We have answers!

“I want to level up my video strategy.”

“What is the best practice for embedding videos?”

“How should I incorporate YouTube videos in my blog posts?”

“I’d like to add video to increase RPM but I am worried about user experience.”

Hi, my name is Heather Tullos 👋 and y’all probably know me because a big part of my job is moderating our Facebook groups, and these are all recent questions you’ve asked about video. I’m here today to provide answers, starting with an announcement we’ve spent the last month or so preparing you for:

Today is the day we kill sunset say goodbye to autoplay

We’ve killed off a few things here at Mediavine — pageviews in favor of sessions, AMP in favor of Core Web Vitals, and now we are taking out autoplay instream videos in favor of a better user experience.

In 2021, we rolled out the Universal Player as a solution for site owners who want to earn those high video CPMs, but might not have yet ventured into producing their own video content. What we learned almost immediately is that the Universal Player, when set up properly, very quickly outpaces our previously recommended autoplay instream settings.

Before we get too far into the details, let’s cover a few important definitions

I’ll be mentioning instream and outstream a lot in this article, so let me explain what those terms mean.

• Instream Video = Video ads that play before or during video content
• Outstream Video = Video ads served outside a traditional video player

Autoplayed video content with an ad that runs before it has always been classified as instream.

The point of an autoplayed instream ad has never been user experience — it was always just money, as recently discussed by our CEO, Eric Hochberger in AdWeek..

New IAB Standards

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB, the organization that develops industry standards) has set forth guidelines that now require that these autoplayed muted ads are classified as outstream. This shift in standards is based on establishing a better user experience.

So let’s talk about what that means for you. Because while we all obviously want a better experience for our readers, we also need a paycheck.

More Money. More Time on Page. Better UX.

Effective today, we are killing autoplay. This means that if you were running autoplayed instream video on your site, those videos will no longer play automatically for the reader. They will be click-to-play.

The Universal Player — that small outstream player that we rolled out in 2021 — is going to do the heavy lifting where your video revenue is concerned. Here’s how that works:

When we look at the numbers, most autoplayed instream videos average fewer than 1 impression per session. In fact, on most sites that number drops to 0.5 impressions per pageview. That means that readers are closing out the autoplayed instream player before they ever even see the video content you created.

In contrast though, the Universal Player averages 2-4 impressions per pageview. It’s 10 px smaller and tucked out of the way in that recommended Bottom Left position on mobile, so it just chugs along, refreshing every 30 seconds as long as there’s outstream inventory.

It works if a reader carefully scrolls your content and reads every word, but it also works if they scroll really quickly or use a jump link to hop down the page. Since it DOES work so well, there are not actually that many Mediavine sites that are still relying on an autoplay strategy.

For those of you that will just be making the shift today, I wanted to be sure to provide answers to common questions, and to help you be sure you are set up for video success.

WHAT ABOUT ALL OF MY VIDEOS?!!!

If you’ve spent time and money creating useful video companions to your blog posts, you are still in great shape. Video is an excellent way for readers to learn more and have an additional visual companion to the content on your site. It speaks to the different ways people like to learn, and when they choose to click on a video they are engaged.

Engaged readers pay you more in the form of higher CPMs and longer time on a site. Not only is that reader seeing the ad in its entirety, but they are also sticking around for your content instead of looking for ways to exit.

Video is also still great for SEO. Google loves it, and videos can give you additional opportunities for how you appear in search results.

And let’s not forget all the ways you can creatively reappropriate video content across social media.

How to set up Mediavine video for the highest revenue, RPM and ROI

Since we are removing Autoplay Settings for you today, including Featured Video, there are fewer buttons for you to worry about, and this set up is really simple.

Check on Your Optimize Placement Settings

Without videos being autoplayed, these settings are no longer needed. However, before you disable them permanently, be sure that your videos are embedded in the correct place in your posts. Find out more details about correctly embed, because if a video is NOT autoplaying, we want to be sure that it IS where your reader can find it and click to play.

Optimize placement settings can be important if you have not been consistent with video embeds across your site (maybe they are in the first screenview, maybe they are not in the easiest place to see in most posts, etc).

To check your video placements, disable Optimize Placement on desktop and mobile, and save. Then go to the Top Videos section of your dashboard and click View on a few of the top videos. Scroll through the post or use your jump links. If the videos are where they should be, you can leave Optimize Placement off.

Embed Your Videos

This one is important! If you have video content it should be embedded into the corresponding blog post.

➡️ If your post has a how-to or recipe card, be sure to embed IN THE CARD.

➡️ If your post does not have a card, embed in the blog post.

❗️ It is not necessary (and is not best practice) to embed in both the card and the post. If you have a card and embed there, that is all you need to do as far as video schema goes.

Be sure to fill out your video details.

This is still important for advertiser spend as well as SEO. Advertisers don’t watch your videos so they use the associated URL and keywords etc to understand more about how to spend.

If you have YouTube Videos…

You can embed your YouTube videos (the recommendations for embeds are the same! In the card if you have one, in the post if you don’t) if that’s your preference, but there are a few things you will want to keep in mind.

• If a reader clicks-to-play your YouTube video, you won’t be able to monetize that view on your blog (you CAN with the Mediavine embed).
• YouTube embeds can be slow. They often turn up in pagespeed reports so it’s important to keep an eye out.
• If you want to grow your YouTube presence via your website, you can also connect your YouTube channel via Mediavine video.

Video has changed so many times over the years, and it will likely change again (but hopefully not for awhile). This current strategy based on IAB standards and best practices is really striking an excellent balance and we think it opens up so many more creative opportunities for how to approach video content on your site. Have questions? You know where to find us!

