What is a Demand Side Platform? 

An ad tech used by advertisers in real-time bidding options, demand-side platforms allow people to purchase ad inventory from multiple suppliers simultaneously, including ad networks, ad exchanges, and individual publishers. The DSP network keeps all available suppliers in one place, so ad buying and management are easier for advertisers. A DSP is one of the most basic tools in programmatic advertising, almost eliminating the need for human participation in the auction. Demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms automatically pit publisher inventory against suitable ad units, in accordance with the parameters set by advertisers and publishers. This happens in a short period of time and this is what makes it a very cost-effective method of ad inventory purchase and selling. 

DSPs are used for programmatic ad buying, particularly bidding in RTB auctions. DSP’s task is to purchase the impressions on a suitable inventory, showing it to users that have met certain criteria of the optimal (minimum) price. Commonly used by agency trading desks (ATDs), advertisers, agencies, or in-house marketing teams, DSPs allow media buyers to get access to many SSPs, Ad Networks, and Ad Exchanges through a singular interface. So they may buy rich media, mobile, video, and native ads simultaneously. This process of inventory purchase happens within seconds, making trading profitable and less cumbersome. 

DSPs are the opposite of SSPs or Supply Side Platforms, which refer to a technological platform representing the publisher’s interests, selling ad inventory. SSPs receive the bids from advertisers and inventory requirements from DSPs. When someone wins the RTB auction, both parties i.e the advertiser and publisher have their interests served. 

Why Did Demand Side Platforms Arise? 

Earlier, digital ads were purchased and sold by ad buyers and salespersons. DSPs came into being to remove the need for media buyer and publisher negotiations. The process became cheaper, more transparent, and fully automated. Manual negotiation has no place in the world of DSPs. Purchasing ad space in real-time through DSPs allows advertisers the chance to target audiences very specifically, with certain campaigns, at the right time in the right ad formats. 

DSPs have basically automated decision-making and decide which impression is worthy of a bid while calculating the maximum value of each impression. An RTB auction sees the system sorting impressions automatically to announce the highest bidder, who pays the price which is preset by the second-price auction, i.e a $0.01 increase over the 2nd highest bid offered. This is called a fair price mechanism, put in place from preventing overspending by advertisers. 

How Do Demand Side Platforms Work? 

Using a DSP campaign building tool, an advertiser can provide certain criteria to set a target audience, like age, gender, annual income, etc. Then, if they want to spread their ad budget throughout the day, the ‘Daily Cap’ option allows them to do so. The ‘lifelong pacing’ option allows you to distribute the budget over the ad campaign’s lifetime. If you want to make sure that your ads show only on good-quality websites, you can block web pages that show sensitive content and blacklist publishers you don’t want to deal with. 

Manipulations, tuning, configurations, and optimizations are up to the advertisers, which is why DSPs are called self-served demand-side platforms. There are managed service and full-service DSPs, designed for advertisers who need support in managing their campaigns. 

RTB Bidding

DSPs analyze inventory to decide its value on behalf of the advertiser. If it fits the targeting settings, DSP calculates the maximum cost of that ad inventory. The bid response is then relayed back to the ad exchange. Bid prices are based on the advertiser’s preset budgeting data, and information like browsing behavior, place, and age groups. Machine learning algorithms have ensured that analyzing impressions happen almost immediately. 

Ad Networks

What Are They? 

Acting as a bridge between advertisers and publishers, or DSPs and SSPs in case of programmatic advertising, Ad Networks also known as Digital Advertising Networks pick up inventory from publishers put it into categories, and offer this as inventory to advertisers based on demographics. There are many kinds of ad networks, each of them with a different purpose. 

Horizontal Ad Networks

Working with multiple publishers, such networks give publishers the golden treatment, i.e there are no barriers on the way. They work on a CPC model, which means that you only pay if the visitor clicks on your ad. Such a network is amazing for low-budget ad campaigns, as the ability to target could be curtailed. 

Vertical Ad Networks

These allow you to target site visitors. They will work with publishers who specialize in a particular niche, like sports, fashion, hobbies, lifestyle, and so on. Some networks may work with publishers just based on niche, so if the site isn’t a fit, the publisher may not be presented. 

Premium Ad Networks

Only accepting the best inventory with the highest levels of traffic, like The Guardian or HuffPost, premium ad networks are tough to join. It is deemed to be the safest place for online media trading. 

Basic Difference Between a DSP and an Ad network

While demand-side platforms may sometimes offer features as ad networks do, the ability to dip into a pool of resources and specific targeting is their USP. Most DSPs offer one tool for the ad campaign launch, optimization, and analysis, which gives them a point over ad networks that aren’t always all-in-one. DSPs charge only when a transaction takes place, without adding margins to inventory. Both DSP platforms and ad networks work in conjunction without losing quality. The latter adjusts RTB bidding opportunities, while the former purchases the premium ad inventory, only to resell it with higher margins.

The Following Table Presents a Comparison of DSP and Ad Networks

Which Should You Choose? 

Advertisers prefer DSPs over ad networks because of a lack of control and low efficiency. Ad networks have certain disadvantages, like fixed CPM and masked site reporting. Earlier with the absence of automation software, they were used, but today advertisers use programmatic advertising, without relying on ad networks anymore. Thanks to DSPs, you have an unlimited supply of inventory from many sources, and can create custom audience segments with specific targeting. The advertisers get access to a range of publishers all over the world and only have to manage ad campaigns, while real-time bidding is implemented by the media buying process. 

Final Thoughts

To start purchasing inventory automatically, you need to sign up with a DSP provider or build your own. Look for one with a sophisticated DSP and customizable technology so you can always expand your brand’s services. Read our blog on ad viewability and its impact on publishers’ revenue to find out how low ad viewability can negatively impact publishers. 

