10 Next-Gen Ways to Improve Ad Revenue for Publishers

Digital ad revenue is under pressure from filtered inventory, privacy changes, and fragmented attention. Yet forward-thinking publishers are boosting overall earnings by adding alternate monetization streams that go beyond just optimizing placements and increasing impressions.

Below are the most effective ways to grow ad revenue today, starting with strategies advertisers and publishers have only begun leveraging at scale.

Monetize Adblock Traffic with Dedicated Recovery Tools

Up to 43% of internet users globally block ads, causing publishers to lose billions of dollars in potential ad revenue yearly. Standard display ads are simply never served to this cohort.

Solutions detect when a visitor has an ad blocker enabled and then serve alternative paid units that bypass typical blocking rules or gently prompt users to opt in to receive ads.

Publishers implementing AdBlock monetization (via anti-adblock walls or ad recovery tech) report incremental revenue recovery on blocked users ranging from 5% to 20% of total revenue, depending on audience and traffic volume. Leading publishers report a noticeable uplift in total impressions served once AdBlock traffic is included in monetizable inventory.

A mid-size news site implementing AdBlock monetization tools saw blocked users generate ad revenue at 35% of regular traffic value, which translated to a 12% lift in total ad revenue compared to pre-adblock monetization.

Key practices include server-side insertion of acceptable ads, native creative formats for AdBlock traffic, and lightweight opt-in modals.

Contextual Advertising That Outperforms Cookie-Based Targeting

Contextual advertising has evolved far beyond simple keyword matching. Modern AI-driven contextual engines analyze page sentiment, user intent, content structure, and real-time signals to serve highly relevant ads without relying on personal data.

With privacy regulations tightening and third-party cookies fading out, contextual targeting is becoming one of the most profitable and future-proof monetization strategies for publishers.

Advertisers are increasingly shifting budgets to contextual environments because:

Ads appear in brand-safe, relevant content

Viewability and engagement are higher

CPMs are rising as cookie-based targeting weakens.

In many cases, contextual ads now outperform behavioral targeting on both revenue and performance metrics, with publishers seeing a 20% to 40% increase in CPMs.

A global news publisher that layered AI contextual targeting across its display inventory saw a 32% uplift in programmatic revenue within three months, even as cookie match rates declined.

Another content publisher in the finance niche implemented contextual segments such as ‘investment planning,’ ‘crypto analysis,’ and ‘retirement advice.’ Advertisers bidding on these segments paid 25% higher CPMs than run-of-site traffic.

Offerwalls and Rewarded Actions as Alternate Revenue Engines

Offerwalls allow users to earn rewards such as points, digital content, or in-site benefits in exchange for completing offers, surveys, or watching engaging ads. This approach unlocks revenue from users who are typically less valuable under traditional display or video CPM models.

Offerwalls convert optional user engagement into revenue while avoiding consumer resistance to standard ads.

Publishers in gaming and entertainment verticals have seen 70% higher RPM from offerwalls compared to standard banner ads for light users. Mobile publishers report revenue share boosts of 10% to 25% after adding offerwalls to monetization stacks.

A lifestyle app integrated offerwalls into free-to-play elements. Light users who rarely clicked banner ads interacted with offerwalls at a 15% engagement rate, driving incremental revenue without diluting user experience. Reward activity provided a new stream that scaled with audience size.

Programmatic Private Exchanges

PMP stands for Private Marketplace, a set of exclusive real-time bidding auctions in which publishers invite a bunch of buyers to bid on their inventory. Here, publishers select only a subset of buyers for their premium inventory. The buyer can either bid in a private RTB auction or buy directly via preferred deals.

Publishers decide what they package as ‘premium’ and what prices they charge. Additionally, advertisers are willing to pay a lot for premium inventory. There’s a great demand for premium inventory tailored to highly specific audience segments, but there isn’t nearly enough available. Brands and advertisers are shifting their focus to private marketplaces to secure advertising inventory that helps them achieve their marketing goals, which will only increase publisher ad revenue.

