In the ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising, programmatic advertising has become a powerful tool for brands aiming to reach the right audience at the right time. What are the advantages to designing programmatic-ready websites?
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This automated technology gives organisations the ability to buy and sell digital ad space in real time, using data to ensure ads are highly targeted and delivered to the most relevant users.
To fully leverage the potential of programmatic advertising, however, websites must be carefully designed to accommodate this technology. A programmatic-ready website enhances the efficiency of ad delivery and ensures a seamless and engaging user experience.
As the demand for programmatic advertising grows, ensuring your website is optimised for this sophisticated ecosystem is no longer optional—it’s essential for both revenue and user experience.
In this article, we’ll explore the best practices you should implement on designing programmatic-ready websites to enhance your business website’s ad performance, enabling you to maximise monetisation opportunities and provide an engaging and intuitive browsing experience for your users.
Use Industry Standard Frameworks
The industry-standard frameworks in programmatic advertising are essential for the smooth and safe integration between advertisers, publishers, and ad networks.
Key elements like ads.txt and app-ads.txt, for instance, help authenticate authorised sellers of ad inventory, reducing the risk of ad fraud and ensuring that the ad space is only sold through trusted channels.
Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) and Open Real-Time Bidding (OpenRTB) are also vital to the efficiency and efficacy of ad campaigns. The former ensures the seamless delivery of video ads while the latter facilitates real-time auctions for ad space.
For websites operating in markets, such as programmatic advertising in Singapore, adopting these standards becomes even more significant.
With both global and regional demand partners competing for ad space, implementing these frameworks can ensure your site is compatible with various Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), and ad networks that are part of the programmatic ecosystem.
This broadens your potential ad revenue streams while improving operational efficiency.
Optimise Ad Placement and Viewability
For programmatic advertising to be successful, the ads need to be visible to users. They must be positioned where they’re likely to be noticed, so you have to optimise your website’s ad placement strategy to maximise ad viewability while ensuring the ads aren’t disrupting the overall user experience.
Placing ads above the fold, which is the portion of the page visible without scrolling, is a common strategy to maximise viewability. This ensures that ads are seen by users as soon as they land on the page, enhancing the likelihood of interaction and improving revenue potential for advertisers.
Another location to consider is within the content itself. This is particularly effective for native ads, as these ads blend more naturally into the page’s content, offering users a less intrusive experience while maintaining high engagement levels.
Make sure to strike a balance between ad viewability and ad density, as too many ads on a page can lead to poor user experience and drive visitors away. To ensure ads are placed strategically, consider the flow of your website’s content and user interaction.
For example, place ads in areas where users naturally pause or engage with content, such as between sections of the article or at the end of a page. This approach helps to maintain a seamless browsing experience while optimising ad performance.
Implement a Responsive Design
As more users access websites through mobile devices, ensuring that your website is fully optimised for mobile responsiveness is essential. This ensures that your website’s content, including ads, is displayed correctly and easily accessible across all screen sizes, from smartphones to tablets, providing a seamless experience for mobile users.
To do this, you must implement fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries that allow your site’s layout and ad units to automatically adjust to the user’s screen size. Make sure that touch interactions are also considered, such as making buttons and clickable areas larger, allowing users to easily engage with ads and content.
Moreover, test your website across multiple devices and screen sizes. This way, you can check if the ads display properly on all platforms and make timely adjustments, if necessary. This can lead to a better user experience and maximised ad performance.
Prioritise Speed and Performance
Programmatic advertising relies on real-time bidding, meaning that ads are auctioned and served to the most relevant user in real time, based on factors like browsing behaviour, demographics, and location.
This happens all within a fraction of a second, thus, the speed at which your website loads can directly impact the performance of the ads being served.
Slow-loading pages can result in higher bounce rates and reduced ad viewability, ultimately diminishing the effectiveness of your programmatic campaigns. They can also reduce your website’s potential for income, as advertisers may be less willing to bid for ad space that fails to load quickly or display their ads properly.
That said, optimising your website’s speed and performance is crucial to maintaining both a positive user experience and maximising ad revenue.
Strategies such as compressing images, minimising HTTP requests, and utilising Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can help reduce load times, ensuring that content and ads are delivered quickly and efficiently to users—regardless of their location or device.
Another solution is to implement the lazy loading of ads. This technique can help to improve page load times by ensuring that only the ads that are seen are loaded, optimising both user experience and ad performance.
With a fast-loading website, you can rest assured that your site will improve ad viewability, increasing the likelihood of higher bids in programmatic auctions.
Enable Data Collection and Analysis
The ability to gather, analyse, and leverage user data is crucial to the success of any advertising campaign. This particular data enables you to understand your audience better, personalise ads, and optimise the overall user experience, all of which are essential for improving ad performance and maximising revenue.
To make your website programmatic-ready, you need to implement tools that allow for comprehensive data collection. This includes integrating robust analytics platforms or other third-party tracking solutions to capture user behaviour, traffic sources, and interactions with your website’s content.
By understanding how users interact with your site, you can ensure that ads are placed in the most effective positions and are tailored to the right audience segments.
The Future on Designing Programmatic-Ready Websites
The future of digital advertising is undeniably programmatic, and making the appropriate design changes to your website is key to staying competitive.
Implementing these best practices enables you to create a seamless user experience that attracts more advertisers to your platform, ultimately driving increased revenue and solidifying your position in the programmatic ecosystem.
