Maximizing Ad Network Revenue
There is an easy way to greatly increase your ad network revenue. I will explain in detail both the theory and implementation of putting ad networks in a ‘daisy-chain’ format. There are many ways of doing this, so you should play with the numbers a bit to see what works best for your site. After reading this article you should have a clear understanding of how daisy-chains work.
Introduction:
The first thing to understand when discussing a daisy-chain is, what the hell is it? The simplest way to put it is: a daisy-chain is a specific way of setting up multiple ad networks on one site to maximize revenue.
Theory:
Revenue is maximized by allowing ad networks to basically ‘fight’ over your impressions (pageviews). These ad networks are setup linearly from one to another. Let’s use Casale Media, ValueClick, and Google as our example networks (in that order). A person (let’s use the name Mike) comes to your website and instead of your one-and-only ad network serving Mike an ad for whatever ecpm (effective cost per thousand) it wants, your three ad networks decides which one is the best. What I mean by this is that your daisy-chain decides which ad network can serve Mike an ad for the highest ecpm and therefore serves Mike that ad. For example, Casale can serve the ad for .40 cents ecpm, ValueClick serves .60 cents, and Google can serve .45 cents. Mike will be passed from Casale to ValueClick, where ValueClick decides it will serve the ad at the highest ecpm.
Google is a little different however. Since Google is more of a marketplace, it has virtually unlimited advertisers. What this implies is that if Google were anywhere on the daisy-chain besides for last place, the daisy-chain would automatically end there because Google would have unlimited ads to serve. I wouldn’t worry too much about the specifics of this part, just remember that Google always has to come last on the daisy-chain.
Implementation:
Ok so here comes the fun part, implementation. Take whatever ad networks you like and attach them in the following way (Heres a list of ad networks). I am going to use Casale and Google as my choices because I am familiar with them. Go through all of the normal steps to sign-up for both ad networks. Now get the tags (code needed to see the ads on your site) from Casale and place them wherever you want on your web page. Now here is the part where you actually ‘connect’ the ad networks together. Get the same ad size tag from Google Adsense and copy the code. Within Casale (may be different for other networks) there is a button on the right side of each ad size that says ‘defaults.’ Click this button and it takes you to a page where you have to enter a few pieces of information (should be the same for every ad network). The 3 pieces of information you have to enter are: image URL, click URL, and creative HTML (Names may vary from ad network to ad network). The first two URL’s are there just in case someone has a very old browser (or javascripts diabled). This banner will appear if someone can’t see your ad. The important piece of information is the creative HTML. This is where you placed that piece of Google code that you copied before. Now that you are done with that, there will be an option in Casale’s site manager called ‘auto-approval.’ Within that there will be an option to set your minimum ecpm. This is a good place to set a static minimum ecpm, which should be Google’s maximum ecpm that it can serve. You may have to play around with these numbers to maximize ecpm and therefore maximize revenue.
Conclusion:
Now what will happen is that Casale will receive the impression and decide if it can serve your ad for higher than Google, if not it will pass the impression on to Google. And there you go! Your done! If you have any questions or my explanation doesn’t make as much sense as it did in my mind, feel free to comment or email me and I will get back to you asap.
Hope this provides a good explanation of what daisy-chaining is and the benefits of it.
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