You can bookmark this help article and are always welcome to reach out!

The post Goodbye Autoplay, Hello Universal Player appeared first on Mediavine.

Look up to the ceiling of your 1980s home.

We know what you’re thinking: Sleep-deprived Eric is losing it. But follow me here as we unveil our latest ad innovation: SkyLight.

(See? The intro sort of made sense. It’s not like we named it PopcornCeiling.)

What is SkyLight?

Like everything at Mediavine, this exclusive ad technology is built to minimize latency and maximize performance.

Innovating and building products in-house enables our technology to work seamlessly with everything else on the page, and SkyLight is no exception.

Available on mobile devices, SkyLight builds upon the placeholders we already use to solve for Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), using that space to run higher-paying ads without disrupting user experience.

If that sounds similar to InView — which uses that placeholder space to create a highly viewable area — you’re not wrong. (And you’re a loyal blog reader. Appreciate you.)

Think of SkyLight as a cousin to InView. The two are related in some respects, but in some ways are total opposites.

Rather than running a smaller ad inside of a larger placeholder to improve viewability, we’re running a larger ad inside of a smaller placeholder to make more money.

I know. I really should sleep more.

But it all makes sense, I swear:

High-paying, mobile ad units like the 300×600 generate more revenue than smaller ads, such as the 300×250, but typically result in a poorer user experience, considering the space these units take up.

With SkyLight, we’re able to display that 300×600 ad in the existing placeholder space without taking up any more space.

So you get the best of both worlds — the higher CPMs of a 300×600 ad unit, with the same height you’re used to with our Optimize Ads for CLS.

How did we make that happen?

SkyLight works by creating a window in front of the ad, and as a result, only shows a portion of the ad. As the user scrolls, the window moves in what’s called a parallax effect, revealing more of the ad.

If you’re a bit confused after the first-ever use of the word parallax in Mediavine blog history, we don’t blame you.

Let’s explain using the official communication method of our corporation, the GIF!

Now that we’re on the same page — hopefully you understand where the name SkyLight came from (it’s a window, get it?) — let’s talk about the important thing:

How Much More Will SkyLight Make You?

Early testing shows that SkyLight generates a 7% improvement to revenue of in-content mobile ad units. Keep in mind, the testing took place in the first quarter of this year, when a high-cost ad unit like SkyLight will perform poorly compared to the rest of the calendar year.

Depending on how much of your revenue comes from mobile traffic and in-content ads, SkyLight could mean a nice impact on your bottom line, especially as we approach the higher-paying times of the advertising year.

Another exciting aspect of SkyLight is that it actually performs well for advertisers. In fact, our testing showed that 300×600 ads inside SkyLight produce higher viewability and engagement than running 300×600 ads in the less user-friendly, inline fashion.

If you’ve heard us talk about viewability, you know that publishers scoring well on that metric means advertisers will likely spend more on their inventory over time.

All the more reason to enable SkyLight now, while advertisers are learning your inventory in time for Q4.

What About InView?

We actually recommend you run both, as SkyLight will compete alongside InView in many of your Mediavine ad placements.

It’s important to note that, by design, not every ad space will be eligible for SkyLight, in order to balance user experience and revenue.

So you’ll typically see a mix of both InView and SkyLight running throughout your mobile pages, giving you a profitable combination of higher viewability and better CPMs.

How to Enable SkyLight

Like anything else in Mediavine, it’s as easy as turning it on yourself inside the Mediavine Dashboard: Click Ad Settings and toggle it on.

Go to it!

If you have more questions about SkyLight, check out the Support documentation.

The post SkyLight: Let the Mobile Revenue Shine In appeared first on Mediavine.

You may have heard us drop this word a few hundred times over the years, and for good reason.

Viewability is the key to success with Mediavine Ad Management, and for the first time, we’re putting the power to measure and easily improve this key metric in your hands.

As of today, we’re excited to unveil a new feature to help you optimize viewability: our Inview technology. 

It comes paired with specific goals (which we’ll discuss below) and can be turned on now in your Mediavine Dashboard.

Below, we’ll break down what viewability is, why it matters, what the new Content Viewability goals are and how Inview fits into Mediavine’s strategy of making more revenue for publishers.

What is Viewability?

You can run all the ads you want, but if your readers never see them, what’s the point?

This is the crux of viewability, a made-up word but very real measurement of how many of your website’s ads are actually seen by the readers who visit it.

Being “seen” in this case means that a majority of the ad (51%) appears in the “viewport” of the device that the reader is using for at least one second.

Why Does Viewability Matter?

As we said in the previous section, advertisers want to reach their target audiences in order to make an impact. They don’t want to spend on ads that aren’t seen.

If a publisher’s viewability falls below a certain threshold, some advertisers will pay less for the ad inventory, or cease bidding on the inventory altogether. (Learn more about viewability.)

What is the Optimal Content Viewability?

There are different viewability measurement vendors from Google ActiveView (which we use) to third parties like Moat. Results may vary, and getting your viewability scores to match advertisers’ scores, and figuring out where that sweet spot is, takes a data team, which fortunately we have.

Based on our research, we’ve determined that the Optimal Content Viewability, or the average Viewability across your in-content, recipe and feed units, is 70% for desktop traffic and 65% for mobile. (We’ll discuss why desktop goals are slightly higher in a few moments.)

How Do Publishers Improve Viewability?

While viewability itself can be pretty complex, the guiding principle to improving it is pretty simple. While most of you have probably already stopped reading this, we’re here to help the 12 of you that haven’t.

