Ad blocking advocates may tell you that all ads are terrible, but some ads are clearly more intrusive and annoying than others. Following the unabated rise of ad blockers, most publishers, ad networks, and regulatory bodies have scrambled to fix the bloated mess that online advertising has become. Based on research and findings from the Coalition for Better Ads and Nielsen … [Read more...]
Funding Choices: AdSense Offers Whitelist Notices to Tackle Ad Block Users
Google has recently announced a lot of pro-publisher initiatives and policies, starting with releasing native ad formats, allowing 300x250 ad units above the fold on mobile, to introducing page-level policy compliance. In addition to that, they've also provided a lot of new best practices based on new ad data. All these were longstanding issues that AdSense users struggled w … [Read more...]
Explainer: What is Supply-Path Optimization?
Header bidding was supposed to solve the problem of complexity in ad operations. As the adoption picked up pace however, SSPs (short for supply-side platforms, software used by publishers to sell ads) began altering their algorithms and employing aggressive auction tactics to increase yield. This works out well for the SSPs and even publishers, at least in the short term. But … [Read more...]
Ad Tech Monthly: Blockchain, Anti-Duopoly Pacts, New Ad Marketplaces +More
Our ad tech monthly wrap-up covers the most important news in ad technology, ad blocking trends, funding, and other topics of interest to web publishers and advertisers. Quick Brief Can the decentralised information model that is central to blockchain help the fragmented supply chains in the ad tech industry? In his column on AdAge, Richard Bush, CTO of New York … [Read more...]
AdSense Best Practices: Recommendations for 2017
Most web publishers use Google AdSense as their primary means of monetization. We've covered AdSense best practices for web publishers in the past, but policies have changed since then, and Google has released many recommendations in recent updates. Here's a quick summary. Optimizing Ad Layouts While creating ad placements, find the balance between optimizing for re … [Read more...]
Google AdSense Now Allows 300×250 Ads Above the Fold on Mobile Web
As we've previously covered, one of the most common policy violations committed by publishers on AdSense is placing the 300x250 ad unit above-the-fold on mobile. The reasoning for this policy was simple: Since mobile screens are small, square ad units or vertical ad banners push the content below-the-fold, i.e., beneath the part of the screen that a user sees before s … [Read more...]
Report: Google Facebook Duopoly Now Controls 20% of Global Ad Spend
Together, Google and Facebook now control 20% of global ad spend, up from 11% in 2012, and their growth shows no signs of slowing down. Monopolies are problematic enough, but what if two companies together pace steadily towards capturing the entire market? What happens to the smaller players — ad networks, exchanges, media giants, smaller publishers? This is why the Google F … [Read more...]
Ad Tech Monthly: The Washington Post Drops Ad Tech Partners, Google’s New Ad Blocker +More
Our ad tech monthly wrap-up covers the most important news in ad technology, ad blocking trends, funding, and other topics of interest to web publishers and advertisers. Quick Brief While advertisers and publishers experiment with new mobile ad formats and mix-model ad stacks including RTB waterfall, header bidding, and S2S header bidding, The Washington Post has decided t … [Read more...]
Ad Tech Conferences: The Best Events to Learn, Network, and Grow
Advertising is as much about networks as it is about technology, there's a reason we call them advertising networks after all. There are a handful of yearly events worldwide where ad ops professionals, publishers, advertisers, regulatory agencies, and ad executives gather to share knowledge, form new partnerships, and grow their reach and impact. Here are the most important a … [Read more...]
What is a Paywall?
For print media, staying profitable was always a matter of simple math, standard ad and subscription rates made it far easier to make revenue projections based on the existing subscriber base. There were, few, if any technical challenges or bottlenecks. Things were just simpler. Enter the world wide web. The Internet Changed How Media Works Now, everyone with a connection c … [Read more...]