One of your primary goals as a publisher is to ensure that your ads are relevant and click-worthy — without compromising their performance or demand. That means choosing which ads to display on your website takes some careful consideration.
It also means that the “Allow and Block Ads” tab on your AdSense dashboard is one of your most essential tools. This is where you will go to select from a very long list of ad categories to manage the ads that you will be displaying and the ones you’’ll be blocking from your site.
However, the process isn’t exactly cut and dry, which is why we’re going to discuss how to choose the ads for your website. For the purpose of this article, we’re going to assume you use Google AdSense or Google Ad Manager as your Ad Ops solution.
How Google Chooses the Ads for your Website
Technically, Google is what chooses the ads that are displayed on your website. Of course, this is after you sift through your Ad Exchange and AdSense filters to choose the categories you want displayed.
From there, Google displays ads on your website based on the following specific parameters:
Contextual Targeting
The ads that get delivered to your site are based on the content, keywords, and overall text found on your website.
Google analyzes everything from your font sizes to your embedded links to ensure that your audience is served the most relevant ads automatically.
Placement Targeting
The ads you’re served also depend on which ad placements are available on your website. This parameter determines the size of the ad that can be displayed, but doesn’t consider the ad’s content and whether or not it’s relative.
Interest-Based Advertising
Interest-based advertising is exactly what it sounds like — a parameter that targets users based on their interest and demographics.
For example, Google may pull user data and serve ads based on other sites your audience may have visited beforehand.
Language targeting
The language — or languages — used on your website also contributes an ad parameter. Therefore, if the text and content throughout your website is written in English, the ads that are served will always be displayed in English.
Tips for Choosing the Right Ads to Place on your Website
Remember, your goal is to increase your ad relevance without limiting the advertiser demand on your website. Therefore, you need to take certain steps to ensure that the ads getting served and displayed don’t miss the mark.
It’s important to note that while you don’t actually select each ad that appears on your site, you can select the category of the ad. For example, if your website focuses on niche markets like parenting or religion, you may want to block ads that are categorized as sensitive that are allowed by default, as well as restricted categories.
Here are a few tips for choosing the best ads for your website:
Don’t Restrict Yourself Category-Wise
While there will be plenty of categories that aren’t relevant to your content or niche, that doesn’t necessarily mean that some of them won’t share a common ground with your audience.
One thing you want to avoid is restricting yourself when it comes to blocking certain categories. Too much restriction towards eligible advertisers could result in a low demand and a poor yield.
So, while you want to choose your categories wisely, you also don’t want to limit yourself by completely blocking off everything that doesn’t seem relevant enough. If there’s a legitimate crossover between your content, your audience, and the ad category, make sure the category is enabled.
Take Advantage of Contextual Targeting
In all aspects of publishing, blogging, and owning a website in general, content is paramount. More specifically, quality content is key.
You don’t want to just post pretty pictures without telling a story. You need to take advantage of context — what will be most relevant and valuable to your audience. So, focus on quality over quantity and aesthetics, because this is what will keep your visitors engaged, and result in lower bounce rates and higher page views per visit.
It’ll also boost your SEO efforts, enabling you to rank higher on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your website ranks on Google, the more eyes you’ll get on your page.
Lastly, quality content and the boost in rankings it brings will increase your ad revenue, which is what you’re really aiming for here!
Improve your Ad Viewability
An ad served isn’t necessarily an ad viewed. Viewability is a metric that tracks the visibility of your ads. For an ad to be considered viewed, you’ll need at least 50% of the creative or banner to be displayed for longer than one second.
So, if your ad is placed at the bottom of your website, but users aren’t scrolling down far enough to view them, you won’t garner any viewable impressions.
When this happens, it could cause advertisers to block your domain from using their ads. So, you’ll want to ensure that your ad viewability is up to par to their standards and your ad revenue can increase.
Optimize your Site for Language Targeting
Once again, language is an important factor when it comes to your ads. If your audience spans the entire globe, then you’ll want to make sure that your website has an option that visitors can select to change the text to their preferred language.
As a general rule of thumb, language targeting should be a part of your set-up from the start. Accessibility is important, especially since a global audience means more traffic and higher ad revenue for you.
Choose your Website Ads Wisely
Choosing the ad categories for your website isn’t as tricky as it may seem. However, it is crucial that you keep in mind not just your audience, but your demand partners as well. The last thing you want is for your domain to get blocked or for there to be a lack of intersectionality between your content and your visitors’ persona type.