articles and blogs highlighting news and announcements about new product developments, events and partnerships. And added new articles to the monetization section on Think With Google.
Thank you to all of our partners for your contributions and input on Ad Manager product development and thought-leadership this year. Onward! See you in 2020.
