Selling Ad Space: Tips and How to Find Quality Advertisers

· 7 min read
Selling Ad Space: Tips and How to Find Quality Advertisers

Settling for selling advertising space to just anyone? Bad idea! The primary goal should be to attract quality advertisers to make your eCPM smile. Regardless of the time or day, advertisers are always on the lookout for the best Ad Space to promote their products and services, so the task of reaching them depends solely on you.

Choosing an effective mediation platform is a strategic move to connect with top advertisers, but there's a lot of work you need to do: optimize your app, study your audience, analyze data, perform real-time measurements, and more. You need to know the waters you're navigating.

To assist you, we've prepared this post to show you how to sell your Ad Space using some tips that have been highly useful for other publishers like you.

Let's start by discussing Ad Space: what it is and why it's important.

The term "Ad Space" refers to the digital space that each publisher has available to display on their website or mobile application. It's a small designated area where an advertisement is placed.

Depending on the characteristics of the Ad Space, it can vary in size and location and is specifically defined by the design and type of medium (in our case, an app) where the advertising is displayed.

For example, some Ad Space includes the famous banners that appear at the top of a website, or the interstitial ads that occupy the entire screen of a mobile application.

As a publisher, you have autonomy over your advertising space. You can decide how to sell it, whether through direct programmatic offers or through real-time auctions (RTB).

Ad Space is extremely important in the world of mobile advertising because it represents the primary source of revenue for publishers. Without Ad Space, no advertiser could showcase their products and services with attractive formats in the digital world.

For this reason, every publisher should strive to keep their inventory optimized and of high quality, finding the perfect balance to keep advertisers and users happy.

Essential Requirements for Success in Selling Your Ad Space

Before putting your advertising space up for sale, there are certain standards you must meet to achieve success. Here are the main ones:

#1 Good Traffic

Having high-quality traffic is vital to attract advertisers and enter various advertising networks. The more traffic you have, the more interested advertisers will be in purchasing space in your inventory.

Some advertising networks have specific requirements, but not all of them. Some may require, for example, a low bounce rate, meaning it should be less than 50%.

Therefore, it's important to regularly review your metrics and be aware of how many active users you have each month. This will help you make preparations when putting your Ad Space up for sale.

#2 Quality Content

If you have an app related to financial services, it's detrimental to have controversial and unethical ads displayed.

One key to success in selling your Ad Space is to stay true to your ethical principles. A recognized and respected brand – let's use McDonald's as an example – will hesitate to buy your Ad Space if they notice that your in-app ad policy is inconsistent.

To attract quality advertisers, you need to have quality space. It's as simple as that.

#3 An App That Prioritizes UI and UX Design

Before worrying about reaching qualified advertisers, you should focus on designing an app that is user-friendly, with attractive designs that prioritize the user experience. This will make every person view each advertisement naturally, in a non-invasive format.

Also, work on the loading speed of ads and ensure that latency doesn't cause inconvenience to users. There are advertising formats that contribute significantly to this effort. Work with those formats!

Your app should also be available in official app stores like Google Play Store or Apple Store and comply with the policies of these platforms.

#4 Comply with Usage and Security Policies

There are policies within the digital advertising industry that you cannot overlook. One of them is data protection and privacy, as well as adhering strictly to the advertising content policies established by advertisers.

Before a premium advertiser purchases space, they establish minimum conditions for displaying their advertising. This includes demographic data, locations, niches, device types, formats, and more. Algorithms will search the auctions for offers that best fit their needs.

Although you have control over your inventory (after all, you are the publisher), you should be realistic with buyers and show them your engagement metrics.

Valuable Tips for Finding Quality Advertisers – How to Sell Your Ad Space

Get to Know Your Audience in Depth

This is a fundamental principle that guides any advertising strategy. If you don't understand how your most loyal audience behaves, all your strategies will be generic and ineffective.

Collect demographic data about your audience and check how they interact with your app and the ads within it. What's their click-through rate? Do you know how much time they spend in your app? How often do they use it during the day?

All this information can be provided to premium advertisers. They may share the same interests and see your Ad Space as an excellent platform to reach their desired audience. Beyond that, understanding your audience data is crucial if you plan to negotiate in private marketplaces (PMP), where the success of any strategy depends on the data you have.

