Revenue vs Efficiency
Unfortunately the ad ecosystem is in equilibrium, if you dial things back and improve page performance, you will likely decrease your earnings. This is why there is no “optimal” set up that works for everyone. Some publisher have different priorities to others. Fusion as a platform gives you the control to make that decision yourself, and find where the happy middle ground lies for you.Experiments
One essential feature in Fusion to all of these optimisation options is experiments. Experiments allow you to test an idea and measure its impact using science and not guess work. Want to see the impact of switching from 5 MPU’s to one Adhesion unit? You can do that easily with experiments. The winner is then down to your priorities. It might be that your idea makes you a little less money, but it makes your users a lot more happy, and that is a compromise you are willing to make, in which case, great! We recommend always running experiments, there are hundreds of thousands of optimisation combinations, and what works for one publisher might not work for others, so while we can recommend experiments, it comes back to your priorities and goals as a publisher.Insights
The other key area to keep referring back to is our reporting suite, be it the report builder or the insights hub. SSP efficiency for example can be seen in the SSP Insights Report, and as you make changes to your set up, it is here that you will hopefully see the positive impact it is having. As mentioned, we are also personally invested in your success, and that means caring a lot about performance. We are keen to minimise our direct impact, while offering tools to help you manage indirect impact form the likes of header bidding etc. We track various metrics such as CWV’s and latency stats directly, so we can measure and track the impact we are having.Primary Levers
Lets look at some core concepts that can help you optimise your digital advertising.Floors
Floors are vital in raising your overall yield and your perceived value as a publisher. Floors make SSP’s bid higher to reach you, where they would otherwise bid as low as they can get away with. We offer 3 options:- Google Optimised (built into GAM)
- AI Dynamic Floors (Content Ignite’s flooring tech)
- Manual floors (for ultimate control or experimentation)
Header Bidding Timeouts
Header bidding adds serious auction pressure, which is vital for increasing bid values. However, it also adds notable weight to the page, each bidders adds weight and all together the tech and the SSP’s add latency and resource usage. Ads reaching page quickly has a direct impact on revenue, and we are talking about time in the milliseconds! Setting a timeout ensures that anyone bidding can’t take as long as they want, delaying the final auction and delaying ads getting to page. Bidders that don’t bid in time will show up in your SSP Insights Hub making it clear when they are not pulling their weight, you can then make an informed decision to remove them or not. Timeouts can be set in your Ad Demand settings inside an Ad Stack. Simply open an ad stack and click the cog icon next to the Ad Demand section. In the panel that opens up you will find a “Bidder Timeout” value in milliseconds (1000ms = 1 second). The default is 1250ms, but you can run experiments to measure the impact on lowering or raising this value. Set a value that is too low and SSP’s wont have time to bid, too high and you are at risk of slowing down the entire ad load process.Prebid Bid throttling
The number of SSP’s in an auction has to be carefully balanced; too little and you don’t add enough auction pressure to drive up bid values, too many and you are adding notable weight to the page, impacting UX and possibly reducing earnings. Bid Throttling is an automated way to disable bidders that aren’t adding value, thus decreasing the resource usage on page without impacting revenue. It does this by setting thresholds and actions inside Fusion, such as “if a bidder fails to bid 2 times in a row, then disable that bidder for the rest of that user session”. It is likely that a bidder that does not bid for a particular user, doesn’t want to target that user for whatever reason, so it is redundant to keep asking them to bid. Setting up bid throttling is done via the Ad Demand settings inside an Ad Stack. Simply open an ad stack and click the cog icon next to the Ad Demand section. In the panel that opens up you will find a section on bid throttling with various fields to configure/experiment with. You should always refer back to the SSP Insights Report when it comes to SSP’s, as it will become clear very quickly when SSP’s are not pulling their weight, in which case, the best optimisation is to remove them from your stack entirely!Refresh (re-ignite)
Refreshing ads is a common procedure, as it maximises the opportunity of a page view. Its important not to refresh so often that users dont have the opportunity to interact with an advertisement (not ot mention how distracting it would be to have ads changing every few seconds!). Each refresh loads new creatives, and it is ultimately the ad creative that can be heavy on page, but also the creative that we have no control over in programmatic advertising. Our refresh technology ensure ads are only refreshed when in-view — its no use refreshing an ad when the user has switched tabs! This ensures a high level of efficiency as standard. Inside Fusion you still have control over refresh duration along capping the number of refreshes that any given unit can make. You can do this easily from within a config.Other Concepts
- In-view
- Our in-view feature is on by default, and ensures we load ads efficiently; only when they are about to come into view. This saves resource that might otherwise be wasted loading ads at the bottom of a page that never get scrolled to!
- Maintaining a high viewability rate for your publisher is also a key quality signal to buyers.
- NOTE: Perhaps counter intuitively, having in-view off can earn more revenue due to the increase in ad loads (despite being out of view), however, we still feel viewability and efficiency is important enough that this feature should always remain on.
- Ad density
- More ads may mean more revenue up to a point, but if your site is unreadable through the ads, will you have any returning users left to monetise?
- Carefully balancing the number of ads is important. There are also signs that the ad industry is moving towards quality over quantity, so you may want to consider one high impact unit over a number of standard MPU’s for example, greatly reducing your ad density.
- Unit type: High-impact vs Standard IAB
- HI units such as interstitial and adhesion will typically outperform standard units like MPU’s scattered throughout content, and by some margin too! So opting for one HI unit over 5 standard units could net the same revenue, with less ads, with less resource and a cleaner UX for your users.