Maximize your Q4 revenue during an AdOps Recession [10 Best Ways]

We call it the most wonderful time of the year — I’m talking about Q4. I know you’re probably not poppin’ open champagne whilst reading this, but in all seriousness, we are at an ideal time to maximize revenue for your site. With more and more advertisers fighting for users’ attention, there’s never been a better time to sell ad space and make a buck.

MonetizeMore’s AdOps experts offer these tips in this last push of the year to help you skyrocket your revenue.

Here’s how publishers can maximize their Q4 revenue

Publishers can deploy a variety of programmatic advertising solutions in their ad stack. These tips can help you determine which approach is best for your ad inventory:

Refreshing Holiday Content

The holiday season is one of the most profitable times of the year for publishers. With the influx of traffic, comes the need to boost ad revenue. What better way to do that than to refresh content already created, around holidays and popular topics in the previous Q4. This will provide a website, or websites, with an adequate boost in traffic, giving more loopholes for earning through advertising during Q4.

Create urgency with countdown promotions leading up to major holidays. This can encourage immediate action from consumers, boosting conversion rates. You can also use retargeting strategies for users who visited your site but did not convert. Tailor these ads with special holiday offers to entice them back.

Contextual Advertising

Publishers who have made the most of contextual advertising by incorporating a wide range of relevant keywords and keyphrases on their site will be able to maximize their Q4 ad revenue. By utilizing contextual advertising, you can reduce the risk of alienating your audience and instead show them ads that are relevant to them.

In addition, by implementing contextual advertising, publishers have been able to increase the rate at which ads are served (as compared to behavioral advertising) because the ads are not displayed based on data collected from past browsing habits. Rather, contextual advertising employs keywords/keyphrases on a page to display ads related to the content. For example, if a user searches for “gift ideas” on an e-commerce site, that user will see several different products displayed alongside the search results depending on what is being advertised at that time. This way, publishers can expect higher conversion rates.

Audience Segmentation

The key to successful segmentation is finding which audiences jump out as more valuable to publishers than others—and then making sure advertisers know about it. This isn’t just about getting a bigger cut of the pie for your site’s own sake, either; it’s about using Audience Segmentation as part of an overall marketing strategy.

With that said, any website can gain traffic from all over the world, but it is important to find out who this audience is and what they like so that you can develop a strategy that works for them. Segmenting your users on the basis of device, geography, gender, and more will help you find patterns in your data that can be used to maximize your ad revenue.

Using segmented data, publishers can sell ad units through direct deals to advertisers and provide data for better ad targeting. This approach benefits both parties: publishers are able to generate more revenue based on the given demographic information and advertisers have better information with which they can target their ads more effectively.

Native Advertising

In the last quarter of every year, publishers experience a high volume of traffic on their sites. So, it’s a great time to power up on Native Advertising in Q4.

Native ads blend well with content, and users enjoy viewing them. Since they are a part of the content, users are not bothered by them; in fact, they often interact with native ads.

Publishers should partner with an adtech company that offers native advertising to their inventory. In this way, publishers can start monetizing holiday traffic without disrupting their user experience.

Video Ad Units

Banner ads are the bread and butter of online advertising, but they’re not the only game in town. Publishers need to leverage video advertising during Q4 and outstream video ads first.

These don’t require an external video player, so they can be placed into a user’s feed as a banner would be. Outstream video ads are especially good for publishers who want to start testing the waters with video ads. They can also be put into an article’s body text to increase visibility.

The format also offers several benefits that make it a strong competitor to traditional banner ads: higher engagement and conversion rates, better targeting options (especially with demographic targeting), and easier ad management for publishers.

The second big reason publishers should consider adopting video ads is how much more successful they are when compared to other types of advertising. Video ads tend to have a higher click-through rate (CTR) than static banners, meaning they’re more likely to get noticed and clicked on. This makes sense when you think about it—if you’re trying to watch a relaxing video, you probably don’t want an ad in the middle of it! In fact, outstream video creatives have some of the highest reported CTRs among all forms of display advertising: the average CTR for outstream video ads is 2.3 percent, which is almost two times higher than the average CTR for traditional display.

