How to Increase the Ad Fill Rate – A Guide for Publishers

The ad fill rate is one of those key metrics in video advertising that can make or break your revenue stats. If your fill rate isn’t living up to your expectations, you may want to rethink your strategy. In this guide, I’ll walk you through some practical steps you can take to boost your fill rate (and your revenue!).

What Is an Ad Fill Rate and How Is It Calculated

Let’s start with the basics – an ad fill rate is the ratio of ads served on a publisher’s website or app to the number of total ad requests made. 

The formula for calculating ad fill rates is pretty simple:

Here’s a quick example: let’s say your website makes 1,000 ad requests in a day. Out of those, around 800 requests actually receive an ad in return. Following the formula above, you can calculate that your fill rate is 80%. 

What Is a Low Fill Rate?

Calculating the fill rate is one thing, but understanding what that percentage actually means for your website is something else. In the example above, should the publisher be satisfied with the 80% rate?

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer (an even simpler answer is – probably yes). The “ideal” fill rate will depend on many factors, including the size and makeup of your audience, the type of ads you want to serve, the demand sources you’re working with, and so on.

As a general guideline, a fill rate of less than 50% should be cause for concern, regardless of the factors I mentioned above. If your rate falls somewhere between 50-75%, there are likely some things you can do to improve it, but you’re not losing out on too much revenue. Ideally, you should shoot for somewhere between 75 and 85%.

But wait, shouldn’t a 100% fill rate be the “ideal” scenario? Not exactly. Too high of a fill rate is usually an indicator that your price floors are too low. But more on that a little later.

Follow TargetVideo on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the industry!

Possible Reasons for Low Ad Fill Rates

As with most things in marketing, the world of ad fill rates can be a tad complicated. If your numbers are low, there can be many different (and sometimes multiple) potential causes to look at. Here are some of the most common culprits.

Poorly Optimized Price Floors

Poorly optimized price floors are behind a good portion of low fill rates. If your price floors are too high, the pool of advertisers willing to buy your ad inventory will be small. 

Keep in mind that this logic goes both ways – if your price floors are too low, you might end up serving ads with lower CPMs and cheating yourself out of valuable ad revenue.

High Supply, Low Demand

As with any market, supply and demand dictate the state of advertising to a large extent. The reasons behind this disbalance can be many, from seasonal slumps to a poor choice of ad networks. Niche industries with little internet traffic often experience this issue, too.

Website Latency

If your website takes a while to load, the user might scroll away before actually seeing the ad, and the impression won’t count. The best way to check if this is the case is by comparing the number of ads sent with the number of ad impressions. If there are comparably fewer impressions, that’s a clear indicator that the issue lies with the ad not loading.

User-Side Issues

The low ratio between ads sent and ads served can also be an indicator of other user-side issues. Ad blockers and browser filters are common culprits. Another potential problem might lie in the user’s internet speed. Their bandwidth might simply be too limited to load the ad in time.

Other Technical Issues

Of course, there are many other potential causes of your low fill rate. These can range from poorly configured ad servers to broken tags and more. If you’re having trouble identifying the issue, I recommend getting in touch with your customer success manager – they might be able to provide additional insight.

How to Improve Your Ad Fill Rate

Depending on the reason for low ad fill rates, there will be different actions you can take to remedy the issue. 

Dynamically Optimize Price Floors

Unfortunately, setting up price floors is time-consuming, to say the least. Since there is no universal optimal price floor, you will have to continuously follow and optimize.

Or – you can use an AI tool designed to automate this entire process. TargetVideo’s dynamic price floor optimizer uses machine learning to figure out the best price floors for your inventory. 

Manage Ad Blockers

The cat-and-mouse game between ad blockers and ad tech has been going on pretty much since the inception of digital advertising. Staying up-to-date with the latest anti-blocking technology is crucial for avoiding revenue losses.

Google’s SSAI solution, the Google Video Stitcher bypasses ad blockers by “stitching” the ad directly into the video stream.

Aside from SSAI, there are other things you can do to minimize revenue loss due to ad blockers. For instance, TargetVideo’s player customization options include the command to turn off autoplay if an ad blocker is present, minimizing the number of unfulfilled ad calls.

Improve Website Speed

Since a slow website is one potential cause for low fill rates, improving website speed is the logical answer. You can check the speed of your website (and diagnose the problem) using PageSpeed Insights. Typically, optimizing images and videos, minimizing the number of HTTP requests, limiting redirects and external scripts, and using effective third-party services should be enough to see some improvement.

Use the Call Ad Again Feature

TargetVideo’s Call Ad Again feature places an additional click-to-play pre-roll ad call after an autoplay ad call comes up empty. This boosts your chances of serving an ad for the same slot, potentially improving your fill rate.

Diversify Demand Sources

I’m sure you already know that relying on only one or two demand sources isn’t the best strategy for maximizing ad revenue. However, instead of expanding into more large demand providers, consider going local. If your target audience is limited to certain geographic regions, consider partnering with networks with a strong presence among advertisers in those regions. Bigger isn’t always better.

Manage Demand Sources

Of course, simply stacking your sources one on top of the other won’t typically do much. However, if you occasionally take a look at your source stack, prune the underperforming ones, and optimize the order of your ad calls, you stand a much better chance to fill your ad slot.

Experiment With Ad Placements & Formats

Not all inventory is made equal. Some ad formats and placements are bound to perform better than others. Typically, video ads are more engaging than images or text-based ads, while ATF placements grant higher viewability than BTF. Play around with your site’s layout to find the optimal combo. 

Optimize for Different Devices

According to Statista, almost 60% of all time spent online comes from mobile devices. Not optimizing your ad tech setup to serve mobile ads is bound to impact your fill rates negatively. Additionally, since different devices may get different fill rates, adjusting ad formats accordingly can help you make the most of each opportunity.

Implement Header Bidding

Header bidding allows multiple advertisers to bid for ad space simultaneously, increasing competition for your inventory and potentially boosting fill rates. It’s a straightforward way to maximize the value of each impression.

Boost Your Ad Fill Rates & Revenue With TargetVideo

TargetVideo specializes at helping publishers optimize their ad tech setups and boost their ad revenue. Whether you want to diversify your ad sources, optimize your price floors, or make use of innovative video ad formats, we’ve got you covered. Reach out to our team to learn how we can boost your ad revenue efforts.

Ad Fill Rate FAQ

* This article was originally published here