The post A Guide to Understanding Demand Side Platform first appeared on Publir.

What is Domain Privacy? 

For any purchase on the internet, some important information like payment details and billing information might be shared. However, some of these are optional. If you wish to buy a domain through a registrar, here are some simple steps you follow to complete the transaction. The information often given out is your name, an email address, a business address, and telephone contact details. The information that you give out is not always private. 

Why Domain Privacy is Required for All Websites?

Privacy is an important part of the web and for users in general. Domain privacy is very important given that there are two billion live websites. That means scores of domain names, with a lot of public user information attached to them. The WHOIS database contains information about every single domain. Domain privacy is required as it can protect your personal and contact information from being public. You’ll face less spam in your inbox or via phone because a lot of people use the WHOIS database as a cold calling list. Malicious users can’t steal your domain, and you have some legal protection. 

The WHOIS Database

A non-profit organization that coordinates and maintains the namespaces on the internet, ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers keeps the net stable and secure courtesy of its IP (Internet Protocol) address management, and DNS (Domain Name Server) root. ICANN controls the registration of domain names, requiring all site owners to register full contact details for each domain owned. This data is made public on the WHOIS database. 

How To Check Whether Your Domains Have Privacy Protection?

Before implementing domain privacy on your site, check whether it’s there in the first place. You may have chosen it at checkout and forgotten, or it may be an automatic application. Visit the WHOIS database, and enter your domain name in the search bar. If you click the ‘search’ option, you’ll land upon the WHOIS entry for the domain. Under the ‘Domain Information section, you might see details regarding the domain name, registrar, and registry dates. You may not know whether you have domain privacy. You need to scroll down to the Registrant Contract, Administrative Contract, or Technical Contact Sections. The details may differ depending on the registrar and domain privacy employed. The important elements to watch out for are 

An email address that appears to be forwarding messages, and a name and contact address that appears generic and is not yours.  

This might indicate that domain privacy is switched on. If any of your details aren’t visible on this screen, you might want to learn to apply domain privacy.

4 Main Domain Privacy Tools and Services 

Domain registrars might provide privacy services at the checkout stage. Here we break down 4 different domain registrars or services offering domain privacy amongst other offerings. 

Your Own Domain Registrar 

Website owners often have domain names to go with. You might want to choose which type of domain privacy you may access. Your current registrar might be the best place to start as it may offer the least resistance in implementing domain privacy. There will be many tools for domain management regardless of your task. While there may not be an explicit ‘domain privacy’ option, you’ll find Domain Ownership Protection (DOP). In such a way, several services come bundled at a premium price. You get WHOIS domain privacy and the ability to ‘lock’ the domain. You can thus avoid common mistakes like domain transfer, changing the domain’s personal information, or domain renewal cancellation. For activating something like DOP, you have to do it at the time of purchase. 

Google Domains 

This is a great way to buy and manage all domains, with familiar dashboards and decent pricing. Google Workspace users might find this to be the ideal domain registrar. It handles domain privacy using Privacy Protection, which is free and can be applied at checkout as standard. You can also view terms of service on the ‘domain overview’ page. You will also find a note that indicates whether privacy protection is active. 

Namecheap 

This firm specializes in cost-effective domain names. You will find lots of TLDs, and the dashboard boasts ease of use. When it comes to managing domains, the registrar is easy to use. You can easily add records and change nameservers. There’s a common domain registrar derived from price, TLD availability, and usability. You can see which of your domains has privacy activated. The ‘shield’ logo is on each domain in a dedicated column.

Hover over that shield and you can see whether domain privacy is explicitly active. You can further expand each domain using the ‘arrow’ icon, seeing further details on how the domain privacy setup works. Namecheap gives you three different ways to view domain privacy. 

Cloudflare Registrar 

This is a service for registering domain names, offering similar services to other domain name registrars, but with more security features. You get free two-factor authentication and private WHOIS management. You get to keep your domain and personal information secure, and you don’t have to purchase add-on services to do so. Domain names managed through Cloudflare tie into many products and services like Cloudflare CDN, DNS, and SSL. 

Purchasing and Applying Domain Privacy For Your Website 

Find and add your domain name to the cart. 

Move to the checkout screen, where you can see the option to add domain privacy to your order. 

Here you might notice that domain privacy is toggled as enabled as standard, also set to auto-renew. 

You can continue with your purchase, and complete the transaction, using the Bulk Settings dropdown to apply the domain privacy settings to all domains in your cart. 

Final Thoughts

That’s all when it comes to domain protection and privacy. For most registrars, it is toggled on as standard, so there’s little else you’ll need to do apart from going through the renewal process in case you have not opted for auto-renewal.In conclusion, privacy is an important aspect of web browsing. Website owners need to declare personal information to purchase domain names. Without domain privacy, these details might become public so keeping them hidden is vital. Thankfully, this process is simple. For most registrars, all you do is toggle a switch for domain privacy. While some might offer this for free, some might charge a fee. That’s the only difference. Read our blog on internet privacy and device fingerprinting to learn about how you can protect your privacy online.

The post An Introduction To Domain Privacy – How Do You Implement It? first appeared on Publir.

Businesses often have multiple threats to contend with. Cyber attacks are of increasing concern. A zero-day exploit is one of the most serious malware threats. 

A cyber attack can have bad consequences for businesses. Hackers can target data, steal money or intellectual property, and adversely affect operations. No company is immune. Even global giants like Google face at least 22 unforeseen attacks each year. Cyber attacks are inevitable. However, there are certain steps that you can take to protect yourself. Here’s why zero-day exploits are dangerous, and how you can identify and prevent them from happening.

What Is a Zero-Day Exploit? 

