Blog
Ad Blocking is a big fear of the digital advertising industry and while anecdotally reserved for techies and gamers, more and more people are blocking ads, though far fewer than expected. For the second year in a row, eMarketer has downgraded its estimates of the adblocking population in France, Germany, the UK, and the US.
In these uncertain times, Google made its stance on third-party cookies very clear. The announcement was made in February 2020 to phase out the use of third-party cookies within the Chrome browser by 2022. This brings Google Chrome, by far the world’s most popular internet browser used by about 63% of internet users across mobile and desktop, up to speed with Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox, which represent about 19%. After both GDPR and CCPA forced publishers to rethink consent, the cookie is now a key issue. Privacy concerns have been the biggest driver for change within the industry, now the battle is around anonymity and what that really means. To clarify, the commodity here is internet users’ cookie IDs. Let’s look at what the future of the cookie looks like and what this means for publishers and advertisers.
Recently, facing pressure from regulators, Google finally unveiled its buy-side and sell-side pricing policies. The numbers were shared in two separate blog posts, detailing the cut the company takes from both publishers and advertisers when transactions occur within its ecosystem. Fees across google’s ecosystem It’s no secret that Google charges the vast majority of advertisers based on their objectives (cost-per-action – e.g. a click, filling out a form, etc.). Publishers on the other hand are paid on a CPM basis, which is achieved by evaluating the potential of each impression and then converting it into a bid. Essentially, Google’s algorithm determines how likely it is for a particular impression (user) to meet the advertiser’s objective, and then assigns a CPM price to it. Obviously, there’s a lot of “converting” happening on the backend and results vary all the time. On average, however, Google says that publishers receive 69% of what advertisers pay for programmatic ads. How is that broken down? Here’s an example of how $100 ad dollars are distributed within the ecosystem: Google Ads charges advertisers 14%, which leaves us with $86. Then, Google Ad Manager takes a further 20% cut from publishers ($17), leaving them with $69. Source: Google Ad Manager When it comes to Display & Video 360 (Google’s enterprise solution for big brands), the end result is exactly the same, but on average, advertisers pay $13, while $18 are taken from the publisher’s side. There’s one thing in the blog post though that definitely catches your…
What is header bidding? Header Bidding is an advanced programmatic strategy that allows publishers to sell their website inventory for several ad exchanges simultaneously before making calls to their ad servers. It is also known as advanced bidding or pre-bidding technology. Header bidding is a special type of programmatic auction and probably the most important monetization method in digital publishing today. When it comes to advertising technology, there have been countless developments over the years and if you run a Google search you’ll probably find that this is one of the most frequently discussed ones. Put simply, header bidding enables multiple advertisers to bid for an impression at the same time, instead of sequentially, helping to increase competition, fill, and ultimately revenue. Header bidding is technologically quite complex, so webmasters with limited coding expertise can have difficulties with both understanding and implementing the concept. While all the resources available are definitely helpful, publishers are more often than not left confused rather than informed. Let’s break it down.
The Future of AMP – Further expansion in 2020 It’s business as usual with Google as we approach the end of the year, even though there have been a lot of recent changes that have caught everyone in the industry off guard. Looks like user experience is still a top priority for the company going forward, as shown by their latest updates overall. It’s clear that the tech giant is steady on the path to simplify a lot of the mechanics used by digital businesses, aiming to establish good practises and create user-first experiences across the board. In retrospect, perhaps the biggest move in that direction was the release of Accelerated Mobile Pages a few years back. So, with the same trend likely to continue into 2020 and beyond, we thought an updated guide on AMP was due.
On May 4th, Google announced its second for this year major algorithm update. It has been rolling out for almost two weeks now, and by the end of this week the so-called ‘May 2020 Core Update’ should fully be released globally. Similar to the previous Google January 2020 Core Update, it’s a large change to the search engine’s algorithm that already has a big impact on a lot of sites out there. Our observations so far are that this broad core algorithm update resulted in a highly visible effect across search results worldwide. That is why the timing Google chose to roll out its update was harshly criticized by many website owners and SEO experts around the globe. Due to the current pandemic situation, it’s been already tough enough for online businesses to sustain. Let alone, dealing with traffic drops, which for many led to a decline in sales and revenue loss. Let have a look at some more detailed information on the May 2020 Update and what the digital publishing industry should expect from it. How has the Google algorithm changed? It has become a tradition for Google to announce its core updates, however, the policy is to not reveal what exactly has changed in the search algorithm and how it will affect the search rankings. Shortly after the update was announced, John Mueller, the Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google was asked on Twitter to provide more details about the May update. His statement was frank and referring…
What are Ad Sense Auto Ads? AdSense auto ads are a Google feature that uses machine learning to automatically make decisions on ad placement and monetization. Essentially, this enables Google AdSense to inject ads into your site only if the ads are likely to perform well. Auto ads can be used alongside traditional ad placements that you have implemented, so it is not a case of one or the other.
Programmatic advertising has revolutionized the scale at which digital publishers can sell their inventory. With scale, comes efficiency and that’s where Header bidding has really come to the fore. In 2019, the share of Global publishers using a Header bidding wrapper reached over 75%, officially overtaking waterfall as the strategy of choice.
We live in an era that is rich in information, so much so, that we are even spoilt for choice in how we choose to consume it. The challenge for digital publishers is deciding the best platform to present content bearing in mind how users’ habits have changed. There used to be a time not so long ago where the media and the general public were both figuring out the internet. Online became a new place where physical, printed media was replicated onto the world wide web. This was how traditional publishers could tap into their readers’ initial new habits by providing their content online. Very quickly, these now online publishers realized that their traditional readers were evolving. Over the years, as physical turned digital, readers became website visitors. With the advent of new ways to engage their audience, these visitors then became users.