It comes down to loading ads where a user is likely to view the ad (hello, lazy loading), and keeping that ad visible for at least one second while a user is engaged in that screen view.

Based on that description, 65% might sound like a walk in the park, but it’s actually not.

Particularly on mobile devices, which are heavily reliant on 300×250 in-content ads that the reader scrolls by, a second of screen time is an eternity.

Even with “recipe” ads — if you run a food, craft or other blog using a card like Create — one second is a lot longer than it sounds when you’re dealing with mobile screens.

Okay, We Get it. So How Do We Improve Viewability?

As you surely know from your own web browsing, particularly on mobile, there’s a LOT of fast scrolling. High site-wide viewability often hinges on solving in-content ad performance.

Improving overall site speed, running Mediavine’s recommended recipe card settings (if applicable), and nixing lower-performing ads will all help — but won’t get you all the way there.

None of that will necessarily solve in-content ads. One way to do that would be to change user behavior, but how do you get people to read and not skim on a massive scale?

We’ll let the seven of you still carefully reading this and not skimming it ruminate on that. But obviously, it’s a tall order. That got us thinking: What if there were another way?

A way to keep that ad visible for just a little bit longer while a user is quickly scrolling?

There wasn’t, so we decided to invent it.

Introducing Inview

Inview seeks to do exactly what we described by taking advantage of the placeholder boxes we introduced with our recent Optimize Ads for CLS feature.

With that feature, we reserve the maximum amount of space an ad can take up, but the winning ad often ends up being smaller than that maximum space.

So what do we do with that extra gray area? Welcome to Inview.

Inview will allow any horizontal banner ad (wider than they are tall), to “stick” to the top of the screen while the user scrolls through that placeholder spot.

Okay, that description was a little confusing. You know what that means.

Time to bring in Mediavine’s preferred method of communication, the GIF:

These end up being what Google calls horizontal sticky ads in its official policy.

Since we run them in a limited space — within the placeholder space we reserve to solve for Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — these actually make for a good user experience.

Cut to the Chase: How Well Does Inview Work?

Alright, alright. We’ll get to the results you’ve been waiting for.

During our beta test, we found that the Mobile Inview improved viewability by an average of 8% on mobile.

On desktop, we see similarly terrific gains, with a 6.5% improvement.

Overall, publishers start with a higher baseline viewability on desktop traffic before Inview, due largely to the larger amount of screen real estate in play.

This higher baseline factors into our slightly higher goal of 70% desktop viewability — compared to the 65% mobile target — mentioned earlier.

How Long Until I See a Difference?

You’ll personally see a viewability improvement practically overnight, but like everything else, there will be a longer ramp-up period before advertisers notice and start spending accordingly.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when your RPM will start ticking up as a result of the improved viewability, as all buying algorithms have different learning periods, but results could start in as little as two weeks, with gradual increases after that.

From the start of the Mediavine application process, we urge patience as advertisers can take up to three months before they fully learn and trust a new site.

Similarly, while Mediavine proudly boasts industry-leading viewability, it can take that long for advertisers to respond to such an improvement, even on established sites.

Within a few weeks, you should start seeing a difference, with slow and steady increases in the ensuing months. In the beginning of December we’ll also be launching Content Viewability Health Checks which should further help you monitor your progress. (More about that a bit later down.)

This is a long-term strategy. Give it time and viewability will translate to revenue.

So Should Publishers Enable Inview?

If you’re running Optimize Ads for CLS (which you should, if you plan on passing Core Web Vitals), then yes.

Emphatically yes. This is one of those rare win-win-wins.

The blank space placeholder already exists to solve for CLS, so turning on this feature only expands it by a small amount (less than 24%). You’re not overlapping any content or really changing much about your website’s user experience by opting in to Desktop and Mobile Inview.

What you are doing is boosting your ad viewability and long-term earning potential.

What Happens to Other Sticky Stuff on the Page?

Great question.

Between the Mediavine Video Player or Universal Player, the adhesion, Grow or other user engagement frameworks running, there could be a lot of things … sticking.

That’s why when you enable Inview, we automatically optimize the placements of any Mediavine fixed, or sticky, units.

For example, sites running our full suite (which you should, to maximize revenue) may feature the Grow widget, Universal Player, mobile adhesion and possibly Grow’s What’s Next.

When you enable Desktop and Mobile Inview, we automatically move all fixed elements to the bottom, so they look like this glorious screen shot and take up only a small % of the bottom of your screen.

This ensures that, as Inview sticks to the top of a mobile screen, there’s no overlapping of any fixed elements on screen, and it doesn’t overwhelm the user.

What Ad Units Are Eligible For Inview?

As we mentioned earlier, the critical in-content units on both desktop and mobile will become eligible for Inview, as will all units using the placeholder for CLS fixes.

This group includes in-content, recipe, top sidebar, and feed units (if you’ve never heard of that one, feed units are primarily used by Trellis sites that run ads on the homepage, archive and tag pages).

You Mentioned Viewability Health Checks?

So glad to see someone was paying attention! 

In the beginning of December we’ll launch Content Viewability Health Checks in your Mediavine Dashboard. This will give you an easy way to track your viewability progress so stay tuned… 

How Do I Opt In?

You can opt in quickly and easily under Ad Settings, where you’ll see Desktop and Mobile Inview appear in the Optimize for Core Web Vitals section next to Optimize Ads for CLS.

Make sure you enable Optimize Ads for CLS first, and then you’ll be able to opt in to the Desktop and Mobile Inview with a simple enable toggle.

For more information on how and where to opt in, check out our handy Inview help doc.

Congratulations on making it through 1,660 words. Here are 10 more to end this novel:

Go forth. Switch it on. Many more viewable ads await.

