If you have ever advertised on your mobile or web property, you would know that getting people to click on (or interact with) your ad is quite challenging. And this is true for all formats of advertising including non-digital. Advertising in general assumed to be intrusive and taking the user away from his/her primary purpose although it’s not always true.
So, the challenge is how to get your users to click more often on the ads appearing on your mobile property. More users clicking on the ads would primarily mean more advertising money for you.
The metric that one uses to track the performance of ads in attracting users to click these is called CTR or Click through Rate. In simple words, this calculates the number of clicks on ads for every 100 ad impressions. So a CTR of 0.5% would mean that out of, say 1000 times an ad is shown to users; you would get 5 clicks on the ads.
It’s no brainer that every mobile site owner and app developer would want to have high CTR for the ads appearing on their mobile properties; but it’s easier said than done. There are several factors that drive the CTR on a mobile property. It’s good to know the factors and understand how to use it to your advantage.
Let’s begin with understanding what can be considered a good CTR. Some may want to have 100% CTR, i.e. every ad displayed to a user gets a click. But in reality that never happens. Users come to your site or app with a primary purpose of consuming & interacting with the content or feature you have provided. They may also click on an ad if they find it relevant or interesting to them. In general CTR of 0.4%-1.5% can be considered to a good CTR on a mobile property. However it varies a lot depending on the type of content you have; number of ad slot one uses; frequency of ad impressions etc. CTRs are also known to lower in the News, Business apps/sites and high in the Entertainment, Music, Games apps/sites.
Below are some of the useful tips that may help you increase your CTR and thereby boost your revenue:
1. Number of Ad slots on the page
You may get tempted to increase the number of ad slots on the page to increase the ad impressions. But beyond a point more ad slots do more harm than good to your monetization strategy. First, the user may find it hard to browse through the content they want to consume; second it may spoil the look & feel of your site/app. This results in users completely avoiding the ads and they may even start switching to your competitor.
AdIQuity recommends its publishers to limit the number of ad slots on a page to ‘three’. In our research, we have found that this balances the monetization and user experience goals that one typically has. However if you have a page that scrolls many folds, you can have the luxury to include few more ad slots.
2. Location of ad slots
The location of the ad slots plays a great role in improving the chances of it getting clicked. Typically the ads on the Top and close to navigational aids tend to have higher CTR. Also, ads close to rich content or at the end of articles typically get clicked more.
You may also want to avoid displaying ads right in the middle of content/feature consumption. This is especially true for Mobile Apps. Take a mobile game for example. Imagine you are right in the middle of playing yourself a nice game. While your sole focus is on the game, chances are you are not looking for any ads along the bottom of the app. In fact, even if an ad pops up on the screen and blocks your access to the game, chances are, all you are going to do is close the ad. However, if the same ad was shown in between different levels of the game, you suddenly improve the chances of it getting clicked. Further, if you have the control to display ads that are closely relevant to the game; the CTR could go up drastically.
3. Size of ad banners
Yes, the bigger is better for higher CTR. The bigger the ad is the better chance that it will be seen and hence clicked. Yet you should not forget about aesthetics. It’s highly recommended to not compromise the look of your Mobile app for a higher CTR. You don’t want to lose your visitors for a temporary jump in the CTR.
At AdIQuity, we offer various choices for your banner sizes and you can choose banner sizes according to the esthetics of your app/site.
4. Repetition
If you ask any marketer, they would prefer to show their ads to the same audience more than once. The users are more likely to accept a brand that they see more often than the other which they rarely see or hear about. In mobile advertising, this would mean showing the same ad (banner) to your users more than once. On the other side, if you show the same ad too often, you are losing an opportunity to show another banner that may be relevant to another set of users. Plus, your users may start to ignore an ad seen all the time. If you have control, you would want to keep a good balance between variety and frequency of ads displayed on your mobile properties.
Although not always possible, at AdIQuity, we make conscious efforts to keep this balance between variety and frequency helping you to maximize your advertising revenue.
5. Fill Rate
If you have an ad slot on your page / app, you may want to ensure that there is always an ad displayed there that is relevant to the audience. Fill rate by geography plays an important role here. For example if you are using an ad network that is operational in the India only. If someone downloads your app in Europe they may see an Indian ad that an ad that is completely irrelevant to them. This would result in much lower CTR. On the other side, if you networks chooses not to show an ad (if they don’t have any), this would mean lost opportunity to monetize your ad space. Higher fill rate from your ad network partners across geographies ensure that both your concerns are taken care of.
With an Ad Partner like AdIQuity, you can enjoy the fill rates of up-to 95% across multiple geographies. This is possible since AdIQuity works with over 80+ ad partners globally.
6. Make constant improvement
It is important to analyze the reports of ad performance on your site frequently. This allows you to take timely action and make necessary improvements. Further, you can also experiment with placements, sizes, formats and frequency and your ad network partners and evaluate them for better CTR & Fill rate.
The strategies mentioned above are by no means exhaustive. Hopefully we’ve given a good starting point to help you improve your CTR on mobile ads. We are sure Mobile publishers and developers across the world are constantly experimenting with several strategies to improve their CTR. We would love to hear back about your experiments and outcome and would be glad to highlight your findings with rest of the AdIQuity community with due credit.
Feel free to write back to us with any questions, comments or suggestions at support@adiquity.com.