Hackers can use a zero-day exploit, a previously undiscovered security flaw in your software or hardware, to breach your system. Also known as zero-hour exploits or day0 exploits, the origin is the same, stressing the depth of the problem. After someone discovers such a vulnerability, developers have no time to fix the problem before it snowballs into something big. Zero-day exploits may also be called zero-day vulnerabilities or zero-day attacks. Each term has its own implications. 

• Zero-Day Exploit – The method hackers use to attack software. 
• Zero-Day Vulnerability – Refers to the undiscovered flaw in the system. 
• Zero-Day Attack – Refers to the action taken by hackers when they take advantage of the vulnerability to breach your system. 

‘Undiscovered’ is a very important term when it comes to zero-day vulnerabilities, as these must be unknown to the system’s creators to be considered as ‘zero-day vulnerability. A security vulnerability stops being a ‘zero-day vulnerability once the developers have knowledge of the problem and release a patch. The people who carry out such attacks may be

• Cybercriminals with a financial motivation. 
• Hacktivists looking to further their political cause or agenda. 
• Corporate hackers looking to get information about the competition. 
• For-profit hackers who locate vulnerabilities to sell to others, instead of exploiting them themselves. 

How Does the Zero Day Attack Work?

Most attacks generally follow a set pattern 

Step 1 – Your developers create a system with a zero-day vulnerability that the former have no clue of. 

Step 2 – After the system goes live, the hacker finds a vulnerability. 

Step 3 – The hacker authors and executes malicious code to exploit the said vulnerability and breach the system.

Step 4 – The public or developers find a problem and fix it with a patch. 

The hacker that finds the zero-day threat and the one that exploits it might be different. Some hackers hawk information to others through the black market, that exists on the dark web, a part of the internet that one cannot reach through normal search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and can only be accessed through special TOR browsers. Cybersecurity companies also search for exploits to sell information to the system’s owners.

How Do Hackers Breach The System? 

Fuzzing

This is a common method, a brute-force technique used to find system holes. Fuzzing a target includes using software to enter random data into your system’s input boxes. The hacker then observes for crashes, failed assertions, or memory leaks that indicate a code hole. Many fuzzing techniques also focus on filling input boxes with random nonsense. 

Social Engineering

This is a manipulation technique used by hackers to gain access to systems through users. The various types of social engineering include pretexting and phishing. The former tries to fool people by creating a believable scenario, like pretending to be from your IT department, claiming they need your password. Phishing is impersonating someone you know to slyly take important information from you. 

How To Protect Yourself From Zero-Day Exploits? 

Zero-day attacks can be quite stressful, especially because you can’t do anything but sit and watch hackers pilfer money, data, and trade secrets while you wait for developers to patch the hole. The best thing you can do is prepare better. Here are some ways you can protect your system. 

Security Software

Protect your system from viruses, internet-based intrusions, and other threats. While each software offers its own level of protection, most can scan for malware, encrypt data and block unauthorized users. You can also get special software for websites. FOr example, WordPress users have FIM (File Integrity Monitoring) Software, plugins like Astra Web Security and WP fail2ban, and a reliable CDN or Content Delivery Network, as well as general security plugins like Wordfence. 

Regularly Installing New Software Updates

Hackers can find vulnerabilities in outdated code, so update your website, applications, and software so your system remains safe. New updates are good for your system as they have patches for cybersecurity vulnerabilities. They get rid of old or unused program parts that hackers could target. They introduce new cybersecurity measures for user safety and fix bugs that could fall prey to fuzzing. 

Secure Web Hosting

Hackers target hundreds of sites every day. Since they can breach your site through plugins, outdated versions of WordPress, or website themes, protect your organization using a secure hosting provider. Kinsta is one such tool. It protects your website with Encrypted Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and a Secure Shell connection. It provides a secure connection to Google Cloud.

You get a hack fix guarantee and an IP Deny Tool that allows you to block IP addresses from accessing your site. You get Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) protection, as well as enterprise-level firewall courtesy Cloudflare. There’s also automatic backups every fortnight, as well as a security guarantee.

Firewalls

Digital walls between your system and the outside world, firewalls give you an extra layer of protection that hackers need to breach before they attack your system. From personal, to stateful, web applications, to packet filtering and Next Generation (NGFW), there are many kinds of firewalls to choose from.

The Least Access Rule

According to this rule, people in the organization should only have access to the hardware, software, and data that they require for regular work duties. This creates fewer entry points for hackers who rely on social engineering by limiting the amount of admin access people have to each system. 

Using DevOps Development

This is an approach that relies on a system of constant development to update programs. This helps tighten security against zero-day exploits as you are forced to update and change your system constantly. 

User Security Training

This teaches employees to identify social engineering techniques and threats online. Training employees to spot such cybersecurity threats can help identify attacks, inform the right team quickly, and act without panic and leaving information. 

Use A VPN

If you want to protect your browsing data, IP address, and connection data as you browse the internet, use a VPN. This makes it harder for criminal hackers to hack your system using your web browser as they have less information for use against you. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, zero-day exploits cannot be avoided altogether. However, taking some simple steps like training your staff to spot such attacks, using cybersecurity measures like VPN, firewalls, and security software, and changing your development process regularly can ensure you stay safe. Read our blog on ad injections and how to tackle unauthorized ads inserted into web pages.

The post What Is a Zero-Day Exploit And Why Are They Dangerous? first appeared on Publir.

While it is granted that seasonality trends impact publishers year-round irrespective of industry, keeping your revenue high is possible if you pay attention to certain factors and optimize your website. Seasonality has quite a sizable impact on revenue. Some months, your revenue might increase or decrease noticeably. As a publisher, you may not be in a position to control the onset of seasonality trends, but you can understand them and take steps to safeguard your interests.

 What Causes Seasonal Fluctuations in the AdTech Industry?

