What is fill rate in online advertising?

When using Propeller Ads to further increase the revenue of your website, understanding fill rate and its importance will give you a better understanding of how our ad network operates and how much you can earn.

In this article, we break down the definition of fill and internal and external factors that affect it.

What is fill rate?

Fill rate is the percentage of ads served based on the total number of page impressions.

For example, if you receive 1,000 page impressions where an ad-unit has been placed, and a total of 900 adverts were served per 1,000 impressions, your fill rate would be 90%.

Ads severed / total number of add opportunities = fill rate

A high fill rate generally increases a website’s eCPM and earning potential. As an online marketer, you should strive to obtain the highest fill rate possible.

How do I achieve a 100% fill rate?

It’s pretty much impossible to maintain a 100% fill rate, even if you do everything right. Webpages timing out, visitors leaving before the advert has had time to load, or network issues between you and the ad network can result in ads not being served.

There are a number of variables that affect a website’s fill rate, some of which you can control while others are out of your hands. These will be explained later in the article.

What is the industry standard fill rate?

The best way boost your website’s fill rate is to use a reputable advertising network that has a good reputation and a wide selection of publishers. Most ad networks promise a fill rate of 25-50% which is very low and extremely difficult to monetise.

This is usually because they have few publishers and too many advertisers. As a result, they create too much demand (advertisers) and not enough supply (publishers), which end up giving you the advertiser a low fill rate.

Propeller Ads offers all advertisers a near 100% fill rate (we can’t help website timeouts or visitors leaving before an advert is served), and have an enormous ad inventory to alway fill demand.

External factors that affect fill rate.

There are a number of factors outside your control that affect fill rate, they include:

Location of traffic – Our publishers place specific targeting options on their advertising campaigns to ensure they are shown to relevant prospects. For example, you may receive a website visitor from Ghana, but if no publishers are targeting prospects from Ghana, there could be a chance that no ad will be served.

In March 2015, the United States, New Zealand and England topped the list of popular countries publishers target according to Tip List Tips:

Device type – On average, publishers are more likely to serve adverts to users on a mobile device than desktop (and pay more too). Website visitors who use a Blackberry or Windows smartphone may be served fewer ads than traffic using iOS or Android platform, quite simply because they are less popular devices:

Source: Market Realist

You have no control over which devices traffic use to access your site, and publishers often target ads on more popular devices and web browsers.

Advertising networks – There are a number of advertising networks to pick from, with many having just a few publishers and campaigns. With few clients and limited daily budgets, smaller networks don’t have a large enough ad inventory to serve ads resulting in very low fill rates.

Internal factors that affect fill rate
There are a number of things you can do to increase your fill rate, they include:

Optimising website response times – To serve an advert, your website needs to send a request to the ad network with the visitor’s details for them to then serve the appropriate advert.

An optimised website speeds this process up and serves the advert before the visitor has clicked on a new page or left. There are a number of ways to improve the response time of a website from picking a great hosting plan, choosing the right theme and speeding up a website’s load time.

Ad blocking – Fill rate doesn’t take into account ad blocking software and can sometimes misrepresent your actual eCPM and fill rate. For example, if 50% of your traffic use ad blocking software, your fill rate may be close to 100% but your eCPM will be very low.

If you’ve experienced this in the past, it’s either because you picked an advertising network that don’t pay advertisers accordingly or your traffic were using ad blocking software.

To ensure ads are served and seen by traffic, use a program like Page Fair to combat against ad blockers.

Use common size ad-units – Placing the most frequently used banner ads by publishers increases your fill rate as there is more demand for such sizes. Typically, the most effective banner ads used by Propeller Ads publishers are:

• 300×250 (large rectangle)
• 728×90 (leaderboard)
• 468×60 (small leaderboard)
• 160×600 (horizontal leaderboard)

We have optimised all our ad-unit sizes to provide publishers and advertisers the best possible rate of return. You can learn more about ad-units and where to place them by reading our ad-unit best practices guide.

Using multiple Ad slots – Publishers often use a number of different ad sizes to get the most out of their campaigns. To maximise your fill rate and overall revenue, we recommend using a balanced banner selection. For example, if you place three large rectangle ad-units on your website, depending on ad inventory, only two of the three ad-units will serve ads (67% fill rate).

