In the wake of the boom in native and programmatic advertising, making money to support your blog or website has never been easier.
But while knowing that advertising is the key to success, how can small publishers ensure that their blog, news site or website doesnt lose its charm or independence, and most importantly its readership
Advertising on the internet is complicated. Particularly if you’re only a small team or just a one man band. Weve all been told about premium ad sales, RTB, trading desks, CPA, CPL, SSP and so on, but how can you ensure that you can get the best advertising on your website and make the most revenue
Its a question that we encounter on a day-to-day basis with our clients. How can we retain a websites authenticity but still obtain the funding from advertising it needs to keep running and importantly, ensure the site can continue to grow its readership
We tend to focus on four key rules to ensure this: the ad placement and pricing, ad format, ad type and whether it’s mobile ready.
Ad placement and pricing
You begin with the type of ad that will best suit the website. Its important that any ad placement gives you the best deal.
Insights on what has worked before on a given site are useful, but you also need to understand that what succeeds on one site won’t always on others. Independent publishers in particular are different from the larger publisher groups so they need to have adaptive content and their ads need a degree of flexibility.
Its vital to look at content, size of the space and size/relevancy of the ad when deciding how it works and fits on the web page. Our algorithm, for example, scans the different offers in the market, including ad formats and pricing across all trading desks. We then calculate the best offer for a website in split-second real time.
Ad format
Whether your readership is five thousand or seven million, standard formats should be integrated on to every website, fitting into the layout perfectly and being absolutely un-intrusive to the readers eye.
However, high impact ads such as skins and footers can have huge benefits for your website. These offer a premium creative brand experience and can grab the consumers attention. They will increase clicks per ad and boost revenue on your site.
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Ad type
After this stage, for publishers it’s all down to choice. Clearly, one thing all smaller publishers need to take into account is how successful and powerful native advertising can be.
Since the turn of the year, native advertising use by small publishers has grown by 150 per cent. This is only going to increase. The ad format appears the same as standard web content and makes the advertising experience less disruptive.
Mobile ready
Aside from ensuring you incorporate native advertising on your website you should also be mobile ready. It sounds like an obvious move, but if you’re a small publisher or blogger it can be an easy thing to overlook.
Weve found that nine out of ten users of our own service now request mobile advertising because mobile use by consumers continues to grow and grow. If you have outdated web formats that deliver garish banners to a readers mobile, it can seriously affect your readership.
Thats why it’s important to ensure all your formats are fully responsive. By contextualising how a reader is viewing a website, this approach ensures that the reading experience is always relevant and effective.
Advertising has huge benefits for small publishers. It has to potential not only to keep you alive, but also helps you to thrive. But it has to be done well. U
sing outdated, unformatted or unappealing ads not only harms your pocket, but can destroy your readership. However, if you understand what you’re doing, advertising can fully complement the content on your site. you’re giving the reader what they want and making money in the process.
Augustin Ory is founder and CEO at The Moneytizer.
