The January Slump isn’t a new phenomenon; it’s a seasonal trend that we’ve seen repeat yearly. Advertisers cut back on spending, and publishers lose out on ad revenue. The drop is drastic for a few publishers and it isn’t always to tide over this time. Today, we will explore the different measures that app and web publishers can take to soften the blow of the Jan Slump.
We are sure you’ve searched for suggestions several times and come across a ton of advice. While we will cover those towards the end, let’s focus on the top-priority ones you must do immediately.
Top Suggestions to Mitigate the Jan Slump
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PMP and PG deals
Private Marketplace (PMP) and Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) can be used strategically by publishers to mitigate the January slump. Publishers working with ad monetization platforms should look at the PMP model to offer their premium inventory. This way, publishers can offer their premium inventory at higher prices to select advertisers. These prices are usually higher than the open auction. Whereas, for PG deals, an advertiser commits to buying a fixed amount of inventory at a fixed price giving publishers some predictable ad revenue in the month of Jan.
Publishers suffering from the Jan slump can look at attracting advertisers in their niche who are willing to pay the premium to secure high quality ad slots. Doing PMP and PG deals will help publishers build better relationships with advertisers. With better relationships, publishers can offer their inventory in Q4 of the previous year at better prices to these advertisers. With PMP and PG commitments, a publisher can secure their premium inventory and reduce the risk of unsold inventory.
We would suggest publishers scout for PMP and PG deals in Q4 and lock them in place. Bundling a mix of inventory is sure to attract advertisers for such deals. Work with a ad monetization that understands your niche and matches you with the right advertisers. Not sure where to start? Yieldmonk can help. Contact us.
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Diversify Ad Revenue
Diversifying your ad revenue will help you soften the impact of the January slump. While publishers enjoy the best CPMs on display in December, it takes a massive hit in January. Reducing the share of display advertising in your ad mix and substituting it with video ads and Native ads can benefit your ad revenue. Publishers with an active newsletter should also add newsletter ads into the mix. These newsletter ads can be programmatic or sponsored in nature.
If you want to open up the taps for ad revenue, consider expanding beyond traditional ad networks and running ads to reduce the risk of unsold inventory. App and Web publishers can create ad bundles creating a mix of display, video, native, and newsletter ads to make it appealing for advertisers.
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Floor Price Optimization
Floor Price optimization can help publishers toi protect their ad revenue. As CPMs drop in January, setting a floor price ensures publishers get a minimum amount for their ad space. Publishers must find the right balance for the floor price. Setting it to low will undervalue your inventory, and setting it high can lead to lower fill rates. You can look at historical data to get insights on average bids and market trends. A floor price can be set based on this data to find the right balance. If you are struggling to find the right balance for your floor price, yield maximization platforms such as Yieldmonk can optimize the pricing for your app or web inventory.
Floor price optimization is not a one-time process and needs to be repeated on multiple instances to ensure that the best floor pricing is in place for your inventory. Keeping a close eye on fill rates will give you an idea if the floor price you’ve set is too low or too high.
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Optimize ad sizes to capture high-volume ads
January demands publishers to be flexible to generate ad revenue. Publishers should look at ad sizes that have demand and optimize their layout to accommodate them. This way they would be able to serve the demand for certain ad sizes that are higher in the month of Jan. By making adjustment to their layout for these ads, and adding them above the fold for higher visibility, publishers will be able to reduce the impact of the slump.
Other Common Solutions to Implement
1) Ad Refresh
While a lot of ad monetization platforms recommend Ad Refresh, we suggest to use it with carefully. Ad refresh allows you to display multiple ads to the user on the same page. Since the ad is refreshed while the user is on the page it is best to use it on pages with high engagement. We advise publishers to identify high traffic pages with evergreen content to run ad refresh.
Another good practice is to have frequency capping in place. Refreshing ads too often will leave readers with a poor user experience. Also ensure that the ad refresh is being carried out on ad slots that are in the viewport. Refreshing ads that are not visible would be a futile effort.
2) Drive Traffic
Publishers don’t have control over CPMs, however they can influence the views they generate. We recommend publishers to drive traffic to their high-value pages. This can be done by using email newsletters, push notifications, and social media. By having more eyeballs on their pages, fairly decent ad revenue can be generated.
3) Write More Qualtiy Content
Good quality content has always been a great hook to bring in the audience. During Jan, publishers should look at creating more thought-provoking, engaging content. Readers spend more time on such content pieces and are likely to share it, driving more traffic. Picking on trendy topics in Jan, or writing opinion pieces on them is a great way to showcase your expertise in the domain while pulling in the audience.
These are some of our tips for publishers to tide over the January slump. While some measures are easy to implement, others need some tweaking from time to time. Yieldmonk can help you through this slump while you focus on creating quality content and apps for your audience.
