Every content network has walked this rope at least once – ad inventory optimization. Direct sales team can only sell 40-50% of your ad inventory at any given time. The rest is filled with different ad networks, big and small. The math is very simple; push those ad networks which pay you higher CPM all the time. However, the truth is, no single ad network pays highest CPM all the time. It varies a lot depending on geography, time, page/site context, readers, etc. And to top it all, with strict frequency capping and default ads deployed,ad networks leave you playing with pennies.

Indirect sales can result in 30-40% of total ad revenue for any mid-size to large publisher. Today, for any smart publisher it’s must to optimize their indirect sales channel to boost the revenue. This becomes more challenging as almost allad networks are closed wall and have not (neither have intentions to) come out with APIs giving power to publishers.

Frequency capping

According to Wikipedia, Frequency capping is a term in advertising that means restricting (capping) the amount of times (frequency) a specific visitor to a website is shown a particular advertisement. This restriction applies to all websites that serve ads from the same advertising network.

In a competitive market where marketers are demanding more accountability, it’s obvious that ad networks have to optimize their ad delivery to boost CTR. However, this turns the balance in favor of ad networks. Publishers have little or no insight of how the pricing is structured for low CPM ads, and it converts into revenue loss.

Defaults

Nothing frustrates publishers more than defaults. Just like it’s impossible for you to sell your 100% ad inventory in direct sales, so is for thead networks as well. Even Google Adsense, which today has the biggest pool of advertisers, can fill your ad inventory up to a certain limit.

Most ad networks allow you to specify tags from different ad networks to serve ads in case they don’t have any for your users. Publishers deploy static chains of ad networks pushing ads from other ad networks in case one defaults. These static chains are cumbersome to deploy or change. Publishers have no or little power to use their real time data to modify the chain whenever they want.

Some ad optimization networks like Pubmatic are offering dynamic daisy chains to publishers where default ad impressions are collected and then routed to the highest paying ad network.