When optimizing your income from advertisements, testing should be an important and constant part of the work. Testing is not only about size, colors, and positions, but also about finding the right partner. For those who are monetizing their income from ads their most important partner is an ad network.
In order to maximize revenue from display advertising, the best thing you can do is sell your ad inventory directly to targeted advertisers willing to pay a premium rate. Of course, many publishers don’t sell all of their inventory directly and instead rely on network partners to monetize remnant inventory.
Monetizing this unsold inventory is a major component of online monetization; optimizing the yield here can have a huge impact on your bottom line, especially if you have a significant base of existing traffic.
- 5 Tips for Better, Faster Ad Serving
- 7 Ways to Optimize Native Ads for Higher Revenue
- 12 Factors of a Perfect Ad Network
- 5 Best Mobile Ad Optimization Strategies
- 10 Factors of a Perfect Ad Network
- How do You Optimize Ad Sets?
- How do I Optimize my Mobile Ads?
- What Does it Mean to Optimize an Ad?
- Which Ad Network Pays The Most?
- Using Data to Optimize Your Search Campaigns
- How Developers Can Maximize App Revenue With AdMob Mediation
- What is Ad Mediation?
- How to Optimize Search Campaign
- Best Ad Mediation Network
- What is The Best Ad Network For Publishers?
- What is Optimization For Ad Delivery
- How do I Optimize Social Media Ads?
- Best Advertising Platforms
5 Tips for Better, Faster Ad Serving
For websites that generate revenue from display advertising, there are a number of opportunities to make optimizations to improve overall earnings. Between ad colors and fonts, page layouts, and even different networks, you’ll have no shortage of experiments to run and incremental improvements to make.
Read Also: How to Choose the Right Ad Formats for your Website
One such opportunity you may not have considered relates to the speed of your site. Because a slow website cripples earnings capacity, boosting your property’s overall speed can deliver a meaningful improvement to the revenue generated from your existing traffic.
Why Speed Matters
As a general rule of thumb, the faster your site loads the more pageviews you’ll receive and the more money you’ll make. Let’s explore why this would be the case. For starters, there’s a direct relationship between site speed and user experience.
The faster a site loads, the easier it is to navigate and the better the user experience. This translates directly into more pageviews during each visit, and an increased likelihood of return visits.
You’ve probably experienced a slow website recently; your reaction was probably one of frustration that caused you to cut your visit to that site short. Doing so also cut short the number of ads you saw and the opportunities for the publisher to earn display ad revenue.
Page load is also a factor considered in algorithms used to determine where pages rank in major search engines, including Google. The premise here is similar: faster loading sites provide a better user experience and should rank ahead of similar properties that take longer to fully load.
So decreasing page load time can also bring more visitors to your site, which can obviously help to boost display advertising revenue.
Ads: The Speed Killer
For sites that monetize via display ads, there’s obviously a benefit to having multiple ad units on each page. But there are drawbacks as well; ad units can increase the page load time substantially, especially if they’re complex and large.
In general, there will be a strong negative correlation between the number of ads (and ad networks) used on a site and the speed of that site. But this trade-off is avoidable; it’s very possible to serve multiple ads on a page without sacrificing the user experience (and ultimately page views and ad impressions) in the process.
1. Limit File Sizes
If you’re dealing directly with advertisers who are sending you files to serve, you may want to consider cracking down on the file size. If their ad units (i.e., the actual Flash files) are too large, they may take too long to load and result in a bad user experience.
A 60 KB max limit included in a spec sheet will generally result in reasonable load times, but many publishers require files to be even smaller (specifically, a 40 KB limit).
2. Use Asynchronous Ad Codes
When creating AdSense ad units, you now have the option to generate tags for asynchronous ads. This is one of the easiest ways to eliminate any ad-related slowness; it literally takes just the click of a button.
Using asynchronous ad code is advantageous because it allows ads to load separately from the rest of your site. In other words, if there is an issue with an ad unit loading slowly it won’t drag down the rest of the site with it by preventing other sections of the page from loading.
While it’s obviously not ideal to have ads load slowly, this will inevitably occur whenever you’re dealing with a network. Ensuring that any such issues don’t interfere with the overall user experience is still a nice win.
If you’re creating new ad units, make sure that the asynchronous box is checked. If it’s been a while since you set up the ad units on your site, an overhaul to upgrade the old ad code will have a nice payoff.
3 Kill Off Slow Networks
It’s often advantageous to use multiple ad networks to maximize your earning potential. But each ad network you add to the equation means there is a possibility for a major reduction in website loading speed.
While Google AdSense generally won’t give you many speed headaches, unfortunately, the same can’t be said for all networks. Sometimes, certain networks just won’t work well with your site, adding seconds to the load time and having a significantly negative impact on the user experience.
Wade Shepard has a great case study in this process, outlining how he identified and killed off ad networks that were dragging down his overall page load time. You can also run a quick test on your site to identify any outliers in terms of load time. From the Chrome Browser:
- Right Click
- Select “Inspect Element”
- Click on the “Network” tab
- Reload the page
You’ll see a bunch of lines pop up, each indicating an element of the page that has to load. Search for any ad networks you know you’re using (you can check for other plug-ins, such as analytics platforms, as well) and note the time associated with each.
Below is an example from CNN.com. Note that Outbrain, a “featured content” network used to generate some incremental revenue, is contributing to the overall load time. In this case, it’s probably not a big deal since it’s adding only a few hundred milliseconds. But if you see ad networks here with a large load time, they may be doing you more harm than good.

4. Experiment With Fewer Ad Units
This tip can be summed up in four words: sometimes, less is more. While you’ll naturally be inclined to increase the number of ad units as you attempt to increase display ad revenue, the opposite approach may sometimes be more effective.
Run A/B tests that involve taking ad units out of your site completely; you may be surprised to see that giving some the ax is more than offset by higher earnings from those you leave in place.
5. Look Beyond Ads
Though we’ve focused primarily on addressing issues with ads loading slowly, there are obviously other parts of a site that can contribute as well. Fixing general speed issues will guarantee you additional ad revenue; you’ll serve more ads, receive more clicks, and get a bigger check at the end of each month.
If you enjoy the process of optimizing your display ad revenue stream, page and ad speed is another challenge to add to your routine. Small improvements in these key metrics can lead to surprisingly large increases in revenue.
7 Ways to Optimize Native Ads for Higher Revenue
Native ads are a popular choice amongst publishers because they lead to a better user experience, and in most cases, higher overall revenue.
Blending in with the medium in which they’re displayed, native ads help advertisers overcome banner blindness and ultimately help publishers earn more from their websites. Business Insider Intelligence reports that the spending on native ads will reach $8 billion in 2015, and by 2018, this figure is projected to rise to $21 billion.
Social native ads, such as those seen on Facebook and Twitter, will account for the largest share of native ad revenue. It’s important to learn how to optimize your native ads so that they earn you more money now and in the future.
1. Maximize the Relevance of Ads
You want the best for your readers. Right? Advertisers that display native ads want their ads to help their them make money and promote their brand, but you want these ads to be relevant to your audience above all else.
If you’ve written a post on gardening, your viewers wouldn’t expect an advertisement for apartments to be displayed.
These types of ads simply don’t convert well, and they harm the trust users put into your website. Relevancy will lead to trust and an increase in revenue. While it’s tempting to place native ads on a site, you need to ensure they’re relevant to your content.
How do you check ad relevancy?
Act as a user of your site. View your ads, and see if they’re relevant to the content produced or your audience’s needs. Testing different ad networks to find one that provides highly relevant native ads is always recommended.
2. Rotate Multiple Ad Networks
Over time, visitors become blind to default ad positions and creatives, this leads to fewer clicks for the advertiser and lower revenue for the publisher.
For this reason, advertisers are known to create several ads so that their campaigns never grows dull. As a publisher, a variety of different ad networks is the best way to promote engagement from your audience.
Readers of your website will notice ads that are newer or relevant to their needs. If an ad is being displayed everywhere from Facebook to a high-profile blog, your users may have already seen the ad and helped another publisher earn revenue as a result.
What do we recommend?
- Utilize several native ad networks at once.
- Rotate between networks to keep ads fresh.
Using ad rotation, you’ll limit the chance of users becoming blind to ads simply because they’ve seen the ad multiple times already.