The post Inview: Improve Viewability and Long-Term Revenue, Starting Today appeared first on Mediavine.

Mediavine’s customers are passionate content creators with their own blogs and social media empires. Ranging in size from 50,000 sessions to 50 million sessions a month, they run the gamut of lifestyle niches — parenting and family, recipes and crafts, fashion and travel. If you name it, Mediavine has a customer that blogs on the topic. 

In 2020, a suggestion from one of our own travel publishers, whose traffic was impacted by the pandemic, led to the creation of our PSA program, where we fill unsold inventory with PSAs for causes that publishers care about most.

Since its inception in April 2020, Mediavine has served nearly 17 billion PSA impressions, across myriad causes from United Way to PFLAG to Pediatric Cancer Awareness. 

With nearly 9,000 unique sites working with Mediavine’s ad management product, putting tools like our PSA program in their hands allows us to bring increased bandwidth and share of voice to a cause without additional cost to the organization itself. It also allows our bloggers to give back to the causes they believe in with a simple click of a button.

The advertising industry hasn’t always had the best reputation for “giving back,” which is why we’re so excited to be part of AdTechCares, an organization that leverages advertising technology to combat misinformation and keep humanity well. The organization of 50+ companies delivers the truth about COVID-19, supports fact-based journalism, and affirms that Black Lives Matter around the world. 

We’d love to share more about this organization — the hows and whys that evolved into a movement that our publishers can take part in today, just by opting into AdTechCares PSAs through their Mediavine Dashboard. 

We welcome AdTechCares Co-Founder, Ryanne Laredo, to discuss the origins and mission of her organization. In addition to her work with AdTechCares, Ryanne is formerly the Chief Customer Officer at Amobee and currently serving as the Chief Customer Officer at Smartly.io.

Tell us about yourself — how did you get into the digital advertising space, and what led you to where you are today?

I have always loved advertising, memorizing TV ads since I was 2 years old. I realized that I should not fight destiny later in college and pursued communication and masters degrees in PR & Advertising.

I was working many jobs to pay for schooling and, quite by happenstance, I fell into search advertising. Truly, a beer with friends after one of my many jobs, meeting a new person who inquired if I needed a job and asked if I was good at math after I told him what I was studying, and voila — landed at Doubleclick Performics in search advertising.

That was many years ago, but I would say curiosity, determination to solve meaningful problems — usually connecting technology with customers needs — and really hard work allowed me to get where I am today as Chief Customer Officer of Smartly.io, the leading social advertising automation platform, and Co-Founder of AdTechCares.

What drew you to be part of the AdTechCares movement?

I created AdTechCares because there is a sense of responsibility I feel to living truthfully and with responsibility for those around me. My parents and community taught me that. So, I guess it is fair to say that I feel a supreme responsibility to leverage the tools that I know best — ad tech and media — to try to undo some of the wrongs that can be caused by these same tools and the industries in which we play.

Again, driven by a sense of responsibility, not one of guilt. So much good comes from ad tech and media and the connections they enable, but there is still a phenomenal amount of opportunity to improve as an industry. And what is most important is that when COVID-19 hit us all, I was not alone in this thought.

In a matter of a few days, an idea to help the World Health Organization combat misinformation was off the ground, and there were 20 companies coming together to fight the battle. We didn’t know what we were getting into, but we all knew we wanted to help.

Over the last 18 months, we have supported four causes covering COVID-19 health tips, vaccinations, systemic racism, and Stop AAPI Hate. Each time driven by our mission. We were there to bring truth to the world, in any way we could, to deliver on our promise of combating misinformation and keeping humanity well.

What has the journey been like to create an organization with staying power?

Unexpected. I knew there were a lot of purpose-driven individuals in the industry, so I was not surprised they showed up. However, the amount of time and energy given by these individuals is stunning. No one showed up just to shake hands. Everyone contributed, everyone got their hands dirty. When they got tired, they called their co-worker or friend. Everyone spread the word.

The staying power comes from the combination of a mission that resonates and a team that is dedicated to delivering for each other. Ideas without action can be genius but have no impact — that’s a butchering of a great quote by Simon Sinek — but it’s true in describing the reason for the staying power here nonetheless.

What are some goals you have for the rest of 2021 and into 2022?

We continue to push new approaches to tackle vaccine hesitation, as we know that misinformation is still powering some of these feelings. We will continue to support this initiative into 2022.

We have also decided that we will take on the Climate Crisis in 2022. With all of the scientific evidence available, there should not be such misunderstandings of the dire situation our world is facing as there is. In this case, we are combating climate change by making it easier to understand the challenge and provide solutions. We will be announcing our partner for this in late 2021.

How is AdTechCares hoping to lead the industry and partners on this journey?

We are stronger together. Providing a monthly forum to discuss how companies can learn and lean in to make an impact, bring ideas to the table and crowdsource approaches is the first step.

Simply having a place where companies can go and grab assets quickly and also to share their own initiatives that fit our mission to help each other is huge. There are not many other places that our industry is so open to sharing and working together. 

How can Mediavine publishers best provide feedback or get involved?

Mediavine has been a stellar founding partner of AdtechCares. Mediavine has AdTechCares assets ready for you whenever you’re ready. For all other inquiries you can reach us via LinkedIn.

The post Ad Tech Shines: Introducing AdtechCares as a New PSA Partner appeared first on Mediavine.

First of all, I’d like to thank all of you who have opted into one (or more) of our PSAs. It’s so rewarding to see not only causes that resonate with you, but also the effect your support has. Since the launch of our very first COVID-19 PSA in May 2020, with the participation of your websites, our PSAs have generated more than 16 billion ad impressions.

