When you are planning out your ad campaign, there are several factors to consider for boosting ad revenue. You’ll want better targeting that increases user engagement and leads to higher CTR rates, as well as creatives that maximize the efficacy of high-quality ad formats and are relevant to a website’s niche.
Whether you utilize popunder, banner ads, native ads, video pre-roll (VAST) or direct link, you should only run safe ads. Stay away from malvertising like redirects, unsolicited downloads and alerts — which we strictly prohibit on our own ad network, where an in-house anti-fraud checking tool and third-party services like GeoEdge monitor ad quality.
Each website and its audience are unique.
CHOOSING THE BEST FORMATS
When deciding what ads to run, one important thing to take into consideration is the website’s design.
Each website and its audience are unique. It’s always a good idea to adjust your strategy and campaigns in accordance with the platform the ads will be placed on. Make sure that ads don’t interfere with the user’s activity on the platform: they shouldn’t cover up registration fields, navigation, all the essentials, etc.
A great ad format we often recommend (that doesn’t require you to do too much work to set it up) is a direct link. Unlike banners, a direct link doesn’t have to be placed somewhere on the website, thus disrupting its original design; it’s literally just a link that you can insert into any area on the page, be it text, button, picture or any other form of media. Once users click on it, our system will automatically filter traffic and redirect them to fitting advertiser offers.
DEALING WITH BANNER BLINDNESS
Banner blindness is the tendency of users to become desensitized to ads to the point of even being annoyed by them, and it is one of the main menaces in advertising. With the digital advertising industry becoming increasingly saturated each year, it’s becoming harder to catch the user’s eye.
There are a few ways to combat banner blindness, but we think that the most effective one is interactive ads. To help address this, we recommend clients use Social Bar, an ad format that lets you mix and match five different templates (chat bar, in-page push, custom banner, video bar and survey bar) to create unique interactive ads tailored to a particular website’s user base.
A/B tests have been shown to perform better than traditional ad formats, with much higher engagement and conversion rates. The A/B test format's flexibility makes it perfect for verticals such as mobile utilities, VPNs, dating, sweepstakes, subscriptions and more.
FUTURE TRENDS TO WATCH
We think that in 2021 and beyond, the focus will be firmly on exclusive content that has been tailored to the individual. Additionally, we would advise you against aiming only for fast results; build long-term promo that will bring you better install-to-trial and registration-to-purchase numbers.
Another trend we’ve been noticing is the resurgence of VPN offers. Our internal tests have shown that they sometimes show higher CR on adult sites, as users want to keep their privacy while browsing those. It’s highly possible that there will be adult-exclusive VPN offers in the future.
And while the industry evolves seemingly at the speed of light, making it hard to say what exactly is going to happen in a year or two, one thing will stay the same: the quality of your content will definitely continue to matter. In addition, it will always be a good idea to have something unique in store; it’s the only thing in the age of ad blindness that will help you to attract new users and boost your numbers.
Run a wide variety of promos like unique offers, discounts on subscriptions and bonus tokens, but don’t forget to make your promotional content stand out, too. Use things such as exclusive webcam model pictures on your creatives, add short video previews from paid sites on video bars and so on. All this will lead to higher user engagement and increase your CR.
Finally, a few words about traffic. 2020 has shown us that it’s too early to write desktop off; because of the lockdown, people have been using their PCs and laptops more often. We have seen great cases of adult verticals such as cams and dating on desktop traffic. So, although mobile still performs better, it is definitely a good idea to work with both.
Aina Sivceva is the head of the CPA department at Adsterra, a global ad network that helps advertisers meet their KPIs and grow ROI, while aiding publishers in getting maximum eCPM with easy-to-use advanced traffic solutions and an elite team that is ready to assist.
