What to look for in an Ad platform?

Marketing
1

Hello to all,

Just wanted to share some tips on what to look for when choosing an ad platform. Most you probably already know, but just in case, some things to keep in mind.

-Simplicity- make sure your ad platform is simple and easy to use, this will make it a lot easier to understand how your traffic and your ad placements are working together. You’ll be spending a lot of time checking your stats and reports so find an ad platform that’s comfortable and “nice on the eyes”.

-Optimization- It never hurts to have a good optimization team behind your ads. Even though the whole concept of self-serve ad platforms is based on technology where everything is done automatically, be sure you count with an optimization team that can help target your traffic and improve your results; this will make it easier to know which ad placements are working and where on your site they should be placed.

-High rates- In the end, you’re looking for profitable results. Search for the ad platform that provides the highest eCPMs. By the way, this is very related to optimization, so again, make sure your ad platform has an optimization feature.

-International- It is always good to have as many options as possible. Choose a platform that supports all, or most, geographic locations. This will allow you to work with a wider, more diverse range of advertisers, and thus, have a greater selection of ad placements to use on your site.

-Flexible payment options- Don’t get stuck with an ad platform that only pays in check or prepaid credit card. Make sure your chosen platform supports PayPal, Payoneer, wire transfer, eChecks and any other payment method. It’s important to be sure that you will get your earnings and get them on time! The more the better.

-Immediate- Choose an ad platform that allows you to see your placements live right away, or at least, in the following 12 hours. Waiting is nerve-racking, you want to see how your site is adapting to the ad placements as soon as possible. This way you can start deciding which placements work best and which should be taken out.

Last but not least, choose an ad platform with dedicated 24/7 customer support. You will have a lot of questions and inquiries, and it’s always good to have a someone at the other end that will be there to answer them, at any time.

I hope this was helpful, and please feel free to add any more features or give any feedback.

Cheers!

2

[font=verdana]An excellent list of tips, so thank you for sharing those.

The one thing I would add to that is customisation – you want to have as much flexibility as you can over the design and content of the ads. In a lot of cases, you’ll be happy to go with whatever the ad network sends you as the most profitable ads, but other times you might want to restrict the ads in order to improve the user experience on your site. For example:

[list][]Being able to chose between text adverts, static images and animation/Flash. If you’ve got a very busy page with a lot of animations on it, having adverts in the same vein could be confusing for people. Or you might know that your target demographic is likely to respond better to certain types of adverts.
[]Being able to block certain words or companies is essential. Not only the obvious examples where you don’t want to find adverts for your competitors appearing on your site, but there may be products/services that the ad network thinks are related but would come across as insensitive or offensive to your target audience.[/list][/font]

3

I’m glad you found them helpful! I definitely agree with you, customization is an important feature. Ad placements should be created according to the site’s content. This is imperative to optimize traffic results.

If you have any other good info to add, please feel free! :slight_smile:

Thanks!

4

[FONT=verdana]I would add one very important criterion:

Targeting.

You need to the ads to be targeted specifically to your audience. (I hate having ads for cars on my cycling site.)

Apart from that, I agree with all the above points.

Mike[/FONT]

5

Hi Miki,

Yes. Undoubtedly this is a very important point. Ad platforms should prioritize optimization as a key characteristic and focus on filtering relevant ads to relevant people. Untargeted ads are not only useless but may often look like spam on a website that deals with entirely different content.

Good point to add, thanks!