One of the most pressing challenges for publishers and content creators is maximizing revenue through instream video ads.
Unfilled ad spaces, or “unsold inventory,” can lead to missed income opportunities, so improving your ad fill rate is crucial.
Follow this guide as it explains the ad fill rate, how to calculate it, why a low ad fill rate occurs, and how technology like JWP Connatix’s Dynamic Strategy Rules and Recommendations can significantly improve it.
Ad fill rate is the percentage of ad inventory successfully filled with ads. It measures how effectively you’re monetizing your available ad space.
Use this formula to calculate the ad fill rate:
For example, if you receive 100 ad requests and serve 80 ads, your ad fill rate would be 80%. A higher fill rate generally indicates better monetization and more revenue, while a low fill rate suggests that there is a significant amount of unsold ad inventory.
A low ad fill rate happens due to several factors:
Ad formats and placement Issues: If the ad formats you offer or the timing of your ads doesn’t align with advertiser preferences, fill rates may suffer.
Now that you are aware of the main reasons for a low ad fill rate, here are some strategies to help you effectively address these challenges:
One of the most powerful tools to improve ad fill rates is JWP Connatix’s Dynamic Strategy Rules. Activate alternative strategies to automatically adapt to situations where a pre-roll ad fails to load, or if a certain ad spot remains unfilled:
Dynamic Strategy Rules can transform empty ad spaces into potential revenue-generating opportunities while keeping a positive viewer experience.
Learn more about Dynamic Strategy Rules
To maximize ad fill rate, it’s crucial to keep viewers engaged across your platform, as engagement is directly correlated with ad opportunities. JWP Connatix’s Recommendations feature is a great solution for boosting engagement.
By offering personalized video recommendations based on user behavior and content traits, this feature significantly increases viewer retention, which, in turn, enhances ad fill rates.
For instance, Apartment Therapy, a leading lifestyle publisher, used Recommendations to more than double their plays in just one month, from 10M to 24M plays. This increase in plays led to a notable rise in ad revenue.
Additionally, Recommendations provides continuous video suggestions tailored to each viewer’s preferences, reducing bounce rates and increasing the chances that viewers will watch more ads.
A lack of video content in certain articles or sections of your site can lead to missed ad opportunities.
Article Matching can help you automatically insert relevant videos from your content library into articles, boosting the chances for ad fill. This automated system uses the article’s metadata to match the best videos from your library, which means every article that goes live will have video content ready to go, increasing the likelihood that ads will be filled.
Moreover, this approach increases the overall number of ad impressions by generating more video plays, ultimately raising the ad fill rate. This strategy also helps with engagement, encouraging viewers to stay on your platform longer and opening up more opportunities to serve ads.
Integrating Header Bidding into your monetization strategy can also help increase your ad fill rate. By allowing multiple demand sources to bid on your inventory in real time, header bidding creates competition for your ad space, leading to higher fill rates and potentially higher CPMs (cost per thousand impressions).
This means you’re more likely to fill all available ad spaces, especially if you’re targeting premium advertisers.
Optimize your content for all devices, including desktop, mobile, and OTT (over-the-top) apps to improve your ad fill rate.
JW Player’s real-time video analytics provide valuable insights into how your content performs across various devices. With these insights, you can adjust your strategy to focus on high-performing devices and platforms, improving both engagement and fill rate.
Increasing your ad fill rate is not just about filling empty spaces — it’s about creating a seamless, engaging experience for your audience while maximizing revenue opportunities.
By utilizing tools like Dynamic Strategy Rules, Recommendations, and Header Bidding, you can count on your ad inventory to be filled more efficiently and your viewers stay engaged for longer.
At JWP Connatix, we offer the advanced features and insights you need to drive higher ad fill rates and ultimately increase revenue. If you want to start optimizing your video monetization strategy and boosting your ad fill rate, contact us today to learn how our platform can help.