We’ve collected over about 20k data points from our customers’ websites to present to you in the form of Webmaster’s Guidelines. Enjoy!
“We’ve been working with traffic and webmasters for more than 15 years. We’ve seen tens of thousands of websites and the points that significantly constrained their revenue-generating capacity.
In this checklist, we’ve collected top-8 factors that usually go unnoticed by webmasters. Although, these certain factors are the keys to traffic income growth.
Our experts helped our clients during the paid consultations using this guide.
We desire to evolve the AdTech industry; thus, we’re sharing the checklist with everyone in the community.
We appreciate it if it helps you to get better results.”
Foreword from Founder & CEO of AdSpyglass
1. Cooperating with a single Ad Network within one Ad format is a road to nowhere.
Which factor is the most influential for you when you’re making a decision about a new Ad Network?
Of course, it is a CPM rate.
But is it a correct way to determine a partner? Let’s figure it out.
Let’s imagine you have plenty high-quality traffic from the US.
Suddenly, you come across an Ad Network which generously pays for banner traffic of your exact type. Let it be CPM – $2,5
Expecting happiness and satisfaction, you’re leading all your traffic to this Ad Network. However, after a few days, you realize that results are far worse than expectations:
- The bounce Rate increased, while other behavioral factors are acting up.
- Your number of hits stay the same, however, in Ad Network’s report they’ve dropped
- The overall income not only didn’t grow but also got lower than the initial level.
So, why did it happen?
You need to understand that Ad Networks always offer conditions that are profitable for them in the first place. If you’ve faced abnormally high CPM – it is a telltale sign that you need to be super-attentive and analyze everything that will occur further.
Here’s what will happen:
- You’ve added a banner, but see popunder? Meet Multiformat. This is the main reason for behavioral factors regression.
- Ad networks know how to understate your statistics extremely sneakily. What is the rationale for paying more if it’s easier to pretend? Voila, and your 100k daily hits are turning into 70k.
- Redirects to other resources. It is one of the beloved ways to steal your traffic. In the meantime, the risk that your users will never come back afterward is truly high.
- Your daily hits from the USA – 100k. Let’s imagine that your network buys only 50% of your amount. What will happen to other sessions? Correct, they will not pay off anyhow. In other words, half of your traffic will be lost.
There is only one option if you want to avoid all the problems listed above. It is working with a few Ad Networks within one ad format simultaneously. In this case, you’ll be sure that all your traffic volumes will be sold properly. You’ll have a chance to disable tricky networks and test new ones at the same time.
You probably have visitors from different countries around the globe. So, why don’t you sell each particular session to a specific Ad Network which pays more at the moment?
Read also: Why you should not work with ad networks using fixed CPM
2. Test different Ad Networks. A lot and frequently
Let’s say you’ve managed to find just the perfect Ad Network. You’ve created an account, set everything up, placed codes on your website, and started to generate revenue. After that, you come across another Ad Network, and it seems like its conditions are even more perfect.
What to do in this case?
Let’s forget for a while about the birds and the bushes and pretend you’re a smart-risky webmaster. In that way, you’ll probably love to try new opportunities for the website.
Here are your following steps at this point:
You’ll wait for the old network until your balance is available for withdrawal. Then, you’ll register at the new Ad Network and go through the process of moderation and configuration.
After that, you’ll place new codes instead of old ones and start waiting for the first results. Later, when one week passes, you’ll be able to assess your revenue and choose which Ad Network works for you.
Read also: Native Ads | Everything you wanted to know as a website owner
Sounds terribly long and tedious, huh?
So, there is a brilliant question on your mind right now. How to test a lot of Ad Networks since it is such a complicated and time-consuming process?
The answer is really easy as a pie. Everything you need is one consolidated source of analytics and statistics. Also, this source should be complemented by management means of codes, spots, and creatives. With such weaponry, you’ll not only be able to work with a few Ad Networks at the same time, but also test them on the fly without any complications.
To make this scenario possible – you need to have a one-stop platform that will give you a chance to look after analytics and manage a single master-tag on your website. Analytics will reflect the real changes of all website metrics, while master-tag will be used to add new Ad Networks’ codes quickly.
Btw, we’ve developed such a system, and it is available for all AdSpyglass users for free.
You may also like: What is Frequency Capping and how it can be leveraged for your profit increase?
3. Straighten things out with your Anti-Adblock
Statistics show that about 30% of internet users are using AdBlock to get rid of digital ads.
Moreover, in the countries where CPM is the most expensive (Northern America and the EU), the rate is more than 40%!
Just think about it… You’re losing up to 40% of your income, just ignoring Anti-AdBlock solutions.