This is an impact we can all take pride in, as well as use for inspiration to keep going and growing. Therefore, today we’re excited to expand our PSA portfolio with another impactful partner: Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA). 

BBBSA is an organization that’s so close to my heart. Some of you may be familiar with the name and/or concept — maybe you were a Little at some point in time, or a Big or know someone who was one or the other. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this wonderful organization, BBBSA is the largest, preeminent, one-to-one mentoring organization in the United States.

The organization has more than 230 agencies across the country, serving all 50 states and more than 250,000 youth with its mentorship services. Mentorship is such an important tool for growth, especially for young people facing adversity in the United States, and it is so rewarding to uplift those youths.

Being a Big myself through Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lowcountry, I cannot speak highly enough of this organization and the impact it has on both Bigs and Littles. The past 4+ years of being a Big has considerably changed my life as much as it has my Little’s, Ty’Laysha’s.

I’ve watched her blossom from a shy kindergartener to a bubbly, beautiful, intelligent almost-fifth-grader. Together we’ve gone to town festivals, educational expos, made arts and crafts, had beach days, spent hours working on homework (my least favorite activity, but arguably the most important), hosting lemonade stands, playing at trampoline parks and more.

I try my best to be a positive influence in areas including academics, work ethic, sportsmanship and physical and emotional health — areas in which many of us could benefit from additional reinforcement, but especially for anyone coming from unstable environments where these things may not be taught or prioritized. This is where Bigs have the potential to make such a difference. 

By mentoring a child from the eligible ages of 6 to 18, we have the potential privilege to lead them down a path to success and far away from the preschool to prison pipeline — a path that ignited the BBBSA mission and services many years ago. 

To date, BBBSA has helped more than several hundred thousand children receive the role models, support, mentorship and experiences they can greatly benefit from in life. However, sadly there are still so many children waiting for that opportunity. In fact, there are approximately 30,000 children and young adults nationwide on the waitlist to receive a Big. 

My hope in writing this blog post is not only to share about a wonderful organization, but empower you to take that next step, if you wish. Whether it’s opting into the BBBSA PSAs to help raise awareness for mentors and mentees or getting hands-on involved as a Big, you are supporting a great cause and shaping America’s youth for a brighter future.

The post Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Joins Our PSA Program appeared first on Mediavine.

Now, as promised, we’ve launched its desktop counterpart in all its glory (and scary user experiences, which we’ll touch on shortly).

The New Desktop Interstitial

Like the mobile interstitial, but for desktop devices, this is a full-screen display ad that takes over the screen between pageviews.

Why would anyone throw a full-screen ad in front of their audience?

As Mediavine Ad Management clients know, they pay very well.

You can’t get much more viewable or engaging than a full-screen ad unit. By definition, interstitial ads are highly viewable and see terrific user engagement. Advertisers know it and will pay top dollar for these units.

Desktop Interstitials by Google: How They Work

Crazy as it seems to those of us who can remember when interstitials were anathema to Google, they are now a viable option.

Some of you may remember that we retired interstitials the first time due to Google’s mobile content accessibility signal.

Now in 2021 they’re back and conforming to Google Search and Coalition for Better Ads standards. How do we know?

As we told you last year, during the Google Mobile Web Interstitial beta, Google Ad Manager renders the unit to “match Google Search standards.”

Long story short: Because the new mobile (and now desktop) interstitials run between pageviews, not when a user first arrives, they won’t hurt your search results.

Like the mobile version, these desktop interstitial units will appear only after the second click, with Mediavine running its ad auction alongside Google Ad Exchange and Google Ad Manager rendering the creative.

From an SEO standpoint, you are good to go.

What Do Desktop Interstitials Look Like?

As with the mobile interstitials, the ads can be closed immediately, with no countdown or set time that you have to wait out.

As soon as a reader clicks a link to advance to the second pageview, ads are instantly ready to be shown.

They also have a consistent and easy-to-find close button. Hard-to-find close buttons defeat the point of even having a close button.

You can see a sample one running here:

How Much Do Desktop Interstitials Earn?

As we mentioned above, the reason interstitials exist is because they produce high viewability and click-through rates (CTRs) that drive revenue accordingly.

We’ve seen a 9.18% increase in desktop RPM from running these interstitials during initial testing — potentially significant but not without caveats.

Since these ads only run between pageviews and are frequency capped (so a given user can only see them a certain number of times), not everyone will see them.

A desktop user will only see an interstitial upon clicking on an external or internal link on your site, not when they first arrive or scroll around.

Also worth remembering: As with any site joining Mediavine, or any new ad unit we enable, there is a ramp up period or learning curve for advertisers.

Optimal performance takes time, in other words.

Furthermore, with very few exceptions, how much desktop traffic a website actually has probably ranges from almost none to… not very much.

Increasing your RPM for those desktop users won’t make you much extra money if you only have 12 of them, and you’ll diminish their user experience to boot.

Which brings us to our final, most significant caveat:

Should I Run Desktop Interstitials?

Honestly?

To quote our attorney, “it depends.”

This is ultimately your decision as a publisher. From a pure monetization standpoint, there may be an argument that it’s worth it.

For those of you with desktop traffic, the potential of up to 9.18% RPM lift could be material. Of course, you’re selling your soul a bit for it.

The user experience of these ads is… not the best.

Of course, all ad solutions must strike a balance of user experience and revenue, and based on the publisher’s goals, this can be subjective.

But the desktop interstitial UX is in its own league.

Use caution before throwing up full-screen ads that your readers have to “X” out of. As a reader, you wouldn’t like that either.