If you use one large rectangle, a small and large leaderboard, you potentially increase your fill rate to 100% as publishers often use multiple ad-units for their ad campaigns. This also provides users with a better ad experience than showing them the same ad over and over again.

Summary

When monetising a website using an advertising network, understanding fill rate is very important to find out your rate of return. The two biggest factors to increase fill rate and eCPM is to use an ad blocker and select a reputable advertising network that can guarantee a high fill rate.

Propeller Ads has one of the largest ad inventories in the world and continually provides publishers and advertisers with fill rates that are way beyond the industry standard.

Signup today for free and start earning money!

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Posted in: What is fill rate in online advertising?

Earn easily with Propeller Ads referral program

How does it work and how much can I earn?

Once approved as a Publisher you will have access to your personal Referral link in your dashboard.

When someone signs up as a Propeller Ads publisher and does so using your link, you will earn a 5% commission on all of his future revenue. This is a lifetime commission, which means you can keep growing a revenue by simply referring people to our network. Keeping track of your referral earnings through the dedicated Referral Program page couldn’t be simpler. An easy to setup and easy to earn new revenue stream that anyone can profit from. Below is the Publisher referral leaderboard from last month:

How do I effectively sell referral links?

There are a number of ways to attract users to Propeller Ads through your referral link. Here are some of the most common techniques that our top referrers use to great success:

• Friends and Co-Workers
  Chances are you have people that own websites. If so then they could be benefitting from one of our many monetization tools. Help them monetize their traffic with Propeller Ads and as they earn so will you.

• Banner or Text Links
  If you have a blog or a personal website, add one of our banner links (found in your Publisher’s account) and convert your website visitors into paying referrals. For the best results your site should be related to affiliate marketing, monetization, SEO, web development etc. The most prominent position of banner ads is above the fold, which means the space that is seen before any scrolling.

• Blog about Us
  If you own your own blog or video channel you could publish content about Propeller Ads. For example, post a positive review or a tutorial showing publishers how to maximize their income. Then just include your Referral Link in all clickable links within the article.

• Social Networks
  Social media is a powerful tool for collecting referrals. Write a post to your social network or tweet about your experience with us and some of your followers will be engaged.

• Use Your Communication Skills
  Forums, online communities, discussion groups and even blog comments are a great source of quality referrals. If someone asks about help or looking a way to monetize his online content, just share your experience. But don’t forget to read the community terms and ask permission before posting any referral link.

• Use Forum Signatures
  If you are an active member in an online community related to webmastering, development, affiliate marketing, SEO etc. – simply add your referral link to your signature and you can earn referrals with little to no effort.

• Use Email Signatures
  Just like the forum signature, add your referral link and a short description of Propeller Ads into your email signature so that you can potentially gain new referrals every time you hit send.

How to maximize your income?

1. Take advantage of understanding your local market
   There are thousands of potential publishers living in your country. They either don’t know about Propeller Ads or can’t start working with us due to the language barrier. Write an article or a review of our network in your native language to spread the word across popular communities in your country or city. If you’re proactive you can even contact website owners directly, but always come across as professional and friendly.

Propeller Ads is always looking for talented and motivated people to join the team by representing our network in the regional markets. If you’re interested, use the tickets at http://support.propellerads.com/ to tell us a bit about yourself and why you’d make a good addition.

2. Quantity is not always quality
   Don’t waste your time by trying to attract non-relevant audiences, or incentivize people to register. Even if you manage to get hundreds of registrations, most of those people never start working. Remember – you earn when they earn. Focus on finding targeted users who would be interested in our services – webmasters, developers, marketers etc.

2. Personalize your recommendations
   Don’t forget – the more your referrals earn, the more you earn. We recommend building personal relationships with your referrals by giving them advice and teaching them how to maximize their own revenue. Providing support and a personal touch will go a long way to building the trust needed for success.

Referral FAQ

Q: Are there any participation limits for the referral program?
A: There are absolutely no limits to the number of referrals you can sign up. However, be careful that you aren’t spamming. You cannot promote your referral links through unsolicited emailing.