Make the most of Q4 Spend

MonetizeMore is working closely with thousands of publisher partners to get their sites and apps primed for maximum Q4 ad revenue. To prepare for the season of peak advertising, here are some hidden tactics to optimize your revenue.

Ad Stack Prep  

When it comes to maximizing Q4 ad revenue, publishers can make the most of their ad stack by focusing on seasonal content and increasing competition with Header Bidding.

Header bidding allows publishers to increase competition from their ad stack, which increases revenue by decreasing the prices paid for inventory.

Publishers can also take advantage of premium PMPs during Q4 when there’s less competition for mobile inventory. Publishers who bid on PMPs should have a strong understanding of what buyers are looking for (such as viewability or specific targeting) so they can effectively communicate their value.

Finally, publishers should focus on seasonal content to give their traffic a boost during Q4. Seasonal content includes things like themed articles like “The Worst Christmas Songs Ever” or “7 Scary Things About Christmas.” By offering readers engaging seasonal content that is both relevant and timely, publishers can increase traffic and revenue.

Tech Check

There’s only one way to maximize ad revenue: you need the right tech. If you’re launching a new site or updating an existing one, you’ll need solutions that can help with header bidding, analytics, and the best AI for ad optimization.

PubGuru offers the full package—header bidding, smart notifications, and all the analytics you need. It is easy to integrate, yet offers ultra-sophisticated features to drive performance and optimization.

Direct Deals

One-way publishers can maximize their ad revenue is by pursuing direct deals with their top advertisers. For some advertisers, like insurance companies or retailers, Q4 is a huge time for buying ads—they’re more likely to buy ads for these last few months of the year because they know it will pay off big-time when all those holiday shoppers start buying presents and insuring their cars.

Direct deals with advertisers allow publishers to realize their performance and direct response campaign ROIs, which means they can charge higher rates than if they were just relying on a network to sell the ad impressions on their behalf. This could help a publisher rake in even more revenue than they were expecting in Q4!

Utilize Innovative Ad Formats

Publishers are facing a decline in print advertising and the looming threat of programmatic ad buying. Fortunately, this is also the time of year when they’re getting a lot of attention from advertisers, who are trying to get people in stores by buying ads on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is the perfect time for publishers to experiment with different ad formats that will make their sites more interesting to potential buyers.

Rich media units are one format that can be used to deliver a wide range of content types, from animations and videos to full games. They’re great at grabbing users’ attention, especially because they take over the entire screen. Because they have high impact and command higher CPMs than other ads.

In addition to its high CPMs, rich media ads have seen an integration into most major publishers’ workflow—making them easier for marketers to purchase and for publishers to produce.

Other than that, we examined the top 100 U.S. advertisers’ Q3 to Q4 shifts in programmatic ad spend and found that native spending was on the rise.

While it’s not surprising that native is growing in popularity among large brands, it is interesting to see just how well it compares to other ad formats. Native advertising overtook HTML5 as the top format from Q2 to Q3 of this year, with a 67% increase in CPMs over that time period alone. It also saw a 10% YoY growth in CPMs for Q3-Q4.

Maximize the value of EVERY asset

In order to maximize your revenue, you must make sure that your site or app is being monetized in the best ways possible. All inventory is valuable in Q4 and there are a lot of opportunities out there.

Through our advanced technology and experience, we can ensure that your site or app makes the most money possible.

As we head into Q4, don’t miss any revenue opportunities.  The holidays and the end of the year are a time when ad spend is the highest.  Don’t wait any longer to optimize your site.

To drive your revenue, you need to work with the right ad management partner. MonetizeMore offers the best tech technology, header bidding solution, and expert AdOps strategy plans in the publisher’s marketplace, hands down.

Contact us to get rollin’ with the best ad placement sweet spots so that you can run ads where readers spend the most time.