Passing the Coalition for Better Ads and Google Search standards doesn’t mean they should pass your personal standards.

We wrote this article because it’s an option that’s available to you that we feel you should know about and so that you can understand the pros and cons of running these ads.

Not because we necessarily think everyone should use it.

Our recommendation is to think long and hard about whether it’s truly worthwhile.

How Do I Turn Them On?

Should you choose to switch these on, desktop interstitials are available to all Mediavine publishers, via opt-in in the Dashboard.

You can access them by logging in, going to Ad Settings > Optional Ad Units.

The post Desktop Interstitial Ads Are Live: Should You Enable Them? appeared first on Mediavine.

If you’re a food or how-to blogger, you’re likely familiar with the dilemma:

Writing more content before the How-To or Recipe Card improves RPM and SEO but often results in complaints from users who want to bypass the content and jump straight to the recipe.

The Jump to Recipe function has undoubtedly offered a great balance for those readers who wish to get straight to the meat of the post, but what many don’t recognize is that for publishers, that content can be their livelihood.

In other words, giving up revenue is not a decision to take lightly. But how much are you really giving up with a Jump to Recipe button? And is it worthwhile for better reader engagement?

Today, we’ll break down the actual impact of the Jump to Recipe or Jump to Card button (abbreviated as JTR from here on out) on your bottom line, now and down the road.

Important Caveat: This post only applies to publishers using Mediavine-exclusive ad optimizations and supported recipe cards: Create, WP Tasty or WP Recipe Maker. (Other ad management companies and cards will likely experience very different results.)

With that disclaimer, let’s get into it!

Jump to Recipe Basics: What Happens When Someone Clicks?

Historically, when clicking on the JTR button, a web user skipped past all content and ads and arrived at the recipe card.

This meant many ads loading which were never seen by the user, crippling a site’s viewability, ad performance, reputation among the ad exchanges and eventually, long-term earning potential.

Enter exclusive Mediavine Recipe Ad Technology.

The old days are long gone. Now when a user clicks the JTR button, they still skip the content, but thanks to our exclusive lazy loading ad technology, the skipped ads won’t load.

This seemingly small distinction is critically important.

Lazy loading preserves your website’s viewability and its performance with advertisers, and with that, its long-term earning potential.

As for the short-term revenue lost by readers skipping ads? Well, we actually now offer a few solutions to this problem as well.

One of these is our exclusive Arrival Unit, an ad that readers are taken to just before arriving at the recipe card. Enabling this unit gives you a highly viewable ad with great engagement.

Combine the Arrival Unit with Mediavine’s ability to run multiple recipe card ad units and you can mitigate any short-term revenue loss!

Okay, But What’s the Actual Impact on the Bottom Line?

Fine, enough abstract talk. Put down all beverages and make sure you’re sitting down.

We’ve found that publishers running all of these recipe optimizations actually make up to 15 percent more revenue when a user clicks the JTR button!

You’re welcome — for the revenue, and for telling you to put down the coffee a second ago. No need to spend that extra 15 percent on a new laptop!

Wow, How is That Possible?

All kidding aside, put yourself in the shoes of a reader jumping to the recipe. They’re likely either trying to cook the recipe right now or shopping for the ingredients. 

They might be skipping the content beforehand, but either of these time-consuming tasks likely means that the reader is heavily engaged inside the recipe card.

Your audience is locked in, and ads inside the recipe card are eligible to refresh if the user spends enough time on that page. 

When you factor in the Arrival Unit and additional recipe card ad impressions, these power users are actually seeing more ads than readers who didn’t go the JTR route and ended up bouncing out of the website altogether before even making it to the card.

So Does JTR Make Me More Money?

Not necessarily. Correlation does not always equal causation, as they say in statistics. 

In this case, looking at the users who jumped to the recipe may just be looking at your most engaged users.

What would those users have done if there was no jump available? Would they have scrolled to the recipe card and spent just as much time there? It’s hard to give a generic, catch-all answer.

However, our findings from studying websites that enable JTR is that there is little to no impact on revenue.

What we typically see is a decrease in in-content ad earnings balanced out by an increase in recipe ad earnings. In the end, the impact on short term earnings is negligible.

And again, thanks to our lazy loading ads, we see almost no impact on viewability by enabling this button.

Should I Offer Readers a Jump to Recipe button?

If you’re prepared to enable the other Mediavine Recipe ad optimizations, including the Arrival Unit discussed above, then absolutely.

JTR will have little to no impact on your website’s revenue, and users looking for this feature will be very happy you added it.

What About Accessibility?

If you’re worried about website accessibility for visually impaired readers (something you should take seriously, as we’ve discussed at length), we recommend you update to the latest version of Create, which includes Skip to Recipe and Skip to Instructions — this will provide a screen reader, or accessibility version, of the Jump to Recipe button.

If you’re running a different card, we recommend you implement this feature yourself on your website to address accessibility.

Will JTR Help with SEO?

Despite rumors to the contrary, you will not see any direct improvements to SEO rankings just by enabling a Jump to Recipe button.

However, you may see some indirect SEO benefits. 

By creating a better user experience, you may end up with readers who are more likely to share or link to your content, indirectly benefitting your SEO.

What About Table of Contents and Other Jump-Style Links?

Our lazy loading ad technology will still prevent in-content ads from loading with table of contents plugins or other jump-type links that are not recipe cards, solving for the long-term revenue impacts of viewability loss.

However, without the recipe card portion and features like the Arrival Unit, you won’t get the short-term benefit of engaged readers earning you more in this scenario.