Q: I told my friend to sign up for an account using my referral link, but he signed up the regular way. Can you add him as my referral?
A: Of course. Just ask him to contact our support team via a ticket and we’ll link his account as your referral.

If you have any other problems, questions or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us – we‘re here to help.

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Posted in: Earn easily with Propeller Ads referral program

We’ve launched a new Support Desk!

Providing you with the professional and reliable support is extremely important to us, that is why we have launched an exciting new support desk designed to allow us to be certain that each and every one of your questions is answered as quickly as possible.

The main features of the new Support Desk are:

1) Integrated Knowledge Base, where you can find answers to common questions regarding our services and illustrated step-by-step tutorials.

2) Completely new Ticketing System, with ability to track your requests statuses and history.

• Any existing ticket can be easily updated with additional information.
• Attachments are supported and can be uploaded with your request.
• Track your support request by clicking a targeted link in notification email.

We’d love to hear any feedback you may have regarding this new support system, so please do not hesitate to get in touch via Comments or our social profiles on Facebook and Twitter.

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Posted in: We’ve launched a new Support Desk!

Winter Nights Mobile Games Conference

15EventsDear Advertisers and Partners, we are happy to announce that you can meet us at the Winter Nights Mobile Games Conference, February 9-10, 2015 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

It is a great opportunity to explore the most innovative trends in mobile development and marketing.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!

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Posted in: Winter Nights Mobile Games Conference

Introducing Mobile Interstitial Ads!

We’re excited to announce the release of our latest ad format optimized for mobile display – Interstitial Ads.

Interstitial ads are full screen ads and one of our top performing ad units, generating the highest eCPMs across all GEOs and mobile devices. Our interstitial ads offer an opportunity to monetize your mobile visitors more effectively by matching the original website’s look and increasing user engagement. Unlike traditional banner ads, interstitials grab users’ attention and maintain high click-through and conversion rates.

  

Watch new format in action here using your iOS or Android device

Key benefits for publishers:

• Full ad coverage across all mobile devices, OS and GEOs;
• eCPM rates are 3 times higher in comparison with traditional banners;
• Additional monetization opportunity non-conflicting with your existing ads (including AdSense!);
• Only quality and brand safe ads on your website;
• Easy to integrate ad tags;
• Work on websites that are not mobile-optimized.

How to get started with interstitial ads

1) Log in to your publishers account and click on the “Sites” tab.

2) Choose a site from the list of verified sites and click “Add New Channel”

If you need to add a new site, please refer our step-by-step guide for publishers

3) Choose the “Interstitial” format for Mobile Advertising and click the “Next” button.

4) Provide a name for this new channel (optional) and click the “Next” button.

5) Copy the ad channel code.

6) Paste the ad channel code in the source code of your website right below the opening <body> tag.

To view statistics for this ads use our filters.

Don’t miss the opportunity to maximize your website revenue with our newest monetization solution!

Key benefits for advertisers

Increase your ROI quickly with our mobile ads that boost your app installs!

• Excellent level of user engagement and click through
• Creative size 500×700 gives more room for your marketing message
• Instant reach of millions mobile users across the globe
• Advanced targeting opportunities (by GEO, day parting, by frequency capping, by OS, by device, by ad placement and site)

If you have any questions, please contact our support team or your account manager and we will gladly help you.

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Posted in: Introducing Mobile Interstitial Ads!

New banner ad formats: 800×600 and 800×440

In addition to the classic banners, we’ve launched two new formats – 800 x 600 and 800 x 440

These ads provides very good income for publishers, because large banners are more noticeable than the small banners and visitors are more likely to click them.

Here are some placement ideas:

• place 800х600 banner as a layer over the video player (for video streaming websites).
• if there is no player on page with video (for example, page contains only the links to videos), place 800х600 banner above the list of links to the movies or files.
• place 800х600 banner in a layer fading the content until ads is clicked or closed (you can use our turnkey layer code or your own scripts).

Bigger banners provide even more opportunities for advertisers to reach their audience:

• bigger formats mean bigger pictures and more room to show the product
• capture attention of the visitor through graphics and detailed text information
• get more visitors because of higher click through ratio

Don’t miss this opportunity!

 advertising, banner ads, mobile, monetization, new feature, new format

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Posted in: New banner ad formats: 800×600 and 800×440