Publishers vying for their share of the action want to enjoy the same opportunities as the big platforms, and Video Discovery allows them to do this. The automated technology recommends video content relevant to the users' interests, keeping them engaged longer, and consuming more video, thereby creating additional opportunities to sell.
In this article on monetizing Video Discovery, we look at the advertiser's perspective in the ad tech world. By understanding their behaviors and priorities, publishers can increase CPMs and grow their bottom line.
The Advertiser
Advertisers work hard to craft campaigns that create a clear message around their brand. The process is timely and expensive, involving dozens (if not hundreds) of people contributing to the strategy, copywriting, design, and production required to create an advertisement. So when it goes live, they need to make sure it's all been worth it.
Getting inside the mind of an advertiser can help publishers to create appealing ad units that are attractive for advertisers and their specific needs and result in effective monetization.
Viewability: Now You See Me
The main goal of advertisers is for their ads to be seen. They value viewability and need their target audience to watch their video ads for as long as possible, preferably from start to finish. After all, the best creative in the world is nothing if no one sees it.
Publishers who increase their inventory's viewability can significantly increase demand and overall revenue. Google reported that an increase in video ad viewability from 50% to 90% resulted in more than an 80% increase in revenue when averaged across desktop and mobile sites. In support of these results, our own research showed a 50% increase in viewability rates raised eCPM by 74.5%.
Placement and Size: Sizing you up!
Advertisers want to make sure their ads are placed in a prominent place on the page where users will naturally pay more attention to their creatives. Most advertisers will want their ads to appear above the fold, where traditionally, they get higher views. However, this is not always the case, and it really depends on the page's content. It's worthwhile to continue testing different positions until you find the optimal location for ads from the perspective of the advertiser.
Placing the player at a natural break within the text's main body will prevent disrupting the user's view of the page content and provide a more comfortable user experience. In the past, shoving it in their face may have worked, but that leads to a higher bounce rate and advertiser campaigns being skipped and unseen.
Quality and Brand Safe Content: Context is Everything
Advertisers look for quality, brand-safe content to appear alongside their ads. No advertiser wants to risk sponsoring the wrong or controversial content, leading to bad press and damage to their brand's reputation. However, quality content can do the opposite.
Before bidding, advertisers look at how safe your brand is. Advertisers are likely to pay higher CPMs to publishers who are improving the quality of their brand-safe inventory. It's important to review your site and video playlists for fake news or topics that may be distasteful to advertisers and their desired audiences. If you can do this, you are more likely to sell your impressions on the page and build confidence with advertisers.
Transparency: I See Through You
Transparency has been a huge topic of interest in the ad tech world of late, and for good reason. This is especially true when it comes to the supply path, with around 15% of advertising spend getting lost on the way to the publisher. Advertisers want to leverage the most efficient supply path to make the most of their ad spend. While publishers need to know exactly who is selling their inventory, how they are selling it, and to whom.
For example, Ads.txt gives advertisers assurance that they are buying authenticated inventory, allowing them to buy it with confidence. So publishers must regularly monitor and maintain their ads.txt file. Publishers should be aware of what each line represents to avoid undesired reselling and inefficiencies of traffic, providing advertisers the smoothest path to the consumer.
Stay Focused
In 2020, the world's internet users spent a cumulative 1.25 billion years online… that's a lot of content!
Publishers who keep the advertiser's frame of mind in consideration are ultimately better equipped to deal with the constant changes in the advertising world and are more likely to stay ahead of the competition. By maintaining full transparency and understanding advertisers' behaviors, publishers can create increased monetization opportunities.
