It’s that time of the year again when the nights are longer, the winds are colder and for most people around the world, it means the holiday season is here!
As a publisher, the holiday season or the last quarter of the year usually comes down to two words: Increased revenue.
With the final quarter coming in, most publishers know that this is the time where they can earn the most or reach the maximum earning potential for their sites. By Q4 or Quarter 4, advertisers will have increased budgets and gone into a buying frenzy. It’s vital for a publisher to ensure that they are ready and that their monetization strategies are as efficient as possible.
An essential factor in all of this is the publisher Ad Stack.
A well-prepared stack can go a long way in making sure a publisher gets to take advantage of the vast monetization potential that the holiday season will bring.
#1 – Look at last year’s data
If you have last year’s audience data from Google Analytics available, for example, you can check the following: where did most of the audience come from, which pages did they visit, which search queries did they use, and how long did they remain on your site. These will provide your benchmark for the months to come.
#2 – Optimize your website speed
Slow loading time means your viewers will get impatient and leave your site. If you haven’t checked your page speed, now is the time to do so. You can use the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool to find out load time issues and recommended fixes.
# 3 – Be mobile and tablet-friendly
Mobile use is on the rise, which means you also have to optimize the mobile version of your site if you haven’t yet. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and imagine looking for what you need. Can it be accessed easily? Is it loading properly? You can also ask a friend or colleague to give you constructive feedback.
Related Read: How to Create the Best Experience for your User’s Situation
#4 – Focus on user-experience
Your visitors’ interest and engagement should be on top of all publishers’ priority. Without their trust, you will lose a lot. Win their attention and loyalty by producing high-quality content and interact with them often.
Read more: Engage and Monetize: How to Win Readers’ Attention while Earning from Ads
#5 – Take note of your page hotspots
Use a heat map tool such as crazy egg, to understand how viewers interact with your pages. It’s best to put your best content in the “hottest” areas and place your advertisements near it.
Related Read: Tried and Tested: Best Adsense Placements
#6 – Have a holiday marketing campaign
It’s important to join in the merry season by promoting your business online through social media channels and other places where your target audience frequent. Consider doing paid search and promote your ads if it’s not part of your regular campaign. Give your audience a reason to visit your site by giving them the content they want.
#7 – Create context for your ads
Whatever niche you’re in, create content that’s useful for your visitors for the holiday season. Advertisements displayed on your site are most likely customized for the holidays, so be sure to complement these with holiday-themed articles. For example, you can create listicles or gift-guides appropriate for your audience.
#8 – Keep your page Google AdSense Policy compliant
You wouldn’t want to be banned during this crucial time so ensure you keep your site free of violations by always making sure your ads are placed properly and your content well-moderated. If you want to have a refresher or when you’re in doubt if your site changes are not breaking any rule, it’s best to go straight to the AdSense help page.
Related Read: 10 Most Common Adsense Violations: Meme Edition
#9 – Fight ad blindness
Next to ad blocking, ad blindness is also a serious issue especially now that publishers will only get paid for viewable ads. To ensure your ads get viewed, study your heat map data and experiment with ad placements. Make sure to still follow ad placement policies and don’t just put ads above the fold for the sake of viewability.
#10 – Create backup ads
Avoid showing any blank ads by creating backup ads to maximize your ad revenues. Make use of this time to look for opportunities to advertise seasonal businesses. Here’s how you can do it: http://www.monetizemore.com/blog/how-to-setup-backup-ads-for-google-adsense-or-ad-exchange/.
#11 – Don’t stress too much
If your site’s performance goes down during the holidays, don’t worry much about it. Unless you’re an e-commerce site, that is. During the holidays, understand that people are busy making their lists and checking it twice. They’re probably caught up in the rush during the last quarter of the year. It’s also a perfect time to evaluate your past year’s performance and strategize for the next.
Tips on how to take advantage of high advertiser spending this holiday season:
Step 1: Frequency restrictions
If you have a frequency cap set, make sure the frequency cap is not too tight to allow more competition in your ad placements. Especially, during Q4 where most advertisers increase their spending.
Step 2: Choose the right ad network partner
The best ad networks to partner up with are those that can work with 100% fill and can offer premium rates considering the geographical location where most of your traffic is coming from. Publishers need to make sure that a particular ad network also has strong demand.
Step 3: Make your content fresh and seasonal
Check your previous year’s holiday analytics data. Using Google Analytics, you can see your top performing content and dates they performed best. Use this data to help you come up with improved content strategies for Q4.
Step 4: Don’t leave empty ad spaces
Make your text content sufficient. This will allow Google to crawl the site and serve relevant and top paying ads. Relevant ads will end up generating more clicks.
Step 5: Reaching out for direct deals
As advertisers increase their budgets for the holiday season, reach out to your ad representatives for premium and direct deals to increase your earnings. There’s a higher chance to strike lucrative deals during Q4 as this helps advertisers meet their targets.
Step 6: Signing up with a Header Bidding Solution
More publishers are now opting for a Header Bidding Solution. As we know, with Header Bidding we can eliminate waterfall passback. This means publishers can have access to more demands and increase fill rates. Header Bidding also allows publishers to sell their inventory to the highest bidder and provides total visibility of who won each impression.
This is a great opportunity for publishers this holiday season. Here at MonetizeMore, we have Pubguru Header Bidding where you can sit back and watch our proprietary header bidding technology maximize your ad revenue.
Of course, a lot of factors are at play with regards to how well each individual website will perform during the last quarter, however, following these tips will help make sure that you get to monetize every single impression that comes trickling in as much as possible.
10X your wonderful time by getting started here.
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source https://www.monetizemore.com/blog/11-holiday-tips-for-publishers/
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