Imagine this: You got your website’s monetization all set up and you’re ready to sell every impression you can generate, but did you know this might be more challenging than you think and not even ideal strategy-wise.? Why? Here’s where Fill Rate comes into the picture. It is one if the key metrics you should add to your repertoire to fully understand your website’s ad monetization. Let’s see what that is about.
What is Ad Fill Rate for a Publisher?
Ad Fill Rate is the ratio of ad requests to ads displayed. It’s one of your website’s performance indicators that plays a role in the big game of comprehending your ad monetization strategy success. Ad fill rate tells how often you fill your ad spaces with ads.
Several factors can impact this metric. For instance, in programmatic advertising, ad inventory is sold through an auction process so the buyers and sellers need to come to an agreement. If they don’t reach an agreement for those impressions it can go unsold. However, other factors such as floor price, demand fluctuations, and website performance can also determine how succesfully your ad inventory is monetized.
Fill rate is a metric that’s important for publishers because it helps them understand how effectively the ads are being displayed on their website.
How do you calculate your ad Fill Rate?
You can calculate your ad fill rate by taking the number of ad impressions and dividing it by the number of ad requests. The resulting percentage shows the frequency with which we successfully fill ad units with ads.
The fill rate calculation magical formula is:
(Total number of ad impressions/total number of ad requests) x 100
Picture this: Your site made 50,000 ad requests, but you got 40,000 ad impressions. If you put this into the ad fill rate formula:
(40,000/50,000) x 100 = 80%
This means you got an ad fill rate of 80%. This 80% is the percentage of ad requests that are filled on your website.
Quick tip: If you are a Refinery89 Publisher you can get this metric delivered to you on a silver platter by checking your Dashboard. In the revenue section of your Dashboard, you’ll find your ad fill rate percentage along with a full breakdown of your most valuable metrics.
Is it possible to get a 100% Fill Rate?
You could try but it isn’t an easy task to achieve. In fact, a 100% fill rate might not even be the best idea for you because it could mean that your CPM aussi is too low. This is the amount of money advertisers are willing to spend on your website per thousand impressions. If your CPM is too low you could also wind up with poor quality ads on your site. Do you really want that?
Here’s where floor price comes in. Floor price is the auction price for your ads spaces. This means that during the bidding process, only those who are willing to pay above the minimum price you set, will be able to place their ads on your website. If you have a low floor price, you get a lower CPM, and therefore a higher fill rate. On the other hand, if you set a high floor price you might get a higher CPM, but a lower fill rate. Just as life, it is about finding the right balance.
It’s important to find the sweet spot between Fill Rate and CPM for the best ad revenue you can get. According to our experts at Refinery89, you should aim to have an ad fill rate of 80% or more to meet the benchmarks.
What causes low Fill Rate?
Latency
What’s more frustrating than a website taking ages to load? In your case, as a publisher, it’s losing ad revenue because of it. Yup. During the bidding process in programmatic advertising there is a timeout for the auctions to happen, so if your site is slow with loading you at risk of reaching the timeout limits. When the timeout is reached the auction process is halted and left uncompleted.
To avoid latency issues, keep track of your LCP score, one of the Core Web Vitals. It helps you make sure things are running smoothly on your site. To monitor your loading time, you can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to get a report on your website’s performance and some tips on what you can do to improve it.
Ad Blockers
Ad Blockers, one of the true public enemies for people working in advertising. These tools prevent ads from being displayed on users’ devices while they browse online, either by blocking ad requests entirely or by filtering responses from ad servers. This can impact publishers’ fill rates and overall revenue, as fewer ads are successfully loaded and viewed.
Unadjusted Floor Price according to the seasonal trends
As we mentioned earlier in this article, the floor price is the minimum auction price you establish for your ads spaces on the SSP via the bid request. This means that during the bid, only those who are willing to pay above your set minimum price, will be the ones selected to place their ads on your webpage. Having a high floor price when the demand is low, can lead to not being able to fill the ad unit because there are not enough ad networks to fill that ad request. This issue can easily be solved by adjusting your floor price according to the seasonality trends and the amount of demand you have.
Lack of demand
CPM fluctuates all year round because of changes in the demand for ad space. There are times in the year that there is not that much demand for ad space, so it’s typical that in these cases there are not enough opportunities to fill the ad requests. If you want to know more about this and how to tackle the changes in the demand, take a look at this article with everything you need to know to understand CPM seasonality.
Technical Issues
Sometimes, unexpected things happen. Displaying ads on a site requires the use of multiple technologies working at the same time in a span of less than a second. It’s normal that technical issues that could stop an ad from being displayed might occur in the process. If you are a Refinery89 Publisher, there’s no need to sweat over this. Our team is always carefully keeping watch of your site to tackle issues as quickly as possible. Also, you can count on them for instant support when you need it!
How can you improve your Ad Fill Rate?
First things first, understand your Ad Fill Rate
It all starts with doing the correct data analysis. Be aware of what your current Ad Fill Rate is (here’s where the formular we shared earlier comes handy or check your notre tableau de bord éditeur), understand its value in relation to your CPM and evaluate RPM. Only then can you choose what can or needs to be done to optimize your Fill Rate.
Use Header Bidding technology
Cool publishers that are up to date with the trends use Header Bidding Technology these days to optimize their ad monetization. It’s the most efficient way to sell your ad inventory. This is thanks to Real-Time-Bidding system, ad networks bid at the same time and the requests are filled much quicker.
You can count on Refinery89 Header Bidding solution to help you improve your ad fill rate. By having access to a higher number of premium demand sources that bid on your ad at the same time, the better the chances your ad unit’s requests are filled with quality ads.
Optimize your ad placement
Being mindful about ad placement goes a long way. Placing ads in those hotspots of your website that guarantee a better viewability. This can help you improve your fill rate cause they get a better ad viewability, which translates to more impressions. Check out these ad placement strategies from our AdOps expert to turn to odds in your favor.
Expand your ad format range
Be open to having multiple formats publicitaires, on your website. This allows you to grant access to more demand sources to participate for your ad space. Also, some ad formats are easier to adapt to different ad placements to there are more chances to get those units filled. By offering more options, you increase opportunities for advertisers to display ads on your site. Here are some ad ideas of high-value ad formats you could include that’ll also give your CPM a boost!
Need help getting a better fill rate?
Of course, we can’t write a whole article explaining ad fill rate and letting you leave empty handed without an easy-to-use solution to boost your ad results.
Reach out us at Refinery89 to maximize your ad strategy with our full stack ad monetization solution. With our Single Tag you can access multiple premium demand sources through our header bidding system. Unlock the best results! On top of this, we’ll implement the best ad placement practices to optimize your ad unit positioning and boost your ad results (including your ad fill rate!).
