Key revenue indicator of media monetization - ad fill rate

If eCPM is the price of the product, then the ad fill rate is the ratio of product sales to the total product volume. It is also a very critical indicator. This article will give you a deep understanding of the ad fill rate.

Ad fill rate refers to the ratio of the number of ad impressions (or ad exposures) to the number of ad display opportunities (or ad requests) within a period of time . The formula is: Ad fill rate = number of ad impressions / number of ad impression opportunities * 100%

The media’s advertising request (supply) and advertisers’ advertising demand (demand) are not always equal. Advertising requests generally carry information such as "time, region, user tag (the tag type depends on each platform), network environment, and ad slot format". Advertisers can decide whether to participate based on their own needs.

Therefore, for the media, not every advertising request will have advertisers participating in the bidding, returning and displaying the corresponding advertising materials. Ad impression opportunities are wasted, and the ad fill rate depends on the amount of waste.

In order to prevent traffic from being wasted, some media have a "bottom traffic" mechanism, which is to package and sell traffic that does not meet the needs of advertisers to specific advertisers at a low price (buying advertising display opportunities at a low price without caring about the quality of advertising display). At this time, the advertising fill rate can reach a relatively high level, but there are two points that cannot be ignored:

1. Establishment of mechanism: If the media lacks bargaining power and qualified traffic management capabilities , as well as advertising effect endorsement, it will be difficult to attract advertisers, and the "bottom-line traffic" mechanism will be out of the question.
2. Impact of the mechanism: The media will "sell" the basic traffic at a low price, which will disrupt the price balance of the traffic market to a certain extent . Selling traffic at excessively low prices is not conducive to the long-term stable growth of advertising revenue.

So for the media, are there any other ways to improve the ad fill rate?

1. Internal “improvement”

1. Increase operational investment to attract more traffic and more high-quality traffic

Traffic is the basis of monetization, and high-quality traffic is even more critical. Media can increase their operational investment to attract more users (new users) and improve user activity (retention), thereby further enhancing media's competitive advantage and advertiser stickiness;

AARRR User Operation Model

2. Increase investment in technology to meet diverse needs at the data and product levels

Technology is the core competitiveness of monetization, and business development requires an advertising system with powerful and complete technical components.

In terms of data, it meets the targeting needs of advertisers, such as region targeting, time period targeting, user tag targeting, or other effect-oriented precise targeting settings. In terms of products, it meets the promotion needs of advertisers, such as interactive technologies such as downloads and Deeplink, or supports popular advertising forms such as interactive ads;

One of the Deeplink processes, picture source: Internet

2. Open Source

1. Relax the requirements for advertising materials

Based on the mainstream advertising material standards in the market, we reasonably relax the requirements for advertising content, file format, file size, and material size to improve the matching rate and operational efficiency of advertisers' creativity.

Mainstream ad placement styles

2. Liberalize the way advertising is sold

It has transformed from a single sales form to a multi-dimensional and flexible sales form, including PDB, PB, RTB, etc., and supports mainstream settlement methods, including CPM, CPC, etc., to meet the diverse requirements of advertisers.

3. Open up advertising traffic allocation

Optimize traffic distribution strategies, sell traffic to advertisers of different levels at tiered prices based on traffic quality, sell and schedule traffic autonomously, intelligently, and flexibly to maximize resource exposure and revenue.

4. Expand sales channels to attract more advertising buyers

Formulate reasonable commercialization strategies and agency policies to attract more experienced advertising agencies to sell advertising, reduce the pressure of business development, and achieve more flexible commercialization.

5. Cooperate with professional third-party monetization service companies to access more resources

When media build their own advertising platforms and operate their own advertising platform businesses, they often lack experience, technology, and talent. At this time, cooperating with professional advertising monetization service companies can improve monetization efficiency and results.

To sum up, the advertising fill rate is a reflection of the media’s advertising sales capabilities, traffic management capabilities, and advertising effectiveness , and is a key indicator of media monetization revenue. The media can make comprehensive efforts through internal improvement and external open source to enhance product strength and smoothly embark on the road of commercialization and monetization.

Author: AdBright

Source: AdBright