3. Avoid Tricking Your Readers
Native ads are meant to blend into your content. They’re an extension of your content to inform or entertain the reader. Tricking users into clicking on these ads is unwise. Your readers are your website’s lifeline. If you trick them, they will not come back to your page – or at least not all of them.
As a publisher, delineate your native advertisements from the content on your site.
This sound counterproductive because native ads work so well, especially when they match your site’s content. But, you don’t want your user to think they’re clicking on your link, only to be directed to an advertiser. It may lead to a one-off conversion, but it may also result in one less return visitor to your site.
View your site from a visitor standpoint.
If an ad is misinterpreted to the point where a reader will click on it unintentionally, you’ll want to test out different ad placement options (we’ll discuss this shortly).
In-feed ads are the common culprits when tricking readers. If an ad matches the look and feel of content that it is placed in too well, it’s easy to see why the reader may click on the ad unknowingly.
4. Use Automation to Optimize Ads
Automation is a great way to optimize your website’s ads to see what works best for your audience. No, we’re not talking about doing anything deceptive. Automation, in the form of split testing, is a great way to find out what works for your site.
Every site will have a unique way to optimize and increase native ad revenue.
A common form of automation that publishers tend to ignore is split testing headlines. Big businesses and news outlets will often test two or more story headlines using automation. The system will then automatically pick the headline that is receiving the most clicks to be displayed, leading to longer session times and higher ad engagement.
Automation can be a powerful tool in the optimization process.
You can test ad color and font variations as well as titles and creatives. When done automatically, you’ll be able to view metrics to see what works best for your audience.
5. Optimize the Layout of Ad Units
Different ad layouts lead to better results. Testing all of these layouts or placements can be an extremely arduous task – especially on larger sites. Automation allows you to:
- Test pre-defined ad placements.
- Test different ad sizes and units.
- Track user behavior based on each layout.
Test, test and continue testing. This is how publishers will make the most money with any ad unit.
Automation allows you to find the layout that works best for your audience. Machine-learning driven optimization is now more robust than ever before. Based off of user behavior, these automated systems can continually optimize your site.
6. Use Content Recommendation Systems
In-feed ads may work well for your website, but adding more story views may provide the best revenue boost for your site. This doesn’t mean going out and writing more content, but it does mean adding more ways for users to navigate your site.
Often placed directly under content, these “widgets” allow viewers to find stories from your site that are relevant or related as well as sponsored stories. For example, a 4-picture cube may be listed under a post where 2 cubes are a story from your site and 2 other cubes are sponsored stories.
This works to:
- Drive direct revenue through new ad opportunities.
- Redirect readers to other pages of your site.
It’s always better for a reader to remain on your site than click “x” and move on to something else. Redirecting traffic to other, relevant pages of your site provides another opportunity to earn revenue.
The sponsored stories also perform very well with revenues based on a per-click basis. Visually appealing, these networks offer a fluid design that blends perfectly with your website’s look and feels.
7. Test CPC vs CPM vs CPA vs Direct Sales
Something you should be doing with all of your advertisements is trying out different ad types to see which produces the most revenue. This can be done with the following:
- CPC: The cost-per-click model works well for a lot of websites that are content-heavy. Sites that contain imagery or videos tend to do better with the CPM model.
- eCPM: This refers to earnings per 1,000 impressions. A great way to earn money even when users aren’t engaging with an ad, a CPM payment model is ideal for larger sites with a lot of traffic.
- CPA: Cost-per-action is often associated with affiliate marketing. You may lead a visitor to sign up for a free sample of a teeth whitening product you recommended and will make money when they provide their information to the company.
Selling ad space directly to publishers is the most lucrative option for publishers. When you sell ads directly, you can negotiate the terms. In most cases, you will sell space based on CPM, but you can choose a CPA or CPC option as well.
Mixing various ways you’re paid for ads is a good way to increase overall revenue and squeeze every penny out of the traffic you receive.
Native ads are just like all other ads where testing is vital to your overall revenue. The one major difference is that you’ll want to pay close attention to your layout to ensure you’re not tricking your readers into clicking ads.
12 Factors of a Perfect Ad Network
Establish a base line
When you start monetizing a project with ads, the question is how much you can earn with it. Even with the best planning and research you still can’t be sure on how much income you can actually generate.
Our recommendation for everyone starting with an advertisement is Google AdSense. It is simply the biggest ad network on the internet and has no problems filling any banner space with ads based on the visitor’s interests or your site’s topic. A whole bunch of ad sizes and a good performance are also reasons why some publishers never stop using it.
Depending on your traffic, you might start testing with AdSense by just using different ad placements, sizes and colors to get the most out of it.
This should help you to quickly create a base line for your potential income from online advertisements. Once you have the feeling that there is no higher income to gain from AdSense, you should start checking out other ad networks.
Criteria for a great ad network
Region and language
Matching the ad networks region and language of operation with your site seems like a no brainer, but is still very tricky. The smaller the group of native speakers is and the more some of them access your site from various countries, the harder it is to find an ad network that can serve ads to all of them.
Running a website in Slovak with less than 5.5 million inhabitants in Slovakia is tough to monetize with just ads. From a recent session on WordCamp Slovakia, there seems to be no performant ad network beside AdSense there.
Ad content
There are not only ad networks for specific languages and regions, but also for specific topics. This can be a general topic area like business or lifestyle, a product or service specific one like cars or insurances, or one that gathers ads for peer groups like parents or students.
Depending on your site’s topics, those niche networks might perform a lot better for your site than the global players, because they can concentrate on a specific kind of advertisers who are interested in placements on websites close to their products and target groups.
In case the ad topic is not specified you should check a potential ad partner for the content in the delivered ads on your site. A lot of them have a policy against ads with inappropriate content like porn, violence, gambling or alcohol. Still, you should constantly check what they display on your website.
Even though the ads might be ok in general, you should think about how your visitors could react on them. There is a site for a better educated, elderly group of visitors offering magic diet plans or how to easily make money as text ads. Is this appropriate?
Decide yourself, but don’t try to ignore the ad content. Visitors naturally see the content of the displayed ads to be your responsibility.
Ad sizes and ad kind
A lot of ad networks have a fixed portfolio of ad sizes they serve. The most common banner sizes are the Leaderboard (728 x 90), Skyscraper (160 x 600) and Medium Rectangle (300 x 250).
It is on you to optimize your site’s layout to at least allow some of those sizes to be able to display advertisements at all. The more common sizes you support, the better you can test and optimize ad networks against each other.
Another important factor is the kind of ads. Just a simple banner like the sizes mentioned above can be a lot. Think about static images, text ads, rich media ads or even video. For the latter, this is diverse too between the ad networks.
Some play them automatically after page load, some after the visitor just moves the mouse above them and some only after clicking the play button. What to take from this? Try to understand as good as you can what your ads actually displays and how they work.
Beside simple banners, there are other techniques of display advertisements like popups, popunders, text links, rollups, etc. This is a lot of material for its own article, but again. Try to understand them as much as possible before integrating them into your site.
Mobile vs. Desktop
Since mobile traffic started to raise to a significant number for a lot of my clients a few years back, we asked ourselves how to actually monetize it. Responsive layout was great, but banners didn’t fit automatically.
Finally, we saw a few specialized ad networks arise and were able to monetize mobile traffic. Technically, this is still itchy, but works rather good for us now.
This is something you also need to consider. Most ad networks don’t serve both, mobile and desktop, and you need to be aware of that.
Fill rate
One of the biggest problems when testing ad networks even for an English site is the fill rate. This is the percentage of possible ad impressions actually being served and visible. No ad, no payment.
While testing a bigger ad network from the US, while click rate and price were significantly better than other networks, the fill rate was below 50% and more than neutralized the positive effects.
Fallback
Some ad networks call them a „fallback“ some a „passback“. They normally mean a possibility to use code from another ad network when the main one can’t deliver.
Performance (speed)
A well-paying ad network was recently moved from a website due to its bad performance. They used several internal fallbacks from other sources and some of those codes were written so badly or were sometimes just broken so that the whole site suffered or was even prevented from being displayed at all.
After removing the ad network the site gained an overall speed boost of 1 second per page view and the main content was also showing a lot sooner.
Speed is important for SEO and usability, but also a late ad impression is a lost impression. So ad delivery speed is important as well. Lucky for publishers, a lot of advertisers switched from synchronous to asynchronous loading. This means, your content and the ads are loading at the same time and not one after the other.