Google says that seasonality is any predictable fluctuation or pattern occurring during certain weeks, every year. Some publishers may experience higher CPMs during the holiday season. This might be during Christmas for countries like the US and the UK, or Diwali, in India. Holidays are a cultural aspect that drives seasonality. Apart from this, publishers might also experience higher CPMs due to commercial aspects like the end of the season and Black Friday sales. Nowadays, advertisers are lavishing large amounts of money on their campaigns, while the number of users online on e-commerce and social media websites is burgeoning. Both these factors contribute towards publishers earning a higher revenue than usual. Last year 2020 saw a significant rise in the number of online consumers, primarily due to Covid-19. eMarketer estimates that US consumers spent around $190.47 billion dollars on holiday eCommerce purchases, a whole $50 billion more than 2019 figures.

Publishers benefit quite a lot from ad tech trends, serving an increased amount of ads to an ever-widening audience. The converse is also true. Traffic may trickle down during months like January and July. This might primarily be due to the drop in ad spending, as advertisers get back to the drawing board for planning. User behavior changes too, as people get back to normal routines. Seasonal fluctuations might also occur due to ad-hoc reasons, like a World Cup, Olympic games, or a presidential election. Such seasonal patterns could affect publishers. There’s no escaping them. However, some strategic planning might mitigate the damage. 

Quarter Wise Breakdown

Most organizations divide their year into 4 quarters, namely 

Q1, from January to March

Q2, from April to June. 

Q3, from July to September. 

Q4, from October to December. 

The following points can shed light on what these quarters can bring, so publisher trends can be leveraged accordingly. 

Q1 – Most publishers might know what the January Slump is. During the first quarter, as advertisers primarily focus on devising new strategies, they spend less money on campaigns. Moreover, online purchasing trends change as well, because people are less keen after Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, to splurge. It isn’t a stretch to say that this is the worst quarter for publishers, in terms of revenue. Direct sales drop leads to more ad inventory being sold through programmatic channels, which might compensate for a drop in eCPMs. The middle of the quarter might see things return to normal. 

Q2 – This quarter is relatively better for publishers, in terms of revenue generation. After drawing up their plans it’s time to spend those marketing dollars, putting money into different campaigns, focusing on experiments too – all this leading to higher revenue for publishers. Seasonality trends might change however, In Q2 of 2020, global media ad spending fell by around 46%, as compared to the same period in 2019, as businesses suffered because of the pandemic. Q2 is different because many advertisers or ad agencies finish their financial year, and try to spend all their budgets, ensuring nothing is left. For publishers, it’s a great quarter in terms of ad RPMs, as we move towards the end of June. 

Q3 – There is a slump here as well, though not as bad as the one in January. One factor is a decrease in traffic, another is advertisers recalibrating their budgets. Traffic change depends on publisher niches, but when advertisers revise their budgets, everyone is affected. Summer is a quiet season, as people spend more time outdoors, less time online. Advertisers adjust their budgets, devising new strategies. Publishers might see a considerable dip in July, after which CPMs might increase. 

Q4 – This is probably the best quarter for all publishers, as the end of the year sees a spike in online users, thanks to the number of holidays during this time. Brands splash money on ad campaigns, and publishers leverage this to earn higher revenues. For brands, being seen is imperative and competition is higher than ever. Holidays like Thanksgiving Day and Diwali begin in November. There’s also Black Friday and Cyber Monday. CPMs remain high all the way through the winter months in the run-up through Christmas and the New Year. 

How Do You Optimise Revenue In The Face Of Seasonality Trends? 

Q1 – Since earnings in this quarter are quite low, there are certain steps that you can take to ensure your revenue doesn’t drop much. Optimize your ad inventory, and try to experiment with various ad units, placements, and formats. Don’t be afraid to try out innovative ad sizes and layouts, and add them to your inventory. Ensure your content is top-notch, even if your site traffic isn’t much. Good content gives users an incentive to stay on your site, ensuring that your site ranks better in the coming months.

Good quality content aside, website health and keyword optimization should be your goal. Consult ad operational professionals, who can help you monitor your website. Private marketplace deals instead of programmatic auctions might give you results, as you have more control and increase your inventory value. Reducing floor price post Q4 might aid in bagging more deals, increasing the fill rates on your site. February is better for revenue generation, as you can take advantage of events like the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, and the President’s Day Sale.

Q2 – Performance in this quarter might be better than the first. If you were able to sail through the first quarter, you might have noticed a small increase in traffic and user engagement. Try marginally increasing your inventory’s floor price, to bag revenue. If the ad formats you used in the previous quarter are working, then great. However, if ad viewability hasn’t increased, consider a change. In the second quarter, occasions like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Memorial Day might help. Don’t make major website changes on holidays to avoid technical glitches. 

Q3 – Performance this quarter may not be as bad as the first, but publishers might need to implement certain changes to make sure they earn from their sites. During the start of the quarter, you could reduce the floor price a little, then increase it again in the quarter’s middle. Always re-adjust to see what works best. Q3 should also see the groundwork for Q4. Optimize your inventory, by experimenting with different ad placements, formats and units. By the end of Q3, you should figure out what works best. Try PMP deals if you think your inventory isn’t going anywhere using conventional methods. Look out for the 4th of July and Labor Day during this period. 

Q4 – This is the most exciting time for publishers. Make the most of opportunities. Ensure you are aware of all the holidays and events during this quarter, even if they aren’t in your country. Your users may belong to a place where that event is important, so optimize your inventory. As the quarter commences, you should test if all website aspects are working properly. That means an effective traffic strategy, low page latency, keyword research, and website performance on different devices. Your ad viewability should be high. As more people browse and purchase, optimize for ad viewability for better revenue. Increase floor prices for higher returns, and take advantage of dynamic allocation for maximizing revenue. Tools like Google Analytics can help track user engagement and site performance. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, seasonal patterns are inevitable, and if revenue declines in one quarter, it may increase in the next one. Publishers must be aware of what tactics to use so as to make the most of each phase. Prepare for each quarter to ensure you don’t fall prey to seasonality trends. Read our blog on ROAS to understand how to maximize your returns for each dollar spent on advertising.