Bottom line? Implementing other buttons such as these will likely entail a small impact to revenue, so you’ll have to weigh those separately from JTR.

We can only solve so much of the Internet at a time.

JTR and You: Making the Right Decision

Only you can decide what’s most important when it comes to decisions like JTR. Our job is to present publishers with the best array of options to build sustainable businesses.

To the six of you who made it this far, we hope we presented a compelling case for its benefits while dispelling some of the rumors that might be holding you back.

At the end of the day, we believe we’ve improved publisher and reader experiences alike and solved for a lot of issues that might have made JTR a major liability just a few years ago.

The post Jump to Recipe: How it Impacts Revenue … For the Better! appeared first on Mediavine.

Over a year and multiple Mediavine PSA campaigns later, the pandemic is still very much a thing. There are new surges all over the world, along with mounting concerns about new strains of the virus.

India is currently being hit with a mind-boggling number of cases being reported daily and a severe lack of medical infrastructure to support the surge.

Mediavine publisher Manali Singh of Cook With Manali contacted the Mediavine team to request that we continue to spread awareness about COVID-19, expand our resources page and specifically draw attention to the swell in numbers currently being experienced in one of the most populous countries in the world.

“The situation in India is absolutely heartbreaking right now. India has been reporting close to 300,000 to 350,000 cases everyday (which is the highest single day spike for any country since the Covid outbreak) for the last few days. These are the official numbers, the real numbers are likely much more!

There are no beds available in hospitals, no oxygen, people are dying in ambulances just waiting to get inside the hospital. The past two weeks have been devastating not only for those living in India but also for people like me, who feel helpless living so far away from home. People are trying to seek help online in this crisis, there are requests for meals, oxygen cylinders, ICU beds and social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram have been helpful.

A lot of organizations are trying to help during these scary times and it would be great if all Mediavine Publishers could enable the Covid PSAs on their blogs.

With our collective reach, we can definitely reach out to more people and hopefully help these organizations in collecting more funds for those in need.”

—Manali Singh, Cook With Manali

At Mediavine, we believe that our publishers’ reach is a superpower. With it, we can do a lot of good.

To date, Mediavine has served 6.6 billion impressions for COVID-19 relief. With our publishers’ help, that number will continue to grow.

In response to the urgent need, we have added more UN creatives for the COVID-19 PSA series and included all new, vetted India-specific resources to our COVID-19 Resources page. This includes Manali’s personal choice for organizations providing relief to India during the COVID-19 surge they are experiencing, Give India.

Give India runs a variety of campaigns, including supplying lifesaving oxygen to patients in need, supplying food to families experiencing food insecurity due to the pandemic and more.

If you haven’t yet opted in to the COVID-19 PSAs, we hope that you’ll click that little toggle on your Dashboard today. Not only are you helping a great cause, but it helps create a more visually appealing experience for your readers and helps optimize ads for CLS, too.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a difficult time for many. But together, we’re stronger. And together, we can continue to make a difference.

The post COVID-19 PSAs: Help India appeared first on Mediavine.

What are PSAs?

PSA stands for Public Service Announcement. In display advertising, these types of ads are served free of charge, and at Mediavine, they only serve when the ad placement has not sold through your regular auction.

We don’t and have never had a goal of 100% fill at Mediavine. Our reason is simple: Working towards 100% fill causes you to keep lowering the cost of an ad impression on your site, undervaluing your inventory in that way lowers the average CPM for your site and is basically a race to the bottom, where every ad impression you sell is devalued by that last elusive 1-10%.

When we run PSAs instead, we’re able to fill the space with messages that you and your audience find valuable, without compromising your auction floors.

How does running PSAs help me?

Before Google’s Core Web Vitals introduced the idea of Cumulative Layout Shift, Mediavine typically collapsed any ad space that didn’t sell to make the page simpler and prettier by leaving no large blank spaces. But this often caused elements of a webpage to move around during loading.

Now that Google has been more specific about their desire not to see items shift around on the page, Mediavine has introduced settings like Optimize Ads for CLS, a solution that creates a gray ad box anywhere a position is likely to be on page, reserving the space for an advertisement so that the page doesn’t shift around.

If you enable these options but aren’t running any PSAs, it’s likely that you’ll have empty gray boxes wherever an ad doesn’t sell.

You’ll pass CLS, and while it’s not a bad user experience, running PSAs for your favorite causes instead makes the experience more visually appealing, more dynamic and more interesting for readers.

What are my options?

Outside organizations

Mediavine has partnered with several organizations so far for PSA campaigns, including:

Cookies for Kids’ Cancer
Operation Gratitude
United Way
Ad Council
No Kid Hungry

With each of these, we work with the organization to decide messaging, campaign dates (if not evergreen) and to coordinate the creatives. When clicked, the PSA ads link to a landing page of the organization’s choosing, usually on their own domain.

We’re very excited to announce that as of April 27th, 2021, we are partnered with No Kid Hungry. Thanks to an introduction made by publisher (and Chicago Keynote!) Jocelyn Delk Adams of Grandbaby Cakes fame, we’ve been able to work directly with the NKH team to launch this option directly into your Dashboard. Right now we’ve got one evergreen campaign in the works, but we’ll have more from team NKH in the fall, so please watch this space!

Internal campaigns

Several PSA campaigns have been initiated by Mediavine and do not partner with or target other organizations specifically. Examples of these campaigns include our Covid-19 Awareness, We Stand With You and Pet Adoption campaigns, each of which work for worldwide audiences.

Instead of linking to an organization, each one of these campaigns links to a landing page on the Mediavine website. The landing pages link to outside resources vetted by the Mediavine Shine committee.