Income potential
When testing ad networks what finally counts is the income you gain from your cooperation. But why is there so few text in this paragraph? Because the income potential is a result from the equation including all the factors mentioned above. There are very, very few networks than can actually offer a constant price based on page views.
When your ad network has a representative, you might ask them directly about some numbers. This serves you the time and nerves of testing.
Payment conditions
Especially for small publishers and those who just want to test an ad network quickly, two additional conditions seem important to mention.
All of them have a payment limit under which they don’t send you money. Google AdSense has its “payment threshold” on exactly $100 or €70. If the sum of your income since the last payment is below that, you don’t get paid yet. In our experience, Adsense’s $100 threshold is one of the highest. High enough so that less than 5% of all AdSense accounts reach it per month.
Another important factor is the time the payment is delayed. Some ad networks have a reasonable period based on their income generating method like affiliates. For products and services with a longer cancellation period, payment is often made rather late.
Ad networks that pay based on simple clicks or page views should have a shorter payment period. Most ad networks at least clearly state on their websites how long they need to pay you.
Support
One of the important side factors of a great ad network is its support. In my experience, the good networks have a direct contact person.
Even AdSense noticed they need to take more personal care of bigger publishers and offer email support for accounts with an ad income of at least 25$ per week. Some get a personal support from time to time checking in to get feedback for specific features and helping to try out something new.
You will recognize a great support by its short and helpful response time. They should offer you extra services that might not be described anywhere and support you with the implementation. Technical support is also an important factor.
There is this ad network that had a plugin that didn’t work on one of my own sites due to some technical problems. The support offered help and after a few days, the user received another code snipped tailored to my site. They even took care of the ad layout so it matched my site.
Backend and usability
One of the biggest differences between ad networks is the level of their backend. Some, even from bigger networks, don’t have one and you are completely dependent on the support when creating new ad units, fallbacks or getting some stats.
Others, like AdSense, offer a lot of possibilities to optimize ads and ad performance from a dashboard.
Stats
What we like most about AdSense are statistic tools. They are very detailed and a reason this ad network is great for testing and optimizing your income. There are a lot of networks that didn’t offer more detailed numbers than the sum of the income per day.
Most publishers probably won’t need a lot of stats. Still, you should at least have enough to allow you to optimize as much as you can and want to. For me, this is a minimum of having a report with the income per ad per 1000 page views.
5 Best Mobile Ad Optimization Strategies
Let’s take a look a some of the main mobile marketing tools and how to use them in your strategy.
1. Mobile Searches
Search results on mobile devices are different than on desktop, and since 2016, Google has made mobile indexing the priority. In other words, it is essential to have a specific SEO strategy for mobile.
When optimizing your website for mobile devices, follow these best practices:
- Mobile users do not read as much as people who search from desktop devices, so less is more.
- Patience is also significantly reduced on mobile devices, so be sure your loading times are as short as they can be.
- Prioritize responsive design and usability. The size of the buttons is also very important.
2. Mobile Ads
Traditional banners are met with increasingly more skepticism and disapproval, and smartphones are no exception to the rise of adblockers. For this reason, it is important to use formats that are less intrusive and offer a better user experience like interactive ads, animated banners and videos.
3. Mobile Apps
Smartphone users have completely integrated apps into their lives. A brand app can be an incredible investment to increase engagement and improve the users’ experience. It is important to make sure that your app is supported by a thorough and complete app marketing strategy. The design is just a fraction of the work.
4. Coupons
Discount coupons have been around forever, but, thanks to mobile, they have been completely revolutionized.
Now, you can send personalized offers by using the user’s location and other data, capturing their attention at the right time. If you really want to modernize your strategy, “disappearing coupons” on apps like Snapchat are a great way to create a sense of urgency.
5. Email Marketing
One of the main tasks people use their smartphones for is to check their emails. According to Hubspot, there are 4 billion email users daily, and this number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025.
Email marketing techniques are better than ever. If you do decide to use email, be sure to use responsive templates.
Periodically, send a newsletter summarizing the latest posts published on your blog and share news about your industry and internal and external videos that might be interesting to your customer database. Additionally, you can send promotions or offers and let them know of any changes that could affect their buying habits.
10 Factors of a Perfect Ad Network
Whether it’s traditional advertising or digital media, the truth is that all advertising campaigns share a number of common characteristics. There are 10 characteristics that make for a strong ad or campaign.
1. It’s Promotional
At its core, advertising is a form of communication that aims to publicize a product or service and encourage sales. By nature, good advertising is promotional.
While some may refer to advertising as “propaganda”, they are in fact two separate concepts. Propaganda seeks to influence a population’s ideology and ways of thinking, while advertising focuses on influencing purchasing habits. A good advertisement is promotional in nature, though this promotion can be more or less subtle.
2. It’s Persuasive
To achieve their main objective (to increase sales of a certain product or service), effective ads must convince consumers that a certain product or service is better than a similar offering from a competitor. Persuasive advertising assures that a product can solve a consumer’s need or improve their life in some way.
Advertising employs a variety of resources such as appealing to consumers’ emotions, winning their trust with arguments of authority, or using logical reasons to justify the purchase of a product. Remember those lessons about ethos, pathos, and logos from high school? Effective advertising uses these tools all the time.
3. It’s Part of the Company’s Overall Marketing Strategy
Behind every campaign, there is a lot of strategic thinking involved. Advertising always aligns with a specific marketing objective that ladders up to the global interests of the brand or company. Thus, a strong advertising strategy should be framed within the general marketing plan, like in Nike’s Just Do It campaign.
4. It’s Targeted
In the past, advertising relied on mass media such as radio and television to reach as wide an audience as possible. Effective advertising in today’s world requires highly targeted and segmented audiences.
Every brand has a buyer persona or ideal customer profile they are trying to attract. The more focused your advertising is on a particular audience, the more effective it can be. The content of your advertising messages should be specially designed to appeal to the feelings and needs of your audience. Ads do not work if they are not trying to appeal to a specific type of person.
5. It’s an Investment
Advertising campaigns require an investment of time, resources, and of course, money. Generally, the channel issuing the advertisements charges a certain amount in exchange for its dissemination.
A good ad campaign will increase the company’s profits, and this should exceed the invested cost. To understand the relationship between costs, advertisers measure the campaign’s ROI (return of investment). A positive ROI indicates that the advertising campaign has been a success.
6. It’s Original
It’s no secret that advertising suffers from market saturation. Consumers are exposed to hundreds of ads a day in different formats, and most don’t even pay attention to them. Therefore, effective advertising stands out from the competition by using unexpected formats and resources.
You can grab a user’s attention by emphasizing the novelty of your product or service, offering a great deal, or doing something completely out of the box, like Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign.
7. It’s Creative
Videos that tell stories, shocking images, unforgettable speeches, catchy jingles, etc. Effective ads use creativity to stand out and make a brand immediately identifiable or memorable. The best creative ads manage to surprise users, move them to action, and become instantly memorable, all while remaining faithful to the principles of the brand.
8. It’s Consistent
Truly great ads stay consistent with the core of the brand and the values associated with it. Generally, a single ad can’t achieve this goal, especially in a saturated environment. Therefore, a key aspect of advertising is consistency.
Ideally, each consumer within the target audience should receive enough impact to remember the brand and its message, but not so much that it becomes annoying or saturated. It is also interesting to consider that impacts can be repeated through the same medium (for example, watching the same TV commercial several times) or transmitting the same message by adapting it to different channels (cross-channel or multi-channel advertising).
9. It’s Personalized
Personalization is an increasingly important trend in recent times and it’s getting easier than ever. Truly effective ads are increasingly personalized to the characteristics and needs of a particular user. For example, you can use marketing automation to send e-mails with personalized content.
These kinds of emails are activated when a user performs a certain action and are a great example of incorporating personalization into advertising. Remarketing is another great way to use personalized ads, especially for ecommerce or retail stores.
10. It’s Ethical
Because of its persuasive power, advertising should be controlled to prevent misleading information or unethical campaigns. While there are several public bodies that regulate the ethical aspect of advertising, it is also essential that advertisers and agencies take responsibility.
In the end, honest and clean advertising reflects the values of the advertiser, contributes to improving a brand’s image, and is beneficial in the long run.
How do You Optimize Ad Sets?
