Failure to succeed in increasing the size of the advertising inventory thanks to a natural growth in audience, leads to great temptation for publishers to multiply their impressions by using auto-refresh ads. This strategy can pay off if its effects are properly measured and adjusted. But if poorly managed, it can also penalise the publisher. Feedback on auto refresh ads.
For several weeks, we have been testing auto-refresh functionalities on several sites. Thanks to our A / B Testing solution for digital media, our team has configured automatic, remote refreshes on a small percentage of the advertising inventory. We then measured the positive and negative effects on the test group compared to the control group.
Configuring auto-refresh ads
In the test group, we set up auto-refresh ads according to several rules:
- Maximum number of refreshes per ad space
- Duration of display of each advertisement
- Viewability rate
- Active screen
What are the results of auto-refresh?
We have measured the impact of configuration changes on several sites in different contexts (cuisine, forum, news, games), by selecting the pages on which Internet users spend a lot of time.
Sometimes we see a negative impact: lower click-through rates, viewability rates and eCPM impressions. So the increase in the volume of impressions does not improve the Page RPM (advertising revenue per 1000 page views). On the contrary, the process can lower profitability per page. In addition, in the medium term, by degrading the user experience, the publisher may see its audience decline over time.
Performing auto-refresh requires an analysis of the KPIs in detail to find the right configuration for your media. At Opti Digital, we manage to take advantage of this very effectively because our dashboards give access to granular statistics on eCPM and Page RPM.
Recommendations for profitable auto-refresh ads
At Opti Digital, we have developed a unique solution to control the triggering of the auto-refresh in detail.
We configure the auto-refresh by device (computer, mobile), by page template and by location of the ads on the page.
We observe the results of any change in parameters and optimise them iteratively, until we obtain a satisfactory user experience and optimal performance for the publisher (Page RPM).
In conclusion, a system of global refreshing of ads on the whole advertising inventory does not add value and can have a negative impact on the user experience. On the other hand, with a granular and controlled configuration, we find the increase in revenue per thousand page views very interesting.
If you would like to test auto-refresh ads on your audience, contact us.
And you? Have you tried auto-refresh ads?
Do not hesitate to share the results of your tests with us in a comment.