Exchange bidding, also known as Exchange Bidding in Dynamic Allocation (EBDA), is a server-side unified auction where ad exchanges and SSPs compete with Google Ad Exchange to win impressions. Exchange bidding was Google’s response to header bidding and the need to reduce the complexity of header bidding. 

What is header bidding?

Header bidding is a programmatic advertising technique that allows publishers to offer their inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously before sending requests to ad servers (ie. Google Ad Manager). 

Earlier this year, we discussed how it’s important to understand how seasonality affects CPMs in order to effectively benchmark, and forecast and predict revenue. As we move into July and August, publishers in the northern-Atlantic regions, like North America and Europe,  may experience one of their weakest quarters of the fiscal year. There’s no need to panic—this is a common occurrence in the advertising industry.

There are a lot of tools and techniques that web publishers can use to maximize ad revenue such as A/B testing, header bidding, lazy loading ads. A commonly used technique is ad refresh. This strategy refreshes ads which can increase the number of ads shown to the user, which in turn should produce higher revenue-per-session for the publisher. Ad refresh is especially beneficial for sites with engaged users, such as those that spend longer times on pages.

A few months ago, Google announced that they would be transitioning Google Ad Exchange to a unified first price auction in Google Ad Manager. In early June, Google will begin testing a small percentage of inventory, with the transition schedule currently on track to have all inventory running through first price auctions by the end of July.

More recently, Google formally announced new Unified Pricing Rules for Ad Manager, which deprecate the existing Open Auction Pricing Rules for first price auctions.

Are these changes poised to disrupt and change the game for publishers attempting to maximize their revenue from ads? How will buyers react to the new auction dynamics? How will publisher strategies for setting floors for their inventory be impacted?

As a publisher, you understand how important it is to measure the performance of your website(s). This allows you to see if your users are loving your site, or if there are opportunities for you to optimize. Lots of data points are available to a publisher, like CPM, eCPM, overall revenue, page RPM, and fill rate. We know that it can be challenging to determine which metric matters most—at Sortable, we recommend our publishers focus on session RPM to realize where you can improve your site(s).

Ad placements tend to be one of the most overlooked aspects of running a website. When publishers place banner ads wherever they feel like it, they won’t realize how effective the careful placement of ads can be. Every website is different and you need to consider multiple factors when optimizing your ad layouts. Here are a few guidelines for ad placements:

Your website may look fantastic with a 970x250 banner ad, but it may not be the best size for monetization. Optimizing ad unit sizes based on advertising demand can be a quick and easy way to increase yield.

Monetizing a website can be a difficult and arduous process, and can often take a fair amount of time out of a publisher’s day. Here at Sortable, we believe a trusted ad partner can be extremely beneficial for your business, taking the stress out of selling ads, allowing you to put time back into creating content and improving your website.

Ad Ops is constantly evolving—the industry isn’t what it was a year or even two years ago. Big data is a large driver of this evolution with its increasingly important role in the latest technologies available. Ad ops professionals are now responsible for overseeing data and providing insight into measuring ad effectiveness and recommending strategies for ad optimizations. Data has become vital to Ad Ops.