Pay-or-Tracking Walls (Privacy Monetization Options)

This approach gives users a choice: pay a fee or consent to tracking that enables personalized advertising. Recent academic research shows this can increase overall revenue because consenting users are more valuable to ad auctions than anonymous ones. Publishers retain revenue from privacy-conscious users while still respecting compliance obligations.

In tests on European news sites, publishers adopting pay-or-tracking walls saw revenue increase by roughly 15% to 20% by converting anonymous traffic into trackable impressions, which command higher eCPMs.

Server-Side Ad Insertion to Bypass Client-Side Blocking

Traditional banner ad calls in browser code are easy for ad blockers to remove. Server-side ad insertion (SSAI) stitches ads into content streams or page output on the server, reducing exposure to filters and increasing viewability.

With SSAI, ad calls are embedded in content delivery, making them less susceptible to client blocking and filter detection. This technique is particularly effective for video publishers.

Video publishers using SSAI report ad-block viewability increases of 20% to 40% compared to client-side ads, and higher eCPM performance due to more guaranteed impressions.

Dynamic Yield Optimization and Demand Path Optimization

Cutting inefficiencies in the monetization stack, removing non-incremental SSPs, reducing duplicate supply paths, and optimizing waterfall logic, produces tangible CPM gains.

Publishers audit their yield stack and eliminate redundant demand sources, resulting in 10% to 18% overall lift in revenue per thousand impressions.

Ad Placement Optimization

Whenever a new publisher onboards to partner with us, we share the best ad placement optimization strategies with them on how they can improve their site’s layout. These types of tweaks include: increasing or decreasing the number of ad units, size optimizations, etc. To successfully create a website’s layout, you need to use the appropriate techniques, products, and, most importantly, get to know your audience. Testing ad placement optimizations for each ad unit is crucial when the main goal is to improve CTRs for your site’s ad units.

Sticky Side Rails and Floating Anchor Ads

These remain visible as users scroll, keeping impressions on screen for longer.

Publisher results show 20% to 50% higher eCPMs vs static display and increased viewability above 85%.

Moving a 200×200 ad unit from the left column to the right side & optimizing your ad units can increase your conversion rate by over 70%. The secret sauce here lies in continuous tweaking and optimization to increase and optimize your ad revenue.

Video and Outstream Video Placements

Video inventory continues to command premium pricing.

Outstream video that plays within content blocks or at scroll triggers can outperform pre-roll in many cases.

Publishers commonly see eCPMs between $8 to $20+ and higher completion rates with scroll-activated formats

A lifestyle blog introduced in-article outstream video units and achieved 4x higher revenue per impression compared to static display.

Comparing Ad Networks

Using the best ad network will always keep you two steps ahead of your competitors. With the best ad networks, you’ll always be assured that you are getting paid handsomely. Ad relevance and quality matter as well. You may have succeeded when it comes to finding the best ad size and ad placement.

But how can you ensure that the ads that are relevant to what your website users actually need are designed properly with a clear call to action? Although tracking the CTR of each creative and banner ad is not possible for publishers/webmasters (and even impractical in many networks), later on, the ad network quality would speak through the eCPMs and RPMs. Sometimes, a micro-network specifically designed for your vertical (think Insurance Ad Network) is better than a large or well-known network if it gives you access to more relevant and premium advertisers.

So, if you test various ad networks with the ad size and placement being constant for an ad unit, you can actually analyze which network is performing better (in terms of total income, CTRs & eCPMs) overall.

Choosing the right partner

So how do you go about finding a provider that will increase your site’s revenue? Well, we’ve got experience in this area and have tested multiple providers over the years. In fact, our team has increased ad revenue for 1500+ publishers by up to 50%. And we can help you do the same.

source https://www.monetizemore.com/blog/7-best-ways-to-increase-ad-revenue/