The online publishing industry has experienced a challenging 2023 thus far, with inflation and slowing economic growth hurting advertisers’ budgets.
This has led to CPMs falling across the board, and in some cases, leading to news sites and other content sites laying off journalists and writers.
However, if you own a small-to-medium sized content site, there are some tools which can help you improve your earnings by optimizing your ad setup.
In this article, we outline two tools – Google Ad Manager & AEK AdTech – that publishers can use to beef up their website’s CPM.
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager (GAM) is an effective tool for publishers of all sizes, as it allows you to easily integrate direct/premium banners into your site.
These types of ads can pay a considerably higher CPM than more typical programmatic ads, but they are generally only suitable to publishers who are large enough to be of interest to advertisers negotiating on such a basis.
GAM is free to use, and although the interface is quite intuitive, some publishers may struggle to set up and monitor campaigns initially.
AEK AdTech
AEK AdTech is an ad optimization agency, meaning they help publishers maximize their earnings from their current website traffic by making changes to their ad setup.
Most of their paid services are only suitable to large content sites, as the cost isn’t justified on a site generating just a few hundred thousand monthly pageviews, but they do have a free, ad network recommendation service which is great for publishers of all sizes.
This service simply consists of AEK AdTech using their pool of data on dozens of different ad networks to recommend the best ad network to your site, depending on its size, niche, and other things.
By switching to a better suited ad network, publishers of all sizes can significantly increase their CPM and monthly earnings – sometimes by over 100%.
Conclusion
While advertiser demand is constantly changing – and consequently affecting publishers’ CPMs and earnings – they are several things you can do to increase your website’s CPM, which in turn will improve its profitability.
You should also keep a close eye on expenditures, and consider cutting back on unnecessary spending at regular intervals.