The post Seasonality Trends in the AdTech Industry – What Should Publishers Do? first appeared on Publir.

Content personalization in marketing has many benefits, and there are some effective strategies you can use. You can tailor your own strategy to boost customer engagement, drive conversion rates and increase revenue. Content personalization can help companies drive the right message to the correct target audience. The content may be adapted to fit newsletters, blogs, or other forms, and may include different headlines, images, CTAs, body copy, etc. Doing this could help improve conversion rates and drive campaign performance, boosting engagement. Called ‘dynamic content’ due to its constantly updating nature, it is all about customer-oriented personalized user experiences. 

How Do Brands Create Such Specific Content? 

How do you know your best friend is feeling sad? It’s because you have observed them, their facial expressions, and can pinpoint either one or more of those expressions as representing sadness. Similarly, brands ‘know their audiences’. They segment user data into 3 buckets. 

Behavioural Data 

When a user visits your website, they leave behind some information. Behavioral analysis can give you the time they spent, the number of visitors, sign-ups, and other metrics. Sources for this data are mobile applications, websites, CRM systems, call centers, helpdesks, billing centers, and marketing automation systems. 

Contextual Data

Providing context to user actions, items, and persons can help marketers gain insights into user intent and patterns. Data comes from social media activity, milestones, location, preferences, and old buying behavior. 

Demographic Data 

This method divides the market into smaller blocks based on demographic factors ranging from age, income, and marital status, to gender, sexual orientation, education level, geography, etc. You can get such data from population censuses, 3rd party databases, and survey records. It is quite useful, knowing how your audience behaves on the internet. 

What Are The Advantages of Content Personalization?

Curate An Interested Audience

Consistently tracking user behavior, information, preferences and more, can help you offer your audience relevant content and consequently products and services that keep their interest buoyed, and their engagement with you for a long time. A bored audience won’t stick around. They’ll leave to engage with similar brands that offer something unique. You can attract new customers, but to have a loyal fan base, requires dedication. Content personalization can help with that. 

Better Lead Nurturing 

There are higher chances of leads being converted into MQLs, or marketing qualified leads, and SQLs, or sales qualified leads if a publisher takes care to curate personalized content. When individual audience members are catered to, established relationships grow stronger, getting you more leads and conversions over time. 

Higher Lead Conversion Chances 

If you manage to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message, your conversion likelihood increases. This is better than when you send customers random irrelevant messages. A personalized curated experience may entice a customer to convert way more than a generic approach. 

Better Revenue 

Different strokes for different folks. Some people prefer Facebook, others Instagram. Staying abreast of everyone’s preferences is important, so you can target your efforts towards those channels to boost purchases. If you have a customer frequently visiting your brand site and social media handles, you could lure them through those channels by personalizing their experience, providing product recommendations whenever they express interests. If your customer sees what you are offering them in terms of user experience and the product is interesting, they may be more likely to return to your site and buy from you. 

An Emotional Touch 

Emotions have always driven purchasing decisions, which is why content personalization is a great differentiation strategy for customer engagement and retention. If you manage to strike an emotional chord with your audience via your content, the impact may be boosted by data-driven personalization. Marketers have managed to break down their audiences on parameters like age, location, and gender, allowing them to customize their marketing message on a deeper level. 

Effective content personalization encompasses a variety of tools, customer data, and new technology, helping marketers study customer journeys to garner more data, giving the customer a bespoke experience, boosting emotional bonds. 

How Do You Build A Content Personalisation Strategy 

User First

Before curating your content, map out your target audience’s needs. Your content, product, or service needs to solve some problem. Your personalization strategy doesn’t need to blow your own trumpet. It should be more about how your product is tailored to audience needs. As a manufacturer, it should be your goal to create something of value for end-users, irrespective of whether you get their business or not. 

Speak To Individuals 

Personalized content is all about the individual. When addressing a potential customer, try to make them feel as if they are your only priority. A human-centric and empathetic approach might help. Interact with your customers as a person, not a company. Lend things a personal touch, and genuine relationships may foster.

Customer Journey Mapping 

A customer journey map helps you curate content that is relevant for each step of the customer’s journey. Such a map should speak to different audiences, aligning your content to each stage of their user journey. This can help you deliver relevant content to a customer during a certain part of their journey, ensuring they move forward to the next step. 

What Can Help You Personalize Content

There are many content personalization tools specifically made for this purpose. 

Customer Data Platforms 

This software clubs customer data across touchpoints, building individual customer profiles after scanning data in real-time. Data from first, second and third-party sources like social media, web forms, site behavior and action, CRM, mail interactions, and other customer transactions, all come together to build quite an accurate customer profile. 

Google Tag Manager 

Working with a data layer variable that triggers personalization, this tool gives marketers data helping them display custom content to different audience members. Google Tag Manager can help publishers provide a seamless personalized experience, boost on-site user experience and conversion rate. 

Data Management Platforms 

Such platforms collect, collate, and activate data from different sources. The data can be a first, second, or third party, and the sources vary from online to mobile, offline, and beyond. 

The above tools have become indispensable for personalized content marketing, helping businesses find new insights about their valued customers. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, content personalization is absolutely essential if you want to feel the pulse of the customer, and relate to them on a deeper level. With a little effort, personalization of content can go a long way in getting you fresh leads, while boosting engagement with your present users. Read our blog about asking customers for reviews, a great starting point for curating a customized content, product, or service experience. 

