Publisher question: How can I increase my website’s eCPMs?
Cost Per Mille (CPM) is a pricing model in digital advertising where Advertisers pay a set amount for every 1,000 times their ad is displayed (an impression) on a webpage. The “Mille” comes from the Latin word for “thousand” and is a highly effective way for advertisers to make an impression. If you are a Publisher wondering how to increase revenues with eCPMs on your platform, read on for our Publisher best practices!
How does ExoClick calculate my earnings?
Our platform operates on a real-time bidding system, where advertisers bid in real-time for the traffic they want to receive. Your earnings are calculated using eCPMs (effective Cost Per Mille), which reflect the combined value of all pricing models used by our advertisers.
The eCPMs for your ad zones may increase or decrease depending on the quality of your traffic. Advertisers will raise their bids if your traffic converts well, or stop bidding if it doesn’t. Since ExoClick is a self-serve platform, we do not intervene or make manual adjustments.
For this reason, we strongly encourage our publishers to continuously improve the quality of their traffic, enhance their site content, and invest in SEO to attract more unique users. Advertisers are ultimately looking for conversions, which can only come from genuine, engaged users, and they’re willing to pay more for such traffic.
For more details on how your earnings are calculated, please refer to our documentation: Calculating your earnings.
Best practices for Publishers: How to increase revenues with eCPMs
Here are some recommendations for our Customer Success experts on how to boost revenue with eCPMs:
- Monitor and Maintain Your Traffic Quality: CTR (Click-Through Rate) is a key indicator of traffic quality. It directly impacts the average eCPMs of your ad zones and overall revenue. Review your ad zones in the Admin Panel weekly. If you spot any ad zone with a consistently low CTR (0%), consider disabling it or testing a different format in that zone.
A site with a large amount of quality content and the right proportion of advertising will be more effective than just a placeholder site for ads. Excessive advertising can actually have the opposite effect on your eCPMs, so make sure there is a balance between content and advertising. Remember, we favour traffic quality over quantity.
- SEO & Audience Targeting: Driving Quality and Relevant Traffic: Strong SEO is essential to attract quality, relevant visitors to your site. By creating valuable, well-structured content that follows SEO best practices, your site will rank higher in search engines, bringing in users who are more engaged and more likely to interact with ads.
Equally important is tailoring your site content for your audience: Target the right demographics and geos for your niche. For example, if most of your traffic comes from Tier 3 countries, it’s beneficial to tailor your site content to better resonate with users from those regions. Additionally, if a publisher’s current focus is on Tier 3 or Tier 2 geos, the next step is to diversify content and gradually attract Tier 1 traffic. This usually involves offering content in multiple languages and cross-promoting with other publishers who already have the targeted Tier traffic.
- Try different ad formats: Incorporate different ad formats on your website to increase demand for your ad zones. Try Banners, Popunders, Native, or Video Sliders as they are very successful when boosting engagement.
Video ad formats are particularly powerful in delivering higher CTRs thanks to their ability to capture user attention through engaging and interactive content. Potential revenue increases for each video format are as follows:
- In-Stream (Pre-roll & Post-roll): Up to 15%
- Video Slider: Around 5%
- Outstream: Approximately 3%
We also recommend all Publishers use Multi-Format ads whenever possible, as they have proven especially effective in boosting impressions, bidding values, and overall revenue—major publishers report estimated revenue increases of 10–15%.
- Ad Placement is key: Place ads in high-visibility areas. Zones above the fold or within content often perform better, as they are visible immediately without the need to scroll, making them one of the first things users see when the page loads. It’s also important to adapt your monetization strategy separately for Desktop and Mobile because user behavior and ad performance differ significantly between these devices.
Use Multi-Format ads! This format allows multiple banner sizes and native layouts to rotate within the same placement, which creates increased bidding competition between Native advertisers and Banner Advertisers trying to win the zone. Not only does this make the multi-format ad placement available to more Advertisers, but it also increases your eCPMs because the ad zone is now more competitive.
Recommended placements for Multi-Format ad zones:
There are many zones you can test, but we recommend starting with the Header and the Footer to see how they perform.
- Optimize the user experience: Use Frequency Capping to limit how often the same ad is shown, preventing ad fatigue and maintaining high user engagement. Additionally, ensure your site loads quickly and offers a clean, responsive design. A fast, user-friendly site encourages visitors to stay longer and interact more with ads. For more details, please refer to our FAQ on Page loading speed.
- Site structure and template: Explore leading websites in your niche to gather ideas on effective SEO practices and ad placements. Build your site using reliable templates from trusted platforms like WordPress to ensure a professional design and strong technical foundation.
More monetization tips to increase revenues with eCPMs
Once you have looked into the best practices above, there are some small tweaks in your settings that can make a big difference to your eCPM revenue!
- Ad Refresh: Enable our Ad Refresh feature, which will allow banners to automatically reload after a set time while the user remains on your page.
- Frequency capping: Implementing frequency capping can help maximize user engagement and boost your earnings. Check out this case study to see how publishers increased their Popunder revenue with this simple adjustment, and this case study for in-stream ads.
- Using the Popunder inline code can significantly boost your earnings and eCPMs, while also allowing automatic Adblock bypass.
- Implementing NeverBlock: We provide our approved publishers with an ad-block solution called NeverBlock. NeverBlock helps you bypass multiple ad blockers to ensure your advertisements are displayed reliably.
- Keyword passing: Send us keywords to enable better traffic categorization and provide advertisers with improved targeting options.
- Native Video Thumbnails: Native ad is well known for delivering high CTR because it blend seamlessly with your content. This recently released feature allows your native ads to appear as regular video thumbnails, driving strong user engagement.
- Direct links: Direct Link is a high-performing format designed to engage users with trending products, like “Games! 🎮” for maximum conversions. If you’re interested in monetizing with this format, feel free to contact our Customer Success Team.
If you have any questions about how to increase revenues with eCPMs, or you simply want our team of experts to review your zone setup, get in touch with your Account Manager or with our Customer Success team here! If you are not yet using ExoClick for your ad placements, contact us or sign up here!
