Considerations for suitable ad placements
                     Considerations for suitable ad placements
Watson F
Writes on ad managing using ad server solutions, 
involved with Adspeed ad server software.
Ad placements are simply spaces available for ad serving. Advertisers often 
have specific preferences where their ads should appear. It could be on the 
right sidebar placement of your web page or on a specific section of the 
website. Similarly, ad placements on mobile apps also have different levels 
of appeal depending on their locations. As a publisher, you want to offer 
your advertisers with a good selection of ad placements to satisfy their 
demands and preferences. With more ad placements, you increase your 
available advertising inventory and ad earnings. However, displaying ads 
everywhere will turn off your audience and so it is best to find and use only 
the best and most suitable ad placements.
Ads must not cover content
People come to your site or open your app to see content and access 
your services, not just to see ads. Advertising is important to you but it is 
certainly at a lower priority for your audience. Therefore, content must 
come first. Ads are side dishes. Ideally, they should complement and add 
values to the main content. If the publisher does not understand this 
order of importance, viewers will be overloaded with ads, cannot find 
what they are looking for and quickly leave the page.
Ad placements should be distinguishable from content
Different people will respond differently to ads. Some people will click on text 
link ads, some will click on banner ads and some will watch your videos with 
ads. Therefore, it is a good idea to use a mix of different ad formats, such as 
text links, banners, video ads to maximize the impact from online advertising. 
However, it is a bad tactic to make ads look too much like real content. 
People do not want to be tricked and often harbor a very negative judgement 
if they find out that is the case. Social media usage is ubiquitous so it is easy 
to publish and share ratings, reviews. Users should not be confused between 
ads and content. Ad placements should have a distinctive look and feel. 
Spacing between ads and other elements should be sufficient to prevent 
accidental tapping or clicking. Proper disclosures must accompany sponsored 
content. Native ads, if displayed within the same content area, should have a 
disclosure heading or link.
Ads should be monitored regularly and tested properly
A suitable ad placement does not just look good on the site by fitting in 
with other surrounding design elements, it also yields better than 
average ad performance. You should monitor ad impressions, clicks, 
CTRs, conversions and viewability rates of all ads linked to each 
placement. These numbers form a trend and any significant deviation 
warrants a deeper investigation. If an ad placement does not produce 
acceptable results over time across multiple ad campaigns, it is a good 
idea to re-evaluate if you should make any improvement and change. 
When you make changes or move an ad placement, you should test the 
new site on a selected group of audience. At the simplest level, you can 
randomly display two versions of the same site and compare ad 
performance results.
Additionally, different devices, screen sizes, resolutions and Internet connection speed 
also have effects on the ad placements. Generally, ads below-the-fold will be less 
effective than ads above-the-fold. Therefore, above-the-fold ad placements are more 
premium and their pricing should reflect that factor.
In conclusion, if you want to build a sustainable and long-term business, creating a 
positive user experience is very important because it attracts first-time visitors and 
retains recurring viewers. To do that, you need to have a balance between monetization 
and value from your content and other services. It does not make sense to serve a boat 
load of irrelevant ads on every web page. If you have high quality content, placing a 
suitable number of relevant ads near or next to it will be beneficial to both your audience 
and to your bottom line.
About Adspeed
AdSpeed ad server is a reliable & powerful ad serving and ad 
management solution that serves your ads, tracks impressions & clicks 
and reports ad statistics in real-time. Driven by the latest ad serving 
technologies, the goal of Adspeed adserver is to provide a reliable 
platform that can help in executing online advertising strategy more 
efficiently. 
Thank you for spending your precious time in reading this article.