Use exchange networks
Exchange networks are systems in which site owners change ads. The webmaster places advertising banners for related sites, and other network members do the same for him. Thus, the participants of the exchange network transfer traffic and mutually increase traffic. For example, in some networks, on the banner advertising exchange RotaBan.ru, you can buy additional displays of your banners.
Working with exchange networks is attractive because a hot audience comes from there, interested in content on a specific topic. For example, motorists will be interested in advertising and auto products, services, and service stations. Such visitors will regularly return to the site and improve its statistics, and this will increase CTR (the ratio of views to clicks on the banner).
There are also mobile banner networks focused on displaying ads from smartphones and tablets. For information resources, this is especially true – in 2020, about 60% of news sites’ traffic came from mobile devices.
Opt-out of native ads
Time on the site is the webmaster’s gold, so stop using native ads. Yes, this format brings good profit, but it has a negative side effect, because of which you risk losing much more in the long run – such ads take users to third-party resources.
Good native advertising will interest users, and they will follow the affiliate link and increase the bounce rate. And if you publish “native” a lot and without a sense of proportion, readers may be disappointed in the resource. The apparent consequence of the outflow of visitors will be the collapse of positions in the search results. A drop in traffic and time on the site signals the search robot to pessimize the site. As a result, advertising revenue will also fall.
Opt-out of video ads if your users are from the provinces
The composition of the audience directly affects the advertising format. There is an opinion that it is more profitable to place expensive advertising – especially videos – to get more profit. But you can’t be guided by price alone.
For example, if you sell goods for rural residents – and a significant part of the audience is made up of people who save on the Internet or live in areas with poor network coverage – you will not be able to upload “more expensive videos.”
The site’s loading speed for such users will be slow, and some elements will not load at all. Placing a video banner will cause users to abort the download and leave the site. Instead of growing advertising revenue, you risk getting nothing.
The conclusion is simple: before placing “heavy” formats, make sure that the audience has enough power to process them—even a cursory analysis using Yandex. Metrica will help to avoid such problems. If readers of an informational site live in remote regions, consider whether you will lose traffic by placing video ads.
Sell user data legally
If the site uses a registration model and collects information about users, you can earn significant income by selling data. For marketing research and advertising targeting, depersonalized data about site users is needed: age, gender, interests, region of residence.
Unique DMP platforms collect this information. Several data companies, such as Weborama and AIData, purchase segmented data from the media. After the conclusion of the contract, DMP provides the necessary software and tells how to use it.
Various payment models are possible: a percentage of DMP income, a one-time fixed amount, or regular payments. The cost of one user profile is an average of several rubles. This is a unique resource for news sites with high traffic that can be converted into money. So, the site owner can receive up to 20% of the revenue from the sale of data.
Stop endless scrolling
Another fashionable reception of information resources is the mechanism of infinite scrolling (Infinite scroll): such endless tapes in the media. Thanks to them, the user can scroll the page, receiving a stream of new content.
An ad creative that appears in the feed for too short a time will not be counted as an impression. Visitors will scroll through the content, and the webmaster will not receive a single ruble for it.
Endless scrolling overloads the site. It increases the loading time, which, together with an increase in bounces, can lead to a drop in positions in the issuance of Yandex and Google. Site navigation, analytical services, and user experience become more complicated. The downsides outweigh the benefits.
Monetize Images
Endless scrolling overloads the site, and it increases the loading time, which, together with an increase in bounces, can lead to a drop in positions in the issuance of Yandex and Google.
Site navigation, analytical services, and user experience become more complicated. The downsides outweigh the benefits.
For example, the LensAI service allows you to analyze pictures and videos posted on website pages and place interactive advertising banners directly on them. The program “attaches” advertising to an image or a separate part. For example, the script can place a pop-up banner advertising a sportswear brand if one of the people in the photo is wearing a jacket.
Such ads do not take up space on the rest of the page. Traditional banners and videos can still be placed there.
Put interstitial banner ads instead of fullscreen
Fullscreen banners are the kings of advertising. Seeing the canvas in full screen, I want to close the site and not return. And almost everyone thinks so. And an increase in the number of failures, as we know, will lead to negative consequences – up to assimilation into search engines.
The interstitial banner is a more elegant tool, and it is attached not to a place on the site but to a link to go to another site page. When pressed, a splash screen that lasts a few seconds opens. As soon as the ad display ends, a redirect occurs, and the user clicks on the link.
The psychological effect comes into play: the user expects some delay in the transition and experiences more minor discomfort when they see such an advertisement.
Skip Turbo Pages
We have already talked about page loading speed as one of the important SEO metrics. In this regard, Yandex turbo pages and Google AMP pages have become an easy and obvious way out for SEO specialists, but not for web admins.
Turbo pages are lightweight versions of a site from search engines. They have a typical design and structure, almost no “heavy” content, and the page loads as quickly as possible. The number of advertising spaces is also limited – usually, 2-3 banners are placed on a turbo page and even those without any special design frills.
Using turbo pages, the site owner will gain in loading speed but will lose the amount of content posted. With specific content without any external “zest,” it will be harder to form a core of loyal users ready to watch ads. Fast loading is not worth the sacrifice.
Not all ways to download an information resource are listed here. But even they are enough to complement the monetization strategy and get a field for experimentation for the whole of next year. Try, test, and compare forecasts with analytics. And then, the news resource will respond with traffic and additional income.