Now that the sun has finally come out in the northeast US two months after the start of spring, it seems like a good time to finally get around to spring cleaning. Your Prebid instance might also benefit from a virtual dusting as well.
Software usually gets updated for one of two reasons: new functionality or bug fixes — and Prebid’s releases certainly fit within this norm. With a new version being released every week, it might not make sense for your org to constantly be updating, but if your Prebid version is so old that you cannot remember the last time you updated — it might be time to visit https://github.com/prebid/Prebid.js/releases and look at all the new stuff that has been added.
In addition to remaining somewhat current on the Prebid version, giving your Prebid instance a little TLC might also help improve your monetization efforts:
- When was the last time you added new bidding partners? Has it been status quo in bidding partner land, or have you tested out any newer folks? You might be happy with the results if you do.
- How many bidders do you have on the page? If you have not added more than four or five partners on the page, try going up to eight or ten and see what really happens.
- How long are your timeouts on the page? Anecdotes and asterisks always abound when this topic comes up, but if you can increase your CPM by 20% by increasing your timeout by 300ms, would you do it? Run an A/B test and find out!
According to Prebid, more bidders and longer timeouts lead to two certainties: higher CPMs and more asterisks, the first and most important of which is “your mileage may vary” — so run tests and gather data from your site and then make an informed decision about what is best for you.
And one final spring cleaning idea is to consider optimizing the ad slots that you submit for each round of bidding. If your footer ad slot is sent out for bidding along with the leaderboard ad, then please separate them and submit that footer request when the reader has scrolled below the fold. Not only will bidding partners respond faster with less slots in each round, but your CPMs should increase as well.