BUILDING A HOUSE AD SERVERLeverage the power of Google’s algorithms to boost CTR
on your blog.
CHALLENGE
• Efficiently rotate and A/B test creatives.
• Serve appropriate creative based on funnel position.
• Create a modular employee scope for growing organization.
ALTERNATIVES• Rotate creatives manually.
• Marketing automation software (HubSpot)
• A/B testing tools (Optimizely)
• Plugins?
ROTATE CREATIVES MANUALLY• Pros
• Easy
• No software to research/configure
• Content manager has access
• Cons
• Slow and cumbersome
• Not easily rotated (a/b tested)
• Content manager has access
MARKETING AUTOMATION (HUBSPOT)
• Pros
• Powerful
• Integrates with email
• Set rules to display ads
• Cons
• Cumbersome
• Expensive
• Made to be ‘easy’
A/B TOOLS (OPTIMIZELY)• Pros
• Easy to use
• Separate roles
• Good data
• Cons
• Lots of experiments
• Slow to scale up
• Expensive
SOLUTION?
GOOGLE DFP& HOUSE ADS
WHAT’S AN AD SERVER?• Sell impressions on your website directly to
advertisers
• Cut out the middleman.
WHAT ARE HOUSE ADS?• Imagine you have 100,000 impressions/mo
• You sell 9 packs of 10,000 impressions
• What to do with the unused inventory?
• AdSense or…
HOUSE ADS• …you can fill the unused ad space with “House
Ads”
• House ads are ads served by the publisher (house).
• “Your Ad Here” billboard is a house ad.
THE HACK:• Fire up an ad server.
• Only serve house ads. Act as the publisher and the advertiser.
• Benefit from powerful ad serving features for free.
GOOGLE DFP (AD SERVER)• Rotate creatives based on optimization (CTR)
• Set per asset rotation limit. Show the same creative to the same user no more than x times.
• Advanced targeting. Target ads by behavior, demographics, etc…
• Free!• Easy asset management.
• Build rich media assets.
WHY DFP?• Allows for house ads.
• Powerful targeting features.
• Powerful asset management features.
• Hosted
• Not going anywhere.
• https://google.com/+jordanskole
• @jordanskole
• Message me and I’ll ping you when the complete guide is ready.
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