Let’s explore the 5 essential tips for optimizing your Facebook ad sets, for maximum return on investment and improved conversions.
1. Install Facebook Pixel
First of all, you need to ensure you have installed Facebook Pixel on your website.
The Pixel is a tiny piece of code that you add to your website, which then tracks how visitors interact with your pages. This data informs Facebook about their background, interests and behaviors, and enables better ad targeting based on real-life user data.
Configuring Pixel is fairly easy, and the data it reaps will ensure your ads are always shown to the right audience segment, increasing your click-through rates, and improving your ROI.
In order to get the best results, you need to make sure you are also optimizing for iOS 14 users – make sure your domain is verified, re-configure your preset settings in the Ads Manager, and select a single domain for tracking conversions.
2. Create Target Audience Personas
Defining your target audience is the second critically important step in ad set optimization. You can rely on Facebook’s own Lookalike Audiences or Audience Insights features, or you can also create your own personas based on user data you have previously gathered.
Relying on your own information sources (like Google Analytics and Search Console, or any other apps you use for the purpose) can give you that much-needed edge. After all, Facebook doesn’t understand your audience as well as you do.
Always start with the pain points your brand can solve. Why would someone do business with you? What can you do to help them solve an issue? What is it they would like to know about your brand?
Once you have an answer to these questions, start defining different audience segments based on demographics, interests, behaviors, etc. Make sure you have distinct personas for different services or product categories, pain points and income levels, age groups, and brand experiences.
Not only will this research help you increase your ad ROI, it’s a great way to lower your cost-per-click too.
3- A/B Test Your Ads
In paid advertising, copywriting and design are often just as important as targeting and ad timings.
In order to ensure your ad sets are doing their best for your brand, you should A/B test them as often as possible. For one, Facebook may have implemented changes you were not aware of, and it also gives you the chance to further improve even your best ad campaigns.
The ad elements you should A/B test (always one at a time!) include:
- Ad design
- Ad visuals
- Ad copy – specifically focusing on the headline
- Ad placement
- Call to action
- Bidding method
- Target audience
A/B testing is made easy through the Ads Manager, so you should have no trouble implementing various tests as often as you need to.
4. Use Intelligent (Re)targeting
Targeting and retargeting play a vital role in paid advertising.
First, you want to be crystal clear about the kinds of ads that certain audience segments want to see. For example, if you have a product that specifically appeals to parents, don’t serve it to teenagers. Sticking to our point about “know what the pain point is and solve it”, make sure you match the ad to the user as granularly as possible.
This might initially be a tougher cookie to crack, but the longer you run your ads, and the more Facebook Pixel learns about your audience, the easier it will become.
When it comes to retargeting, make sure you add those who have already visited your site to this audience. You also need to choose the right time frame: if your products can be considered an impulse purchase, or if you sell an item that is often shopped for, you can target 30-day audiences. But if customers need more time to make a decision, then you can target 60-day audiences.
Always ensure that audiences who have previously converted see a different ad than first-time potential customers and leads. Show them something extra, give them a discount, make a special offer – they will appreciate it.
5. Stand Out and Be True to Yourself
Finally, in order to truly make the most of your ad spend, you should do your very best to stand out from your competition.
Most brands will do some competitor research (whether through the Ads Manager or on another platform or even through Google) before running an ad campaign. They will then merely adapt the targeting practices and ad formats that work best in the niche.
While this practice is perfectly legitimate, you risk becoming no more than just another business in the crowd. Instead, try to put a twist on the best practices. If most competitors use images, try doing video. If they keep promoting their blog posts, make yours more informative and more valuable.
By structuring your ads so that they are likely to spark high engagement rates, you will instantly be seeing an improved ROI as well.
How do I Optimize my Mobile Ads?
in order for your video ads to be most effective on mobile, they need to be optimized for the mobile viewing environment, so we put together some tips to help you easily adapt your existing assets for mobile.
1. Turn static images into video ads with slideshow
Slideshow makes it easy to create lightweight video ads from images you already have without any additional production investment, so they’re quick and affordable to create. You can create a slideshow ad in minutes right from your phone or desktop from images you have or you can choose from a selection of free stock images, rich video-editing tools and a wide range of music.
Slideshow ads are also ideal when you need to reach people on slower connections, like in emerging markets, since slideshow ads load quickly and play well on any connection speed.
2. Trim your video to match consumption behavior on mobile
People flip through content quickly on mobile, so it’s important for your video ads to match this fast consumption behavior. If you have videos that are longer in duration, like a 60-second product demo or how-to video, you can repurpose these by using the video trimming tool to select the most important 10-15 seconds.
Shortening your video ads will not only optimize them for how people consume content on mobile, but will also ensure your video ads are eligible for placements such as in-stream.
3. Crop your video to fit the mobile screen
Since people typically consume content on mobile while holding their phone vertically, it’s important to take advantage of the vertical screen space by creating 9:16 video ads.
And formatting your video ads to fit the vertical screen space is now easier than ever with the automatic cropping tool in Ads Manager, in which our scene detection technology identifies the focal point of a non-vertical video on a frame-by-frame basis and automatically crops the video to the aspect ratio of the your choice.
4. Create assets that work with sound on and off
Since video viewing happens at different parts of the day in various settings, we know people enjoy having the ability to watch with or without sound. That’s why we recommend using subtitle to help deliver your message when people are watching with the sound off. In the Video Creation Kit, you can layer text assets on your video to guide viewers through your story arc and communicate your business messages seamlessly in the mobile environment.
The Video Creation Kit offers templates suited for common marketing objectives like driving product discovery and showcasing multiple product benefits. You can also use the Video Creation Kit to turn static assets into video ads as well.
5. Bookend with your brand
Since people flip through content quickly on mobile, be sure your brand or business message is prominent at the beginning and/or end of the video, to help drive higher brand awareness and ad recall. Including your brand at the beginning of your video will give it a better chance of being seen and including it at the end will help keep your brand top of mind as people move on to other content.
What Does it Mean to Optimize an Ad?
Ad optimization refers to the process of creating ads that are relevant to users who see your ads and then perfecting these ads informed by data collected through A/B tests and user testing.
But, if you’re just starting out with creating ads you need to start somewhere, and this is where ad optimization techniques come in.
The optimization process includes using ad optimization techniques that perfect both ends of your ads for better user experience:
- Ad optimization frontend: This includes the ad the user gets to see and involves creating persuasive ad copy using a relevant image and a CTA button. It also includes adding ad extensions for detail in the case of search ads.
- Ad optimization backend: This includes the keywords you use for your ad based on user intent and the targeting options you select in your advertising platform keeping in mind your buyer personas.
Your ad is optimized for the user only when you’ve taken care of the both the frontend and backend of ad optimization.
Which Ad Network Pays The Most?
CPM ad network | Ad types | Min payout, $ | Min traffic requirements | Payout frequency | CPM rates |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
SmartyAds | Rewarded videos, interstitials, native ads, banners, and other formats. | 50 | ~300 000 monthly views | 60 days (NET 60 basis) | 10 to 25 USD and above for tier 1 traffic |
Google AdSense | Display, text, in-feed, in-article, matched content ads, video ads, games ads, mobile ads. | 100 | No | 30 days (NET 30 basis) | From 0.71 USD |
Appnexus | Display, mobile, video, native. | 50 | No | 30 days (NET 30 basis) | From 0.51 to 20 USD |
33 across | Desktop, mobile, social display, tablet. | 100 | No | 30 days (NET 30 basis) | From 5 to 15 USD |
Media net | Search, display, native, video, and mobile. | 100 | ~50,000 monthly views | 30 days (NET 30 basis) | From 1 to 20 USD |
Propeller Ads | Interstitial ads, popunder ads, quality banner ads, display ads, native ads, pop-unders. | 100 | No | 30 days (NET 30 basis) | From $0.50- 1 USD for most of the websites |
1. SmartyAds
CPM publisher SSP from SmartyAds is a part of the vast programmatic full-stack infrastructure developed by the company over 8+ years. It incorporates proprietary DSP, ad exchange, DMP platforms, which means that publishers are granted immediate access to myriads of premium-class advertisers and additional tools essential for effective inventory monetization.
SmartyAds SSP publisher platform serves billions of impressions per month and is able to generate one of the highest fill rates across popular geos, verticals, and ad formats. Top tier countries at SmartyAds SSP publisher platform are the U.S, Israel, UK, India, Germany, Russia, etc.