The post Content Personalization – Why This Can Help You Retain Customers and Win New Ones first appeared on Publir.

AMP pages have turned out to be quite popular, adopted by a majority of websites online, including the Washington Post, to ensure a faster, more efficient mobile web experience. Leveraged by digital publishers to increase site performance, these can help the former get maximum ROI.

What Are AMP Ads

An acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages, this concept was launched in February 2016, with an aim to help mobile website content load immediately. Google was the main sponsor, along with Twitter, Bing, Baidu, and Pinterest as well as others. Aiming to minimize data to 8 times smaller than the mobile page size, Google’s AMP might result in an increase in revenue. Thus, faster, lighter, and capable of loading as fast as the rest of the AMP page, these ads, created by AMP’s smart open-source components, are devoid of useless JavaScript (JS), ensuring a seamless advertising experience. Validation before display protects them from malware. Developers need to build them only once and they can be used freely on both AMP and non-AMP pages.  

How Do AMP Ads Work

Similar to standard HTML ads, there are 3 steps to AMP ads. 

1. Publishers use an ad slot to insert an ad, through the amp-ad tag, further defining the SSPs or ad networks they prefer. 
2. A piece of JS code controlling the implementation of AMP elements and managing resource loading, or AMP runtime, further sends an ad request to a network to retrieve said ad. 
3. The AMPHTML ad is sent by the ad network, and AMP runtime starts before the ad rendering. 

Usually, ad networks have the ability of serving AMPHTML ad creatives, with each creative validated and signed via the Fast Fetch mechanism, the process being the same for AMP and non-AMP pages. The Fast Fetch mechanism ensures that AMP ads are fast (2.7 seconds faster, to be precise), as they’re fetched asynchronously, rendered only when users might see them. As ads and their responses are separated, ad requests are entertained during the early stages of a page’s life cycle. 

AMP Video Ads 

Being heavy, videos can slow site loading time, affecting end-user experience. AMP videos can help monetization without hampering speed. There are 16 video players, like DailyMotion, Brightcove, amongst others. Apart from these, custom components like <amp-iframe> can be used to integrate your existing player. Video ads boast a higher completion rate on AMP pages, appear more frequently on traditional web pages, and are a huge source of ad revenue. Instream video ads can be served by publishers using the <amp-ima-video) component, which works as a standard video player with functions like docking and auto-play on scroll. Publishers who don’t have video content can also deliver out-stream ads, courtesy of the <amp-ad> component. 

What Are The Benefits of AMP Ads 

Speed 

Faster than regular ads as they are requested earlier in the web page’s life cycle, AMPHTML ads help page rendering and creating selection happen parallelly. The omission of unnecessary elements makes these ads good performers. 

Page Latency 

Publishers often put up with high page latency due to slow-loading ads. AMPHTML ads are rendered immediately, reducing this significantly. 

Performance 

AMP runtime is tuned to work according to mobile resources. For instance, when not in view, AMPHTML ads with animations will not play. 

Size and Viewability

These ads are low on browser resource consumption due to their light size. They load faster, making them more viewable. 

Safe

AMP validates each ad creative before users see it, making AMPHTML ads fraud safe. 

Customizable

Working across devices on both AMP and non-AMP web pages, AMPHTML ads allow publishers to put down different strategies for ad loading, by changing one line of code. 

Amount of Ads

Publisher’s HTML page and AMP pages should be the same, content-wise. However, AMP pages can have more ads than the original HTML page, giving publishers more flexibility and control. 

Free, With Good ROI

An open-source project, AMP’s product suite, and resources are free. AMPHTML ads have a higher number of viewable impressions, generating more revenue per day for publishers. 

AMP Ads Also Have Their Disadvantages

Here are some cons to running AMP ads. 

1. Say goodbye to any fancy design elements, because UX is very basic. 
2. There will be random errors and warnings in Google’s Search Console. Fix them, whether they appear to resolve themselves or not. That means constantly working on the AMP platform. 
3. Depending on the website size, your workload might be more because you’ll need to maintain two identical websites. 
4. Using Analytics, Ads, or DoubleClick to track data from AMP pages is tricky. 

 Does AMP  add Value

AMP allows you to create your own custom design but is not just a simple code strip. As Google’s servers do a small pre-render of your website, you cannot speed up your site to be faster than the caches themselves. AMP could help with increasing page results, but knowledge of how to track the data served from Google’s servers is tricky. AMP has created a plugin, to help you create your own AMP pages, design, etc, according to the AMP project guidelines.

A lot of ad platforms, networks, and agencies are on-board with AMP, but there has been some criticism regarding its nature. AMP is a threat to the open web, alleging a few, courtesy of its supposed ‘rankings favoritism’. This is because Google always lets its own exchange win, despite submitting lower bids, courtesy of its fierce anti-competitive practices. Firebolt, Cloudflare, offers similar benefits, but then, any product/platform needs sufficient research before you implement it. 

Results of AMP on Revenue 

Since we have covered the advantages and disadvantages of AMP and the details of its implementation, it’s time to focus on the effect of AMP on Ad Revenue. While you certainly get better traffic from Google, including mobile search, ad revenue might suffer a little. For monetizing AMP pages, Ad Exchange and AdSense are sufficient, with other networks not optimized to work with AMP. 

Conclusion

AMPs are very beneficial for publishers who want to boost page speed and give their subscribers faster ads. Creating an AMP ad is as easy as creating a regular ad, with the former increasing revenue significantly for advertisers. What’s more. Google is constantly innovating functionality, which makes working with AMP to boost ad performance a lucrative option. 

At the end of the day, it’s all about providing a pleasant and memorable user experience. With more users going mobile, AMP ads might be the way forward. Read our blog to find out the right way of striking the fine balance between ads and user experience. Also learn how to optimize your ads so they remain non-intrusive, helping you retain your audience.