For our We Stand With You campaign, we worked with Black artists last year to make beautiful creatives. We’re excited to announce that as of today, there is also artwork by Asian-American artists and designers added to this campaign’s set of creatives.

Art by Ann Chen, Julia Kestner, and Rhianna Chan are now a default part of the WSWY campaign. You will also find links to their social media on our WSWY Resources page.

How do PSAs help organizations?

First and foremost, these PSAs provide awareness for the organization and particular goals they have. For example, last September we ran a special creative for Cookies for Kids’ Cancer because September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month, with links back to special fundraisers they were participating in, which gave the organization a boost for their cause during this special time.

While awareness is definitely helpful, these campaigns are also able to share information on how to donate or how to participate in volunteering with each organization through PSAs. Operation Gratitude is a great example of this, running a letter-writing campaign with us not too long ago that resulted in readers signing up to write letters to first responders and service people overseas.

United Way’s 211 campaign was incredibly successful at bringing light to what 211 is and how calling 211 can help match resources to any family dealing with everything from food insecurity to mental health crises. In some cases, it might even be better to dial 211 instead of 911, which lowers stress on the emergency response teams while also matching callers with the people they need to get past the problems their family is currently facing.

We’re working all the time to bring more organizations on board with this program because we know that our publishers’ favorite causes are as varied as their website topics are.

What publishers need to do

The ad server is set up to give each PSA you’re opted into equitable distribution. That means if you’re opted into three different campaigns, each one of them will get equal distribution on your available ad impressions.

We think it’s wise to run a couple of different PSA campaigns alongside your programmatic ads to help your site have plenty of visual interest and to be sure you’re solving for CLS by filling in those gray boxes.

We know that many of you have not only your own chosen charities but also courses and services you’d like to advertise in these spaces. We’re working on the ability for you to do just that! Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

As always, if you’ve got any questions, please let us know! Email publishers@mediavine.com for questions about your account. If you’ve got suggestions for organizations you’d like to see Mediavine work with, you’re welcome to reach out to shine@mediavine.com.

The post What Are Mediavine PSAs? appeared first on Mediavine.

The billion-dollar question all of us in the industry are asking is: What’s next?

Targeted campaigns are immensely valuable to Google and advertisers because they can be sold at a premium. The loss of cookies due to privacy concerns threatens this entire model.

Many browsers like Safari and Firefox already block them; Google is phasing them out in 2022 and is responding to this slow-moving funeral procession by workshopping alternatives in the meantime.

One of Google’s new solutions for tracking users — while protecting their privacy in ways that cookies don’t — is the avian-themed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) that we’ve discussed at length.

The idea is that FLoC anonymously assigns interests to web users based on their browsing patterns, then uses those patterns to categorize or cohort users into respective buckets.

While early FLoC testing is barely underway, the concept already has some industry players crying fowl, and not because it’s ineffective (which isn’t fully known yet).

Beyond the ongoing privacy questions regarding FLoC’s ability to securely track people’s data are even graver concerns surrounding how the system could be abused.

Numerous critics have gone so far as calling FLoC “nasty” and claiming that it enables “discrimination” and is a “dangerous step that harms user privacy.”

A bombshell article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that grouping users based on browsing habits is a slippery slope and likely to facilitate discrimination regarding employment and housing “as well as predatory targeting of unsophisticated consumers.”

The controversy has extended to WordPress, where two developers have already published plugins that block FLoC from the widely popular content management platform.

A contingent within the WordPress community has pushed back against FLoC and lobbied to use its platform to prevent what it sees as potential racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.

This fueled speculation that WordPress axed FLoC altogether, although that appears to be premature. Founder Matt Mullenweg tweeted that no decision has been made . . . yet.

“Contrary to headlines, WordPress hasn’t made any decisions or changes with regards to #FLoC,” he wrote. “It is more correct to say there is a proposal from a WP contributor to block FLoC by default.”

It’s true that WordPress’ developer community makes many proposals that don’t pan out and that if FLoC were to be banned, technical and broader questions would need to be answered.

There are conflicting schools of thought as to how WordPress would go about this — or whether standing against FLoC is even appropriate, given WP’s neutrality regarding third-party tracking.

All of that said, blocking FLoC appears to have strong support inside the core developer group and the general WordPress developer community, so it’s clearly possible, if not likely.

What Do Publishers Need to Do?

At this point, there’s not a lot you can do until we know more.

It’s important to note that FLoC testing is in its infancy; WordPress (or the segment of its community that wants this) is essentially talking about blocking something that’s a non-factor right now.

As we said above, it’s also unclear that a FLoC ban will happen or what it would look like. But assuming WordPress does go through with this, what does it mean for your website?

If and when WordPress takes any action on its end, Mediavine will build a solution for publishers to re-enable FLoC testing if they so choose. Right now, it’s too soon to say what that will entail.

Mediavine remains committed to building third-party cookie replacements and first-party data solutions in this rapidly evolving landscape, and FLoC is just one piece of that puzzle.

We also take seriously our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Allegations that FLoC is discriminatory along racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ+ lines are alarming to say the least.

Potential third-party cookie replacements that unintentionally allow for discrimination are obviously not acceptable at Mediavine — and presumably, Google would take the same position.

In fact, at the time of proposal, Google published a white paper on the subject of discrimination and sensitivity of cohorts, along with potential solutions for the issue.

This is a serious accusation, and one we will monitor in the coming weeks and months as Google reveals more about the inner workings of FLoC and addresses these concerns.

The post FLoC Block: WordPress to Give Google Cookie Fix the Boot? appeared first on Mediavine.