Core features
- Omnichannel monetization. Rewarded videos, interstitials, native ads, banners, and other formats.
- Header-bidding (including lightweight header-bidding SDK solution for mobile apps).
- High-volume private marketplace deals. Private marketplace deals provide publishers an opportunity to sell their most valuable and exclusive inventory. Choose between programmatic direct or RTB deals.
- A publisher-oriented logic enables configuring ad campaigns according to the publisher’s requirements: filters for ad types, resolutions, advertisers, floor price, etc.
- Analytics. Real-time performance measurement: impressions, revenues, fill rates, etc.
- >90% viewable impressions and one of the highest fill rates across networks.
- Clean traffic. All requests scanned with Protected Media and Forensiq. The network is featured in ads.txt file as inventory reseller, GDPR compliant.
- Extended verticals: all verticals for blog owners, small, big, and medium-traffic publishers with the most significant segment in business and financial services, software, investment, travel, commerce, media, sports, etc.
Is it right for you?
SmartyAds is one of those platforms for publishers that can deliver the highest paying CPM ads $8 CPM and 10 to 25 USD for tier 1 traffic. Payment method: Wire Transfer, PayPal. G2 User Rating (stars) gives it 4.5 stars out of 5 based on user reviews. You can choose it as a viable alternative to Google AdSense, whether you are a small blogger or a bigger publisher.
2. Google AdSense
Most publishers know and use AdSense because it is one of the largest ad networks operated by Google. On the other hand, Google also offers what it calls its DoubleClick range of Google products; for instance, AdX is a premium version of AdSense explicitly designed for premium publishers and advertisers. Upon transition to AdX, you also access the best tools for creative optimization, better targeting, and payout options.
With Google, AdSense publishers are free to use both CPM advertising and CPC (cost-per-click campaigns). It is a secure and high-paying monetization system, however, before the campaign starts, you need to make sure your inventory is eligible since the approval system of Adsense is quite strict. Publishers get 68% of the revenue, and Google obtains 32%. AdSense helps publishers pick from 450 categories of ads and offers publishers a reach of 2 million advertisers worldwide.
Core features
- Ad Balance Controls. Automatically selects only the highest-paying ads for your website (which don’t harm user experience).
- A/B testing of creatives. Publishers can predefine settings for creatives in the dashboard and then test them as a part of the A/B test campaign to analyze what performs best.
- Automatic optimization. The system can give suggestions regarding current campaigns in real-time (to optimize placements, categories, site-related issues).
- Analytics. Automatically generate reports regarding performance with an ability to sync with GA.
- Simple work. No need to involve developers; publishers just need to register and add a few strings of HTML code on their websites to start monetizing.
- Payouts are flexible and available in 51 currencies (Western Union, Check, and Bank Transfer).
Is it right for you?
Google AdSense is still one of the best CPM ad networks in the world. Ads placed on the blog can generate $1.5 per click, and go up for 25 USD on the tier 1 traffic (depending on geo and other conditions). Ads reviewing process is strict, but the platform offers a wide variety of publisher options when it comes to campaign controls, payment, etc. AdSense has 4.0 stars out of 5 on G2.
3. Appnexus
AppNexus is also one of the leading ad exchanges for publishers that offers publishers lots of opportunities and tools for content monetization. This ad exchange features a special suit explicitly developed for publishers who can apply audience extension mechanisms and audience acquisition forecasts.
The platform boasts 11 bn impressions served in the system daily, plus, the company also claims to have 400 technology experts in staff including support. (For comparison, Google AdSense support line doesn’t have a phone number.) Like the first two mentioned, Appnexus offers multichannel ads serving different categories of publishers.
Core features
- RTB and PMP. AppNexus provides a single platform with access to the direct, customized, invitation-only marketplace and RTB auctions at the same time.
- Support of the different ad formats with emphasis on video (in-stream, out-stream, and support of video header-bidding technology).
- Inventory controls. Ability to control floor prices, the appearance of delivered ads, positioning, etc.
- Analytics. Ability to check inventory performance across metrics for suitable periods.
- No solid traffic threshold for publishers.
- Inventory quality protection and build-in traffic scanners.
- A broad selection of categories featuring News & Media, Arts & Entertainment, Computers Electronics & Technology, Games, and 20 more.
Is it right for you?
AppNexus is a good choice for publishers for the guaranteed quality, excellent coverage, and yet high CPM rates.
The platform has no definite requirements regarding necessary traffic amounts, which makes it easier to start with. Like with other platforms, CPM will heavily depend on geo. AppNexus has a user rating of 3.8 out of 5 on G2.
4. 33 across
33 across is one of those ad networks for publishers that feature connections to the global pool of advertisers (including 100 direct ones). In turn, this guarantees a better supply of ads and quick access to direct publishers who look for inventory across different verticals and geos.
How to distinguish 33 across among similar solutions for publishers? This platform has excellent support, and they issue an account manager to publishers to extract the maximum value from every impression served. The other distinctive feature is that publishers can have a more in-depth look at their site performance as a platform has in-deep stats developed specifically for this.
Core features
- Granular UI. All necessary controls to configure future ad placement: position, resolution, price floor, etc.
- Header-bidding functionality. Support of unified auctions for publishers.
- Variety of ad formats for desktop, mobile, social display, tablet.
- Analytics. Strong analytics across performance metrics.
- Functionality to analyze content performance.
- Direct connections with advertisers like Amazon, Duracell, Airbnb.
- Extended integration opportunities: via TAG, server-to-server, additional adaptors.
- The most popular verticals are arts & entertainment, computers, electronics & technology, science & education, news & media, and 20 other categories.
Is it right for you?
33 across has no minimum traffic requirements, making it easy for publishers to join this network without effort. The network will work specifically well for publishers in the United States, France, Taiwan, Indonesia, and 152 other countries. Like in different platforms, the CPM level depends on geo and other conditions. The payment methods it accepts are PayPal, SEPA, and others.
5. Media.net
Media.net is considered to be one of the best CPM ad networks for publishers since it works well for local and international advertisers and serves Yahoo and Bing ads. When it comes to advertising formats, Media.Net supports IAB standard resolutions and all kinds of desktop and mobile formats, including but not limited to interstitials, native, display, and video ads. This network also supports search ads.
Some of the most renowned publishers that belong to this network include Forbes, Reuters, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Esquire. Since there’s no particular traffic requirement, the network can suit even small blog publishers and blog owners.
Core features
- A convenient dashboard that helps to manage, edit creatives, and navigate advertising campaign flow.
- A real-time reporting system that allows analyzing campaign performance briefly.
- Ability to serve CPM, CPC, CPA ad campaigns that can replicate the look and feel of Google ads.
- Direct demand from global advertisers and agencies.
- A pool of specific demand non-reliant on cookies.
- Variety of ad formats, including search – Yahoo and Bing.
- Specializes in following verticals: Computers, electronics & technology, food, and drink, arts and entertainment, news, media, science, education, travel, tourism.
Is it right for you?
Media.net is a great choice for publishers who search for networks with no traffic threshold. Specifics of this network also enable three types of campaigns – CPM, CPC, CPA, and search ads of Yahoo and Bing. The payment methods it accepts are PayPal and Web Money. If you join the network with a partner link, you also can add 10% to your revenues for the first three months—user rating on G2 4 out of 5.
6. Propeller Ads
This CPM publisher network works with more than 150K global publishers and offers a variety of ad formats like a native, display, video, mobile, and affiliate services as well. When it comes to the resolution of the banner ads, you should expect all standard and custom sizes, including 728×90, 300×250, 160×600, and 120×600. They have 3,000 active ad campaigns, and the marketplace also aligns with Google AdSense.
The distinguishing feature of Propeller ads is that they support ads in different languages, not only English, which means that publishers can show ads in the language specific to their visitors. They also offer CPM, CPC, CPL, CPI, and CPA advertising models and no minimum traffic threshold for joining the network.
Core features
- Traffic from top-tier countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.
- Flexible minimum payment threshold: $5
- The platform supports ads in English and other languages.
- Manual automation ensures that ads are rendered in high quality and non-fraud environment. This feature protects from fraud, both advertisers and publishers.
- A proprietary ad-block fighting algorithm replaces annoying ad formats with user-friendly ones like, e.g., native to ensure that inventory is monetized to the fullest.