However, there are a bunch of various Anti-Adblock on the market, and you never know which one will show results. Notwithstanding the software you choose, you shouldn’t expect that it will work forever.
Every new release of AdBlock brings more complexity to webmasters. It becomes better and more accurate in determining digital ads.
That’s why, when you’re looking for an Anti-Adblock solution, you need to make sure that a proactive and fast team of developers stay behind its back.
One of AdSpyglass’s teams is supporting precisely the same Anti-Adblock tool. From our customers’ stories, we’ve figured out that their income is rising by 30% just after the first day of implementing AdSpyglass Anti-Adblock.
The experience of a webmaster is always the #1 priority for us. Therefore, we are offering AdSpyglass Anti-Adblock free of charge for all of our users. It’ll be awesome if your business will be booming with our help.
4. Coalition for Better Ads
We bet the name of the paragraph needs no introduction. Of course, you are already familiar with this term. Probably, you have already had several troubles caused by this regulation. If we also season it with Google’s “love” to all websites that are not working with AdSense and enrich it with regular updates of the search engine. We’ll get a dish reasonably called “Webmaster’s disaster”.
It is not for us to judge whether this situation is fair and just or not. But, since Google is a number-one source of web traffic globally, we MUST play by their rules.
And it doesn’t matter if you’ve gone through a fantastic job with bookmarks, you have the stuff to be afraid of. Because now, we’re talking not only about SEO and your rankings but about your website’s availability via Google Chrome.
If you already have any misunderstandings with Google or any other parties – you need to deal with it immediately. Alternatively, you’ll lose your primary asset – website. And it is evident that nobody wants such an end.
At first, a few words about avoiding being banned:
- It is clear that you can’t just suddenly abandon Popunder, TabUnder, Push Notifications, and other high-yielding ad formats. But, you can use these ads calmly and accurately. Track your website’s behavioral indicators, play with Frequency Cap and Show limits settings, and avoid too aggressive ads. It is apparent and straightforward, but this is how it works.
- 100% never, on earth, never ever ever even think of doing it:
– Popup triggered by a click on the navigation element
– Video- or audio- autoplay with sound.
– Full-Screen ads without an ability to close it.
What else can a webmaster do?
Our industry is one of the most dynamic. It does not stand still, and new ad formats keep on appearing. There is one piece of advice from this perspective: Whenever you notice something new over the web, be among the first to try it. In most instances, fresh formats fully comply with all the rules and “coalitions”. Moreover, users are actively clicking on the ads, which leads to high CPMs.
How to act if you’ve already got banned?
Just pretend you’re dealing with a bomb. The concept is coinciding: Don’t worry, don’t hurry up, don’t panic. Avoiding sudden moves, you just need to reach out to experts that know how to act.
For the record, we’re at AdSpyglass have already helped resolve hundreds of different ban-related cases. We know not only how to unban you, but also how to protect you from getting there in the future.
Would you like to request a quote? Not needed. As we’ve already mentioned – We are webmasters ourselves – just as you are. And, consequently, we love to help our people for free.
5. Ensure you’re segmenting your traffic and selling different cross-sections to different Ad Networks.
Quite a brief paragraph, even though extremely important. You know that there is no one-stop-shop in Ad Networks, and every one has its own specialization. Industry, vertical, geo – each parameter has the best network of a kind. So, this is an excellent chance that we need to capture. Hope you see it: You can sell different cross-sections of your web-traffic to various Ad Networks that focus on the specific traffic types.
Here’s an example:
You’re dealing with mainstream traffic from various countries distributed around the globe. You can quickly put all the traffic volume together and sell it in bulk. However, there is a much more sophisticated option for you.
You can double your revenue, just creating different cross-sections following Ad Networks needs.
Let’s say:
- one network pays a lot for mobile traffic from Norway,
- another one – gives you incredible CPM for Canada-based macOS users
- and there is a network that agrees to provide you all the money in the world if you have Brazilian visitors via cellular.
According to our experience, such an in-depth and advanced configuration will boost your traffic revenue by up to +100%. Building this system is extremely expensive, complicated, and lengthy.
That’s why we’ve built it by ourselves and called it AdSpyglass. And, of course, you’re welcome to try it out. Btw, above is just a perfect definition of the “Ad Mediation System” term.
Read also: What is SSP? Real quick and easy explainer what it is and why you MUST use it.
6. Boldly try everything new.
Recently, we’ve added a new Ad Format – Interstitial. This is a full-screen overlay. This type of ad appears to cover the full screen just when a user clicks on any link and can be dismissed easily if needed. At the moment the advertisement is being closed, the user will be automatically redirected to the target link. So, we can say that the way of the appearance of the Interstitial format strongly attracts attention.
