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Ad serving benefits of Multi-Format Ads

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By Ana Kealy

April 6, 2023

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Table of contents:

Introduction

According to Statista, banner display advertising ad spending is projected to reach US$161.84bn in 2023 and US$207.02bn by 2027. According to Future Marketing Insights, in 2021 the native advertising market was valued at US$94 billion, and in 10 years time, it is expected to reach US$650 billion. EXADS offers a blend of both these ad formats in the form of Multi-Format Ads and Responsive Display Ads. In this article, we will be looking at the benefits of Multi-Format ads.

Banner Display Advertising Spend Graph

Source: Statista

What are Multi-Format Ads?

EXADS ad serving platform wants to ensure that your ad network or publisher platform has all the tools available to monetize online advertising. Which is why EXADS provides you with the ability to incorporate Multi-Format Ads within your white-label ad platform. 

Multi-Format Ads are ad placements that adapt to serve multiple ad formats: banners or native in just one placement. Within the ad placement the system allows the pitching of different banner sizes and native ad widgets against each other and serving the highest paying ad in the Multi-Format ad zone. This ability to serve multiple formats can increase the number of eligible bids for a publisher’s impressions while giving advertisers access to previously unavailable inventory. 

Let’s look at an example of one possible ad placement: Desktop Footer, this is usually a large 900×250 display banner zone. An advertiser cannot target this zone with a smaller banner or a native ad, however if the publisher uses the footer as a Multi-Format Ad zone the Footer now has the following different combinations of inventory available in the one ad placement:

  • 1 x banner 900×250
  • 1 x banner 728×90
  • 3 x 300×250 banners or 4 x 300×250 banners 100% width
  • 1 x 3 Native widget, 1 x 4 Native widget or 1 x 5 Native widget depending on the website layout.

By allowing the pitching of different banner sizes and native ad widgets against each other, the highest paying ad will be served within the Multi-Format Ad zone. For publishers, this ability to serve multiple formats can expand the number of available bids per impression while giving advertisers access to more inventory simultaneously, which is extremely beneficial to both publishers and advertisers. In turn this is beneficial to ad networks because it increases not only volumes of inventory, but can also increase the eCPM values which in turn increase your margins. 

Responsive Display Ads

EXADS Multi-format Ad Network Experience

Multi-format ads offer several benefits for ad platform owners, including:

  • Increased reach: Multi-format ads can appear on a wide range of devices. This increased flexibility can help your advertiser clients reach a larger audience.
  • Better performance: By offering Multi-format ads to your publisher clients, they have the opportunity to test Multi-format ad zones against native or banner only ad zones to A&B test for CTR, conversions, and overall ad performance.
  • Increased competition: Multi-format ads allow ad networks to serve ads to the highest bidding advertiser. This creates increased competition for the Multi-format ad zone, increasing earning potential for your share of the Multi-format ad zone revenues.
  • Simplified ad placement creation: Creating Multi-format ad placements is built into EXADS’ ad serving platform, making it easy for publishers to create and advertisers to target with a simple tick box within the admin panel.
  • Adapting to changing trends: Multi-format ads allow adapting to changing trends in advertising, whether that is a general market trend for increased interest in native ads or banner ads. By offering Multi-format ads, your business is staying ahead of the game.

Overall, multi-format ads can help the platform owner to deliver more effective and engaging ads to their audience, while also simplifying the ad creation and management process and adapting to changing trends in advertising.

Multi-format ad placements are important formats to include in your white-label ad platform offering. With Multi-format ads offering you a way to drive native and banner revenues, you can ensure your ad platform is a market leader in monetizing display advertising.

EXADS Multi-Format Publisher Experience

Multi-Format Ads Publisher case study

Using Multi-Format ad zones can significantly increase publisher revenues, impressions and ad spot bidding values. We carried out A/B testing with a well-known publisher. The publisher did four separate tests on four different ad placements:

  • Desktop NTV 300x250 banner
  • Desktop Footer 900x250 banner
  • Mobile Footer 300x250 banner
  • Mobile NTV 300x250 banner

For Variant A, the traffic was sent to the website’s original Banner ad zones.

For Variant B, the ad zone was changed to a Multi-Format ad placement.

The table below shows the difference between Multi-Format and Banner for each of the four ad placements:

Ad Placement eCPM eCPC Revenue
1. Desktop NTV +22% +22% +20%
2. Desktop Footer +49% +94% +216%
3. Mobile Footer +68% +2% +79%
4. Mobile NTV +68% +55% +71%
  1. A: Banner 300x250 -> B: Native x4 & Banner 300x250
  2. A: Banner 900x250 -> B: Ad Group Banner x3 300x250 & Native x3 & Banner 900x250
  3. A: Banner 300x250 -> B: Native x4 & Banner 300x250 & Banner 300x100
  4. A: Banner 300x250 -> B: Native x4 & Banner 300x250 & Banner 300x100

Benefits of Multi-Format Ads for publishers 

Effective Monetization: eCPM rates are more competitive in comparison to standard ad zones because by offering more ad formats to win the ad zone this increases the bids, increasing revenues as seen in the case study above.. 

Full control: Publishers can choose two or multiple ad formats to display on a specific ad placement. Native widgets can be configured to use custom fonts, colors, and styles in Multi-Format Ads rotation. 

Seamless visual integration: Publishers can easily set the container of the ad placement to automatically resize with the ad format winning the auction, to achieve a perfect display aspect on the zone size in order to avoid spaces between the sites content or cropping advertiser assets.

One script for each Ad placement: Multi-Format Ads are easy to set up, all that is needed is to place the Multi-Format Ad script in the Ad placement, just like any other standard Ad Zone.

A/B testing: Experimentation is key for publishers and they can test different ad placements on their site to test which zones perform the best. 

Easy setup: Creating a Multi-Format Ad zone is easy and EXADS provides step by step instructions in our comprehensive documentation. 

Multi-format ad zone

EXADS Multi-Format Advertiser Experience

The EXADS platform is packed with creative tools for advertiser clients to optimize their campaigns and generate the maximum number of conversions. Let’s have an overview of the benefits that using the platform’s RDA and Multi-format ads can offer to your advertisers clients.

Benefits of Multi-Format ad for advertisers 

When an advertiser chooses a format for a campaign or an ad zone, they are doing so with a specific strategy in mind, which will have a specific impact on their business. By using the Multi-format ad format, advertisers have access to many more ad zone targeting options for their campaigns, resulting in more chances for their business or product to be seen.

Expanded reach: It’s important for advertisers to reach the relevant user at the right time and place. Having both banner and native ad formats available in one ad placement means that Advertisers can reach users they would otherwise miss.

More placement and inventory opportunities: Multi-Format ads allow advertisers the opportunity for their ads to appear in different ad zone placements and inventory that they might not have had access to before.

Conclusion

Are you an ad network or a large publisher wanting to monetize your content using display and native formats? Find out more about Multi-format ads with EXADS fully customizable white-label ad serving solution. Get in touch with us to learn more about how to quickly set them up and start benefiting from them now!

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