- The abundance of ad formats, including full-screen pop-unders.
Is it right for you?
Even though this network doesn’t have traffic requirements, it will best suit those publishers who generate significant traffic coming from such countries as the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, since CPM across those countries is high.
Propeller ads will also suit those who want to stay flexible regarding pricing models (CPM, CPC, CPL, CPI, and CPA). The payment options are diverse and include PayPal, WebMoney, Wire Transfer, Payoneer, Skrill, and ePayments. User rating on G2 4 out of 5.
Using Data to Optimize Your Search Campaigns
Using data to optimize your Facebook and Google Ads campaigns is a complex process that generally requires help from a developer. You need to add code snippets to your site in each place that conversions occur and configure them correctly to drive data to Facebook and Google Analytics.
It’s a barrier that effectively makes the whole process off-limits to small business owners, who don’t have a developer at their beck and call.
That’s why it’s good to know about alternative options that make it possible to draw data from your website to your marketing campaign platforms whenever you like, without expanding your staff or going back to school to learn coding.
1. Use Oribi to draw data from custom events
Oribi is a tool that enables you to track any custom events on your website, like someone watching a video in full, adding a product to cart, or subscribing to your email newsletter, without using any code.
You can add buttons or other actions to your site, and Oribi automatically places them in the right event group and sends the data to Facebook and Google, without doing any coding.
If you make any changes to your Oribi button settings, the data will be automatically updated.

Adding Oribi events to your Facebook ad campaigns allows you to build more powerful lookalike audiences, refine your retargeting campaigns, and improve your ad sets by analyzing key events. When you send that data to Google Ads, you’ll be able to enhance your remarketing campaigns and analyze events more deeply by keyword.
2. Set up Google Data Studio to help you visualize insights
Google itself has a useful tool called the Google Data Studio, which enables you to combine all your data from Google Analytics, Facebook Ad Manager, and Google Ads. You’ll need to use a Connector, as it’s called on the platform, to integrate your data.
Supermetrics is a popular choice for integrations with Facebook Ads Manager, Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and more. Google Ads and Google Analytics are native connectors, so you won’t need an integrator for them.

Once you’ve gathered all your data on the Google Data Studio platform, you can create a whole range of charts that make it easier for you to analyze and draw insights. These visualizations can help you to see marketing trends, spot your most profitable ads, and draw conclusions about your marketing campaigns, but you’ll still need to apply those conclusions yourself.
3. Use A/B testing tools to discover the best scheduling time
A/B testing is still a tactic that’s loved by many marketers, and it can certainly deliver a whole slew of valuable data that you can use to optimize your Google Ads and Facebook ad campaigns.
While you can run A/B tests through Google Analytics alone, there’s also a range of tools that help make it easier to set up, run, and analyze A/B tests, so it’s worth taking advantage of them.

AdEspresso has a popular tool that helps you see which times of day your ads perform the best so that you can schedule them in advance for the optimal time. You can also use it to see which ads are driving the most clicks, impressions, conversions, etc.
Google Optimize is another option for A/B testing for basically everything, including your landing page content, email subject lines, and more. It plugs straight into Google Analytics, but you will need to either master Google Tag Manager, or find someone to help you manipulate code.
4. Create better UTM tags with a smart UTM manager
One of the biggest challenges of using data to optimize your ad campaigns is trying to establish last-click attribution. Click throughs from Facebook, in particular, can show up on Google Analytics as m.facebook.com/referral, facebook.com/referral, or other variations, making it extremely challenging to work out exactly which visits came from which Facebook ad campaigns.
UTM tagging helps you ensure that every click driven by Facebook is correctly attributed. You can use Facebook’s built-in Facebook UTM builder, but there’s still a high risk that you’ll end up with different versions of Facebook written in the tool.
A UTM manager like UTM Smart Manager helps standardize all your Facebook UTM tags so that you end up with reliable, quality marketing data to drive your marketing campaigns forward.

A UTM manager can also help you out with data analysis by providing an easier to use analytics platform than Google Analytics, which often gives an incomplete picture of Facebook marketing data.
UTM Smart Manager offers an intuitive executive dashboard that displays metrics like Facebook ad spends, Google Analytics bounce rate data, click-through-rate for each ad, and more.
It gathers information from both Facebook and Google Analytics into one place and automates analysis to display actionable insights, making it faster to draw conclusions that sharpen your Facebook marketing decisions. The only downside is that you’ll still need to translate these insights into action on your own.
How Developers Can Maximize App Revenue With AdMob Mediation
App developers who monetize with ads can combine the AdMob ad network with the power of AdMob mediation to maximize their app revenue.
The AdMob mediation platform lets you expand advertiser demand to include third-party networks. This allows you to drive more competition for your ad inventory and earn even more than working with just one ad network.
1. Maximizing ad revenue from any demand source
AdMob mediation can help you build a strong revenue stream, optimizing across the best performing ad formats and network partners for your business. You can work with 30+ major networks via adapters and with 70+ others via custom events. AdMob gives all ad networks fair access to ad inventory, thus ensuring the highest paying network always wins.
In addition to transparent auction dynamics, AdMob mediation offers built-in solutions to help you automate and simplify your monetization strategy:
- Ad Network Optimization (ANO) dynamically rearranges your waterfall to optimize CPMs for every impression.
- Mediation groups make it easy to scale your setup across a large number of ad units.
- AdMob runs on the same infrastructure as Google to provide reliability support that your business can count on.
While mediation can be a strong revenue model, the AdMob team is working on a new solution called bidding to help you earn even more. Bidding lets app advertising sources compete for your ad space in real time to help you max out revenue potential from every impression. Bidding works seamlessly with mediation and will be available in beta this year.
2. Deliver a world-class app experience
Once you’ve built a great app, long term success depends on the ability to grow revenue while providing a great app experience. That’s why AdMob holds all advertiser demand to a high standard, to defend against malware, spoofing, bad content, and more. Here are just a few of the tools that make it easy for you to protect your app:
- The app-ads.txt solution is a simple and secure way for you to declare who is authorized to sell your inventory, improving transparency for advertisers and maintaining the value of your app’s inventory.
- Ad Review Center lets you see what ads have actually been showing in your app and block specific ads you don’t like.
- Additionally, you can set Ad Content Rating in blocking control settings to ensure that only appropriate ads are served on the basis of your app’s target audience.
3. Grow your app business
As you evolve your monetization strategy, consider how it fits in with your long term goals. Whether you’re striving for financial independence or a #1 hit app, mediation can help you maximize ad revenue. But depending on the platform you choose, it can also help with retention, engagement, and growing overall app revenue. Here are few ways that only AdMob can help your app business grow:
- Smart segmentation can help you unlock new app revenue by automatically customizing the app experience to different user segments.
- Firebase has a tight integration with AdMob and can give you insight on user behavior, which is essential to optimizing engagement, retention, and most importantly to growing your app revenue.
- Plus if you want to cross-promote another one of your apps, or work directly with an advertiser, AdMob supports house ads and direct sold campaigns, too.
What is Ad Mediation?
Ad mediation is the use of technology and tools for monetization that helps maximize display ad fill rates and eCPM for publishers. Additionally, it could also include a service that enables publishers to find and display ads on their sites from ad networks, direct advertisers, and other sources.
Ad mediation platforms search for the best available ad networks while sending ad requests to multiple demand sources. This way, they ensure publishers find the best available ads to fill their ad slots.
Publishers rank ad networks in order of preference. If the top ad network can’t fill the ad request, the mediation platform tries the next preferred ad network until it fills the ad request.
A simple way to look at how ad mediation platforms try to maximize ad revenue for the publisher is by checking out the formula below:
Ad revenue = requests * fill rate * eCPM
How to Optimize Search Campaign
1. Review, refine and add to your keyword list
If a keyword has a Clickthrough Rate (CTR) of less than 1% after you’ve tried to optimize it, then delete it. That was easy.
Remember you are bidding on keywords that real people search with and their popularity changes over time. Also, new keywords will always be emerging.
You can track these changes and find new keywords by using Wordtracker’s Keywords tool with Google Insights.
Add the new keywords you find to relevant existing Ad Groups. If there is no relevant group, start a new one.
Within your Ad Groups, always look for keywords that can be used to start new Ad Groups with their own adverts and landing pages.
