Media24, a leading publishing and media company in Africa which offers a range of audiences available through traditional and programmatic transaction types supported by its award-winning ad operations team.
Trying and testing new ad formats within its network had been risky due to its large online presence, as a positive impact on revenue was not guaranteed. To overcome these hurdles, Media24 – already a Google Ad Manager customer – participated in the Formats Experiment beta, and tested a web format on a percentage of traffic invaluable.
Experimenting with new formats to assess potential revenue
Google Ad Manager Formats Experiment enabled Media24 to experiment with new ad formats and assess their potential revenue. Using real-time data, Media24 tried the new ad, giving it an overall view of the revenue impact. This enabled the publisher to make a stronger case for implementing new formats, such as high impact ads, across the site.
Google Ad Manager's data allowed Media24 to see the direct influence on impact on user experience and the revenue potential are important considerations for Media24 when defining ads & placements.
With Google Ad Manager Formats Experiments, Media24 gained more control over where, when and how much of the ad was displayed, allowing them to trial the ad for user experience and, consequently, additional revenue.
Web Interstitial positively impacts daily open auction revenue
Google Ad Manager Formats Experiment enabled Media24 to make a decision on not only if they should include the new web format that was tested, but also where to use it. Using Google Ad Manager’s Format Experiments, it split the experiment 70/30, where 70% of the inventory was held under control and 30% experienced the Web Interstitial experiment. Encouragingly, in 4 out of every 5 experiments conducted, the Web Interstitial positively impacted overall daily open auction revenue by an average of 8.2%. Media24 observed a 5x higher CPM from the interstitial over standard display banners from the open auction.
With such a large and diverse network of readership across its sites, it was paramount that Media24 gathered information to decide which of these sites can have the tested ad format versus those that did not resonate well with the readers