It is a new advanced analog of beloved PopUnder. Although this alternative doesn’t have any problems with regulators and has a few other benefits in comparison. Let us guide you through them:
- Interstitials open in the layer over your website. As soon as a user closes ads, his browser will open the link immediately. So, target=” _blank” is not a limit for you now.
- The configuration of this format can be called super-flexible. More than that, there is a callback function. For instance, you can set up video playback after the closing of an ad.
- There are no more reasons to risk because of PopUnder’s revenue-generating ability. CPM of Interstitial is almost the same. Some of the geos have even higher rates for these advertisements. Using a wise approach, you can quickly achieve amazing results.
- Interstitial fully complies with the Coalition for Better Ads policy. It was approved as a user-friendly format. So, fire away!
Learn more: An excellent alternative to popunder – Interstitial ad format
And we have not finished yet. In-page push – another rookie in the squad. It is something average between standard push notification and banners. It really looks like push notification and contains the image inside. In the meantime, it doesn’t require a subscription.
Sound promising? Look at this:
- In-Page push is one of the most user-friendly advertising formats. It doesn’t block the content of the website.
- Despite the previous statement, it was proved that this type of ad brings quite high CTR. It attracts user’s attention due to its dynamic appearance. Also, many users bounce from the website before they interact with your In-video ad or trigger a popunder. However, the In-Page push will be conclusively shown in any case.
- It is not a substitute for existing ad formats. It is a new and independent type of ad. It means that you’re very welcome to use it in a mix with existing ads on your website. So, we’re saying that it is a promising opportunity to get additional income.
- Frequency capping, show limits, delays, delays between multiple in-page pushes, accurate positioning on your web-page to the coordinates, behavior after clicking the link – all of these parameters are available for your custom configuration. Just imagine the scenarios you can build using this flexibility!
- The in-page push was developed following various regulations. You may use it without any risks of being banned.
- As usual, we save the best for last. CPM of this format is higher than banner’s on 200%-300% on average.
So, it’s crystal clear that you MUST try it on your website. We would not be AdSpyglass since we had not recommended what actually works with our clients. Good luck!
Learn more: New native ad format In-Page Push
7. Analytics and statistics from A to Z in one place.
And it is not about Google Analytics. Seriously, you need to have one trustworthy and objective source of the data. It is required for the understanding of what is happening with your traffic and what is your REAL performance at various Ad Networks. This is the only way to be sure about your metrics and number. Of course, you can try to track everything using Ad Networks analysis tools, but… we’ve mentioned it is not the most accurate data source (shaving, remember?)
In this situation, it is a perfect decision to have one single tracker of your web-traffic. It should collect the information across all sessions and impressions, notwithstanding how many and which ad networks you’re working with. Of course, it should be able to store records through different formats, zones, and spots.
Having this type of software will definitely lead to fruitful results because you’ll be aware of all aspects and actions that reflect positive movements and tendencies.
As you’re guessing, we would not tell you tales about the platform that has never existed. And, how you’ve already probably guessed we successfully built the tool for our customers.
We’re keeping track of everything with absolute transparency and accuracy to let our people achieve better results. Also, since our mediation system is factically useful, we want to make sure our users can observe their progress in the fairest and most straightforward way.
Give it a try and create your own impression.
8. Making a lot from visitors is cool. But making much more on competitors is badass!
We know that you’re spying your competitors. We are also webmasters, and we can say it is considered as one of the best practices. Looking after your competitors can always bring you new ideas, insights, and useful points that can be applied for your own website. From a tech perspective, it is fantastic to be aware of modern tech stacks and solutions. We thought for a while and decided that we know how to turn this fact into revenue. Your revenue, of course.
For sure, you’ve seen Ad Networks labels near the advertisements dozens of times. You know these like: “Powered by Ad_Network” or “Ads by Ad_Network”.
Altogether, we’ve created a referral program and officially allowed you to paste the referral link into “Ads by AdSpyglass” label. Now, you’ll get a commission from every registered webmaster who has used your link. Easy and profitable, huh? We love it when you’re making more with us. And there are no doubts; you’ll love it as well!
We appreciate you’ve read the checklist to the end. We hope our advice will be helpful to you and your business. If, while reading the publication, any question came to your mind, notwithstanding the subject and theme. Or, if you feel a desire to test AdSpyglass in action for free – you’re most welcome to reach out to our experts. One homeless kitten in the world finds a home when you’re joining us. Catch up later, pal!