This allows the old and new Ad Groups to each have adverts and landing pages more relevant to their keywords. And more relevant ads and landing pages means higher Quality Score, lower Cost Per Click (CPC) and higher Conversion Rates.
For example, one Ad Group might contain both Marquee Hire Kent and Wedding Catering Kent. To work for both these keywords, the ad copy will need to be generic and will struggle to mention both target keywords. Likewise, the landing page won’t be able to focus on either keyword.
But if each of those phrases is given its own Ad Group they can have their own ad copy and landing pages that focus on their specific keywords.
2. Use Keyword Matching options to lower costs
Are all your keywords using Broad Match?
Make sure you are also using Phrase Match and Exact Match bid types.
Use the AdWords Keyword Estimator Tool to create a ‘bid stack’ which involves bidding on the same keyword with all three match types. Sounds crazy but it works. Here’s how and why …
Exact Match is the exact keyword you are targeting and so should deliver the best response. Of your three bids this one is for the highest amount because you know exactly what you’re bidding for and these are searchers you most want to see your ads.
Eg, I might bid $2.00 for an Exact Match with Marquee Hire. Meaning I will pay up to $2.00 for that exact keyword only.
Make your Phrase Match bid 75% of your Exact Match amount because these searches are not as good as Exact Match and you don’t want to pay as much for them.
Eg, I might bid $1.50 for a Phrase Match with Marquee Hire. Meaning I will pay $1.50 for any phrase that contains that exact keyword, eg, Marquee Hire in Kent, Wedding Marquee Hire.
Make your Broad Match searches just 25% of the Exact Match amount because such searches are, generally, the worst.
Eg, I might bid $0.50 for a Broad Match with keyword Marquee Hire. Meaning I will pay $0.50 for any phrase that contains those keywords, eg, Hire Marquee in Kent and also any keywords that Google decides are similar. This might include badly matching phrases like van hire. This is why our Broad Match bids should be low.
It seems complicated but it’s really simple and ensures that your ad first appears for the best keyword searches, ie, Exact Match. But your ad will only appear for less responsive keywords if it can do so for a much lower cost, ie, you’ll pay less for Phrase and Broad Match.
You can really start to save money and increase Clickthrough Rate (CTR) if you add Negative Broad Match and Negative Exact Match keywords to your Phrase and Broad Match Ad Groups.
Rather than being keywords you want to bid on, negative keywords are those that you do not want to bid on. For example, I might have an Ad Group that includes the following keywords that I do want to bid on with a Broad Match:
- marquee hire kent
- wedding hire kent
… and the following negative keywords that I do not want to bid on:
- cheap
- free
- van
Which means that even though they contain my Ad Groups ‘positive’ keywords, I will not be bidding on the following:
- cheap marquee hire kent
- cheap wedding hire kent
- free marquee hire kent
- free wedding hire kent
- van hire kent
3. Keep testing your ad copy & landing pages
It is always possible to improve your ad copy and increase Clickthrough Rate (CTR). AdWords doesn’t charge you to test new ads so Always Be Testing one to three new ads against your current best performing ad.
You can also test new landing pages against your current page. Send 50% of clicks to landing page A (your existing or ‘control’ page) and 50% to a new landing page B (your ‘test’ page). If B performs better it becomes your new control which you then try to beat with a new test page.
You can test changing everything on your landing page, from the color of your response buttons to your choice of font. But try starting with your ‘offer’ – your product’s price, discount and package.
Google’s Website Optimizer allows powerful A / B testing of your landing pages and is available for free.
4. 200 is the magic number at which response can be judged
200 is the magic number. 200 ad impressions and 200 clicks.
If a Keyword gets 200 impressions then 200 people whose searches have matched your keyword bid have seen your ad. And 200 impressions is enough to judge your ad’s performance.
If your ad gets less than a 1% Clickthrough Rate (CTR) then you must either delete the keyword, add more negative keywords or improve your ad text.
If a Keyword gets 200 Clicks then 200 people who have seen your ad have clicked on it and visited your landing page. And 200 visits to your landing page is enough to judge its conversion rate and subsequent profitability.
Your unique bid cost, sales process and profit margins will determine what Conversion Rate is required to make a profit. But if you are converting at less than 1% then it’s likely that either something needs changing to improve conversion or that you should delete the keyword.
5. Use location targeting to show your ads only in relevant parts of the country
Many AdWords accounts only have one Campaign, targeted to one location.
If your product or service is location specific – you can use AdWords Location Targeting features to only target people in the areas you can sell to. You can configure this from the Audience section on your Campaign’s Settings page.
In Tony’s case he targets English counties such as Kent and Surrey. This allows Tony to tailor his ads and landing pages to these locations.
But the location service is not perfect as it’s based on IP address, and some IPs don’t match user location. To deal with this, you can run a second Campaign with much broader location settings – eg a whole country – but only bidding on keywords that include ‘location words’.
Eg, if you’re selling pizzas in Chicago, only bid on keywords containing Chicago and other words for relevant locations in Chicago.
Eg, if you’re Tony and selling to people in Kent and Sussex, then bid on keywords containing those words like:
- Wedding Caterer Kent (Phrase Match)
- Marquee Hire Sussex (Exact Match)
Smart location targeting like this should dramatically decrease your AdWords costs and increase relevancy.
Best Ad Mediation Network
The need for ad mediation tools comes from the great availability of choice when it comes to ad networks. Although there are tons of great mobile ad networks for developers to choose from, there is a huge difference in their performance across different ad formats, countries, and many other factors.
AdMob

AdMob is Google’s mobile ad network and unsurprisingly, one of the strongest players in the market. AdMob also offers a powerful ad mediation solution that integrates with 24 ad networks including many of the top mobile ad networks.
Admob mediation is commonly cited as one of the best ad mediation tools for beginners due to its ease of setup and access to a wide variety of demand sources.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android, Unity
Appodeal

Appodeal is one of the most powerful and feature-rich mobile ad mediation tools available on the market. They offer a hybrid in-app bidding technology that you can customize by giving a higher priority to your preferred ad networks from over 70 ad networks available on the platform.
Appodeal also offers A/B testing for ad placements, audiences, product updates, and more to help you optimize your setup, in addition to powerful reporting to help you understand how your app is performing.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android, Unity, React Native
Mopub

Mopub was acquired by Twitter back in 2013 and has since grown to be one of the most popular tools on the market. They are a strong ad network with access to Twitter’s audience and data and also offer ad mediation with 13 of the top ad networks, as well as direct deals and cross-promotion.
Additionally, if you want to add a specific ad network that is not supported by Mopub, you can build your own “adapter” to integrate it with it.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android, Unity
ironSource

ironSource is another powerful and feature-rich mobile ad mediation tool and is one of the oldest players on the scene. They integrate with 14 of the top ad networks and feature a hybrid between real-time in-app bidding and the waterfall model so you can customize your preferred networks.
IronSource’s platform also boasts powerful reporting features to help you gauge how you are performing. You can then use their A/B testing feature to improve and optimize your monetization strategy.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android, Unity
Fyber

Fyber is another well-established mobile ad mediation tool with a focus on video ads and games. They support 12 of the top ad networks including all of the top video ad networks, which makes them especially useful for game developers.
Fyber’s FairBid technology ensures an unbiased bidding process between all participating DSPs, but you can also opt for the waterfall model.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android, Unity
What is The Best Ad Network For Publishers?
1. Publift
Publift is a simplified and cutting edge programmatic advertising technology provider. Named one of Australia’s Fast Starters 2020 by The Australian Financial Review and Statista, they have partnered with over 250+ publishers and app developers worldwide.
Publift’s clients typically see a 55% increase in ad revenue. In their own words, they’re “obsessive about growing publishers’ businesses.” As a Google Certified Publishing Partner, Publift is an excellent choice for publishers who want to monetize, grow their business, and serve quality ads with minimal impact to their UX.
2. Google AdSense
With Google AdSense, publishers are free to use both CPM advertising and CPC (cost-per-click campaigns). AdSense has a large advertisement pool that pays well, but its approval system is quite strict. Publishers get 68% of the revenue, and Google obtains 32%. AdSense helps publishers pick from 450 categories of ads and offers publishers a reach of 2 million advertisers worldwide.
The main drawback is that AdSense accounts need clearance, which is not simple to obtain. Nonetheless, it is one of the best CPM ad networks in the world. The platform offers a wide range of publisher options when it comes to campaign controls, payment, and more.