The post AMP Ads – Will They Boost Revenue For Publishers first appeared on Publir.

This is why, when formulating a content strategy, you have to think ‘mobile-first. If you want to have a competitive edge, you have to ensure your content is mobile-friendly. If not, you’ll be left behind because frankly smartphones dominate the times we are living in. Mobile users consume content like never before. An Internet Trend Study in 2018 established that the average time a consumer spends on digital media is around 3.3 hours per day. The same year, mobile traffic jumped from a 50% share of all internet traffic. There has always been a gradual shift towards mobile engagement, a wake-up call for content marketers who wish to be competitive. 

Why Do You Need A Mobile-First Strategy? 

In 2015, Google published its mobile-centric algorithmic update, for better rankings for mobile-friendly pages. They wanted to provide better results to smartphone users. Another update the next year aimed to boost rankings for mobile-friendly sites. March 2018 saw the publishing of Google’s Mobile-First Index, which meant that Google would begin to use the mobile version of a page’s content for indexing, ranking it so that it is more relevant for smartphone users. In July that same year, Google came up with a Mobile Speed Update, making page speed an important aspect in mobile search results. Through all these updates, content that has been optimized well gets a boost in terms of search engine rankings. You can never underestimate the significance of publishing mobile-friendly content because today everyone is using a phone for entertainment, shopping, information, and social interactions. 

Mobile-Friendly Content is Indispensable for SEO

Google, Yahoo, FB, and Twitter have all gone mobile-first. These are areas people frequent online, so if your content isn’t designed for mobile, your SEO rankings will suffer. Google has a ‘mobile friendly’ label on sites that come up when you search from a smartphone, duly informing users which site has been optimized for small screens. There are some specific criteria that can help you redesign your content with a mobile-first mentality in mind. Ensure your text is legible without zoom, your content is screen-friendly, links are spread out, and there’s no laggy software that makes smartphones slow and users frustrated. 

Mobile-Friendly Content Provides a Better UX 

Content needs to be readable, shareable, actionable, and fast. This requires more than just ‘downsizing’ everything for a smaller screen. Mobile content needs to be adaptive, so users can get what they want immediately without unnecessary navigation. 

Mobile-Friendly Content Needs To Be Everywhere

Whether it’s seeking news or making purchases, using social media, or just casual browsing, mobile-friendly content needs to be wherever there are active internet users. 

How Do You Ensure a Mobile-First Content Strategy? 

Make Your Website Responsive

A responsive website’s elements adjust according to the device that the person uses, providing a rewarding viewing experience. For WordPress sites, installing a desirable theme can be a quick fix.  

Site Speed Optimisation  

More than half of all mobile website visits are terminated if a site takes more than 3 seconds to load. According to Google, for every one-second delay, a site’s conversion rate falls by around 12%. Page speed is one of the important factors that determine the ranks of mobile searches. Ensure your pages are optimized for speed. Use Google’s Mobile Speed Test for finding issues. 

Implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) 

AMP aims to boost user experience by ensuring that sites load quickly. Optimizing for AMP ensures better rankings. An open-source project in partnership with Google, the latter’s guidelines are a good reference point to check if your AMP pages are valid. WordPress users need to install the WordPress plugin. 

A Sitemap 

Sitemaps are easy to create and ensure that Google’s web crawlers go through your page properly. WordPress Plugins and the Yoast SEO tool can help you. You could also download the XML sitemap in case you wish to make one for free. 

Title and Description Optimisation 

Google’s SERP always takes into account meta descriptions and titles, and this is very important for boosting Click-Through Rates. Mobile users might not be able to visualize the description owing to smaller screen sizes, which makes it imperative to insert keywords at the beginning of titles and descriptions. 

Using Rich Markups 

A closer inspection of Google’s SERP will reveal rich snippets, appearing in the form of product ratings, company information, and more. While they may not directly affect search rankings, they may affect your site’s bounce rates and click-through rate. Google uses structured data mark-up or the rich mark-up to pull information from mark-ups. 

Relevant and Engaging Content 

Content is king. There are no two ways about it. Where you put that content matters more, however. According to studies, mobile users focus most on the top left corner or top half of the screen and scroll more when compared to desktop users. Put the most interesting, engaging content at the start right above the fold. 

Short, Captivating Headlines

Headlines should be intriguing, explaining how users might benefit from further reading. Short, snappy, and scan-=able headlines are attention-seeking and will draw users. Keep a special eye out for font size to ensure this does not get lost below the fold. 

Personalize User Experience 

When users access sites via mobile, give them a chance to personalize the content they wish to see, just the way it happens on laptops. Technology like ‘Maxymism’ can help, that operates alongside mobile devices to track what content is accessed, at what time. 

Conduct an SEO Audit 

Simply redesigning the site won’t do. You could carry out a comprehensive SEO audit, using Google’s mobile-friendly test tool. The analysis report it throws up will give you an idea of what tweaks are required. Content needs to be structured correctly. Use image compressors, because with screens becoming smaller, users should have fewer tasks to perform. 

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, it is imperative to have your site optimized for mobile. Ensure that this is carried out on your site, on your social media channels, or even in the emails that you send to your customers. Make regular announcements on social media for new products, giveaways or sales. Make it easy for your users to scan the content you offer quickly, engaging with them as they do. Content today has to meet user needs across a multitude of devices. Analytics can help you find out which device your target audience favors, giving you an idea of how to optimize your content best. Google is only focusing more and more on mobile content, with mobile viewing growing. Don’t forget to optimize mobile content as that could ultimately determine your brand’s visibility and online credibility. 