3. Adcash
Adcash has advertising costing billions of dollars per month and over 200 million viewers per day. They claim to fill inventories 100% of the time, allowing publishers to monetize web traffic with minimal effort.
While the platform prides itself on offering dynamic CPM monetization and user experience, you can opt-in for the manual process, too. Adcash also accepts smartphone advertising and has a smart network for personalized targeting.
There is no minimum traffic requirement to get approval and numerous payment systems are available.
4. Exponential (Formerly Tribal Fusion)
Exponential, formerly Tribal Fusion, is one of the most highly-ranked ad networks on the internet, providing a variety of ad types. The platform offers publishers and advertisers custom-tailored plans to monetize. It provides elevated CPM rates, and a huge opportunity to earn revenue with the help of extremely targeted ads.
The need for highly tailored and pertinent content is high with this ad network. The company gives 55% of the total ad revenue generated to the publishers, but with a base standard of 500,000 unique visitors per month, it is extremely difficult to get accepted.
5. BuySellAds
BuySellAds is an option for beginners since there are no minimum traffic thresholds, allowing website owners to get started right away. The ad network helps publishers in setting direct deals with advertisers. It also enables them to monetize the traffic that is using ad blockers.
Pay demands for BuySellAds should be received twice a month and are reviewed in 2-3 days. A minimum payment threshold of $20 may be transferred through PayPal. A minimum payment threshold $50 and a maximum payment threshold of $500 must be available for cheques or wire transfers.
6. Propeller Ads
Propeller Ads is an excellent eCPM ad network with good eCPM speeds. It’s also simple to try their service, which allows you to monetize your website or smartphone traffic in less than five minutes. You can get started right away by following a few simple steps to add and check your domain ownership.
Propeller Ads supports a range of ad types, including OnClick PopUnder Ads, Web Ads, Banner Ads, Layer Ads, among others. PropellerAds is an outstanding alternative as one of the strongest CPM ad networks. Net30 payment policy and a minimum $100 requirement are two excellent features. Propeller also offers real-time reporting.
What is Optimization For Ad Delivery
When you make your Optimization for ad delivery choice for an ad set, you’re telling Facebook for example to get you that result as efficiently as possible. In other words, your optimization choice is the desired outcome that our system bids on in the ad auction. For example, if you optimize for link clicks, your ads are targeted to people in your audience who are most likely to click the ads’ links.
Based on the optimization that you choose, the delivery system uses machine learning to improve each ad’s performance and minimize your cost per optimization event. The optimization of your ad set can be different from your campaign objective.
For example, you can choose Conversions as your campaign objective but optimize for link clicks within an ad set. Different optimization choices may be available depending on your campaign objective.
Note: You may need to set up a Facebook pixel or app SDK to use some optimizations, such as value. These tools allow you to pass back web or app event data to Facebook.
How do I Optimize Social Media Ads?
Truthfully, a lot of the same principles that apply to SEO will carry over to social media ad campaigns, but there are obviously a few differences, too.
1. Check your headline text (and copy)
HubSpot put together three key tips when creating a Facebook ad headline, but honestly, the same principles can be applied to most, if not all, social media ad campaigns. Ensure that your headline text is:
- Customized
- Clear
- Concise

Shopify’s ad headline is short, sweet and to the point – getting the message across immediately.
Your headline is the perfect chance to push your key selling point or promotion. Use plain English, and keep it short… nobody likes a long headline!
2. Have you set up your target audience appropriately?
Once you’ve selected your target audience, it doesn’t mean you can’t change it in the future. In fact, it’s important to tweak your target audience, ideally by refining it, over time.
The team over at Sprout Social has suggested a few key pointers when it comes to defining your true target audience. Keep these in mind when you’re choosing who you’d like to target with your social media ad campaign. Then, once your ad has been running for a while, revisit your target audience and ask yourself the tough questions.
Are these people really our target audience? Do we need to change our focus to a younger generation? Is it actually young professionals, not just senior heads of departments we’re targeting with these ads?
3. Are your images eye-catching or off-putting?
Along with your headline, the imagery you choose to use for any social media ad campaign is crucial. It’s the first thing that catches the eye of the user. If it’s unappealing, irrelevant, or offensive, you’ll have a hard time getting the engagement or acquisition numbers you were hoping for.

Slack’s ad image uses bright colors and because it’s a little out there than generic images, it captures attention fast.
Oh, and we cannot stress the importance of getting the correct image size dimensions for each particular ad campaign.
4. Does your call to action make sense?
If you’ve read our piece on top performing CTAs for social ads you’ll know exactly what they all have in common. In short:
- They’re logical: Focus on the basics above all else. Does it make sense for the CTA to say “Buy Now” when you haven’t described any product or service that someone could purchase?
- They’re compelling: “Buy this” is not compelling, but “Start free trial” is a lot more enticing.
- They’re easy to read: Just like your headlines, CTAs are not the place for long, obscure language. Keep it simple, concise and clear.
5. Are you budgeting for success or failure?
It’s crucial to understand what you’re paying for with your social media ad campaign. A large part of its success will be your ability to apply more budget to higher performing ad versions and reduce your expenditure on those ads that aren’t doing so well.
Read Also: How Does Bing Ads Make Money?
You’re not completely on your own though. Facebook, for example, has a budget optimization tool that uses an algorithm to automatically optimize your budget distribution across ad sets and based on your audience size, etc.
Best Advertising Platforms
To get started with PPC, you need to select the paid advertising platforms you want to use.
Depending on your budget and goals, you may opt to use multiple ad platforms to reach a wider audience. Of course, you probably don’t want to try using every single one on this list — that would be overwhelming.
That said, it’s still good to know all your options before you choose which paid ad platforms you do want to use.
1. Google Ads
It should be no surprise that Google Ads is first on our list, as it’s essentially the king of paid advertising platforms.
With Google Ads, you can display PPC ads at the top of Google search results, and with Google being the biggest search engine out there, you can harness Google’s reach to drive results for your business.
You can also use the Google Display Network to advertise on popular websites, making Google Ads a great platform for both search and display ads.
2. Bing Ads
Google may be the biggest search engine on the Internet, but it’s far from the only one. Bing sees its fair share of web traffic too, so it’s a good idea to take advantage of its PPC platform — Bing Ads — to appear in search results as well.
3. Facebook Ads
Not all PPC ads are limited to third-party websites and search engines.
Social media is a fantastic place to reach extensive online audiences, and Facebook Ads is one of the best platforms for doing that due to the large number of people who use the social media giant. Facebook ads can come in an array of formats, including banner ads and sponsored posts.
4. Instagram Ads
As Instagram is owned by Facebook, its ad platform works essentially the same way. You can display ads in a variety of formats. Best of all, you can target very specific user demographics with both Facebook and Instagram ads.
5. Twitter Ads
Next to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is one of the largest social media platforms. Twitter ads can take multiple forms, but one of the best ad types is promoted tweets, which boost organic tweets from your business to the top of users’ feeds.
6. LinkedIn Ads
While often overlooked as a social media platform, LinkedIn is a very valuable advertising resource — especially if your business is B2B. It’s particularly great for advertising informational content specific to your industry.
7. Pinterest Ads
As the last social media network to make it onto our online advertising platforms list, Pinterest is a must-have if your target audience matches its largest demographic of middle-to-upper-class women. You can advertise your products or services using promoted pins.
8. Amazon Ads
Our final primary entry is Amazon Ads, which is essential if you’re looking to promote your Amazon store. Ads on Amazon can appear not only as sponsored search results on the platform, but also as display ads on third-party sites.
FInal Words
Large ad networks typically work with thousands of different publishers. Try to find out which publishers are in their inventory and see if they’re relevant to your target audience. Remember, there’s no point running ads on websites that your target demographic isn’t viewing.
There are many different factors that you need to take into consideration when determining where to run your ads. Since testing a new network requires an investment of both time and money, it’s important that you figure out which ad networks are best suited for your business first.
That said, remember that you aren’t required to stick with the first ad network you test. If you’ve given a network a good try but aren’t seeing the results you need, don’t be afraid to pick another option from this list and try your luck elsewhere.
For most ad networks, the income is different from each ad size. So some might be good to cover the main sizes, some for blind spots, some have customizable text ads that integrate into your content, other cool video ads that are interesting to your visitors.