When it comes to mobile content optimization, you have to optimize your ads too. Read our blog on ad viewability and how that affects user experience to ensure the smoothest UX for your site visitors, maximizing your revenue. 

The post A Mobile-First Content Strategy – Why Is It Important To Have The Edge? first appeared on Publir.

This study says that around 80% of all consumers experience banner blindness. With digital marketing, ad spending reaching 300,000 million USD in 2021, the use of banner ads to monetize websites has been growing steadily. However, it fails to generate revenue for publishers or provide a significant ROI, and this is often due to banner blindness. 

When and Why Does Banner Blindness Happen

Banner blindness occurs when the user consciously or subconsciously skips or ignores banner ads or information laid out in a banner-like fashion. Usually, the effectiveness of a banner ad is calculated by determining its CTR or Click Through Rate. 

CTR =(Number of clicks/Number of ad impressions)X100. = % CTR

The term ‘Banner Blindness’ was coined by Benway and Lane in 1998 when they found that large, attention-grabbing, and brightly-colored banner ads were still failing to attract clicks from participants who were seeking specific information. Even embedded with helpful related information, banner ads would be ignored. Banners on the top of the webpage, further away from important links are more likely to be ignored than the banners located on the lower side of the page. When users browse websites, they are usually seeking something specific, tending to ignore everything irrelevant. This is the reason for banner blindness.

Thanks to banner blindness, revised users avoid ads on both desktop and mobile, so publishers would do well to avoid using banners that look like ads. Banners too can be placed randomly on a website. Displayed in fixed dimensions, given a fixed color, and a certain position on a web page, they can start becoming repetitive. There are several reasons for banner blindness. 

What causes Banner Blindness

One of the most prominent reasons is that visitors to a webpage are already on a mission, to find out the content they want. This is why they don’t particularly need a banner to tell them where to go. Another reason is the informational scent. People usually don’t read the entire banner, rather they tend to skim through it for relevant information. The third reason is that readers are usually distracted by some other elements on the page. There are several other reasons as well. Some of the most important ones are – 

Location 

The location of a banner makes a big difference because users sometimes skip the banner part of a page. They are usually seasoned web browsers who have visited scores of websites that display banner ads. Users assume all website layouts are the same and hence become banner-blind. 

Ad Clutter 

A cluttered web page, full of banner ads, pop-ups, texts, and external links often makes users lose focus. Excess ads cause a sensory overload, annoying visitors, who eventually learn to ignore these ads, concentrating solely on what they have visited the website for. 

Visual Style 

Ignoring ads is something users learn over time. They know how ads look and dodge them. Visitors know that typical ads look very different from the main website content. Whether it’s a banner ad or an inline ad, if the ad is of different font color, type, or has another background different from the host website, or has text embedded in the image, users classify these as useless ads, skipping them entirely. It doesn’t even matter if your ad is useful or not. It just won’t be seen.

Perceived Usefulness 

Displaying your ads to the wrong audience would be a waste because ads that are irrelevant will be classified as annoying and boring. User responsiveness is related to personalization. 

Ads Harm Other Elements Too 

Ads cause other elements of the page to be ignored too because they are placed on the same part of the screen as ads. These cause people to skip these, mistaking them for banner ads. Banners are quite problematic for advertisers. There are a few ways to avoid banner blindness and grab a user’s attention. Some of them are enumerated below. 

Stop Making Content Resemble Ads 

Ad content is quite different from the rest of the page. You should ensure the same, choosing the color, font, background, and overall style carefully, to ensure your content is distinct from the banner ads on the page. 

Testing Different Sizes and Locations 

Banner ads are located in 728×90 leaderboards, and 300×250 rectangles, placed on the right side of the content. These always do not work, and checking out unconventional locations and sizes to grab your visitor’s attention can get you a better Click Through Rate. 

An Eye-Catching Design 

A poorly-designed ad can be annoying, while a well-designed ad can help you. Ads must be simple in design, with elements placed from the most important to the least. This applies to the font as well. Try playing with font and element sizes, make some elements larger to highlight them.

A Good CTA 

The message of the ad matters. A question needs an answer. While writing your ad’s copy, ask yourself what you want to achieve with this ad. The CTA should clearly convey the message. A successful CTA should guide users, prompting them to take action. 

3 Dimensional Photo Ads 

3D ads are interactive, with objects like product images in the display area. Users can spin, move or even customize the product images in real-time. 3D banners convert more than flat banner ads.

Implement Native Ads 

Text ads in social feeds, graphic ads within mobile apps, or short video ads that play in the middle of TV series episodes, native ads are seen more than traditional banner ads, resulting in higher viewability – a must for successful ad campaigns. 

Follow the F Pattern 

According to web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen, page visitors often tend to scan websites in an F-shaped pattern, meaning they start scanning the page from the top left to the right. Keep this in mind, while placing your ads on a particular web page. 

Invest in Video Ads 

Net users find videos more engaging than texts. Invest in video ads, and don’t forget to run these on FB and YouTube, for wider engagement. Keep commercial videos under a minute. While you can use longer videos, they should have a strong storyline. Make sure the video quality is top-notch, before release. Read our blog on video ads to know more. 

Keep Testing 

To avoid banner blindness, always keep testing different versions of ads to see which works the best. USe A/B testing to see which ad receives high engagement if you want to battle banner blindness. 

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, while banner blindness might be quite a menace for advertisers, there are quite a few workaround methods. Users tend to ignore ads, finding them irksome and annoying. However, using the above tips might help you bag more customers via digital advertising. Remember, it is incessant advertising that caused banner blindness in the first place, so it would be prudent to put some best practices in the palace to avoid ad fatigue and the resultant banner blindness. Read our blog on striking the right balance between ads and user experience, to ensure a smooth browsing experience for your customers. 

The post How To Reduce Banner Blindness? first appeared on Publir.