Integrate an Ad Mediation that Connects You to Top Advertisers

There are many mediation platforms in the market, but only some of them fit your niche and goals. For example, platforms like Unity focus on monetizing creatives for video games (rewarded videos, playable ads, etc.), so you might not feel comfortable using it.

Therefore, the advice we give you is to integrate a mediation platform with a lightweight, practical, and intuitive SDK. The platform should be transparent, connect with multiple Ad Networks, and work with the most attractive and innovative ad formats in the market.

In addition, its algorithms should help you connect with quality advertisers to maximize the value of your advertising space.

Contact Agencies and Advertisers Directly

Real-time auctions are just one source of monetization; you also have the option to negotiate direct deals.

There are agencies and advertising networks that have strong relationships with premium advertisers. It's valid to connect with them and show them data about your app (real and transparent figures). This way, you can potentially secure direct agreements, which, as you know, offer better remuneration than auctions.

It's also a smart move to approach buyers directly and understand their needs. Put yourself in their shoes and think about how your Ad Space can contribute to their viewing objectives.

Offer a Variety of Ad Formats

Another key to successfully selling your Ad Space is offering a variety of formats. It's not good to only offer banner spaces when there are advertisers looking to include native or interstitial ads.

For example, at Wortise, we offer innovative formats like geosmart video, native ads, banners (in all sizes), and rewarded ads. We've found that these interactive ads contribute to higher Click Through Rates (CTR).

According to Adpushup, ads with dimensions of 1280 x 720 are seen by 90% of app users. Therefore, interstitial ads are currently one of the favorites.

Set Competitive Prices

Regardless of the monetization source you choose, try to establish competitive prices so that buyers choose you. It's great to have good numbers in your app, but you might not be the only one. There are other publishers with excellent metrics who still choose to set realistic prices to attract quality advertisers.

If you want to attract premium advertisers with direct offers, set flexible negotiation terms and create customized advertising packages based on their needs.

Once they choose you and see positive results, you can consider renegotiating the agreement. The idea is to establish solid and long-lasting relationships; remember that one customer can lead to another.

Promote Yourself

Believe it or not, some advertisers seek information about a particular digital medium (website or app) before deciding to use its advertising spaces. Therefore, it's not a bad idea to promote yourself as a publisher.

Do it on forums, websites, and social media. Let people know what topics you cover, the number of active users, click-through rates, demographic data, and more.

What Should a Mediation Platform Have to Help You Sell Your Ad Space to Premium Advertisers?

As you've read in this text, it's not about choosing just any mediation platform to get by. You should join one whose technology is designed to provide the best possible performance through connections with premium advertisers.

Furthermore, a suitable mediation platform offers personalized support to fine-tune strategies and optimize earnings, a dashboard with real-time performance data, and the ability to connect with a wide range of ad networks.

For example, at Wortise, we help you mediate with over 100 Ad Networks where high-quality advertisers like Netflix, Coca-Cola, Mercado Libre, and Ford converge. We easily connect you to these types of advertisers thanks to our advanced algorithms and first-party data technology, which involves collecting user data firsthand.

Additionally, the technological systems of ad mediation should be useful for detecting the most attractive offers and succeeding in a highly competitive environment.

However, despite the importance of ad mediation, there are things that are beyond its control. Its performance depends on the optimizations you apply to your mobile application and other factors:

  • Apply appropriate segmentation to adjust ads. You can do this manually or leave it all to the algorithms.
  • Learn about the mechanisms they use to mediate and reach advertisers.
  • Evaluate their payment system and terms. This will help you set short-term monetization goals for selling your advertising spaces.
  • Ensure that their SDK is complete and easy to integrate.
  • Ask if they offer personalized support to address any issues in your advertising space selling tactics.

Connect with Premium Advertisers and Maximize the Value of Your Ad Space with Wortise, the #1 Ad Mediation in LATAM

Hello, Publisher! You have the enormous challenge of selling your advertising spaces to buyers who can help you achieve a higher eCPM every month. Fortunately, you're not alone on this journey. You have Wortise!

Created by publishers for publishers, Wortise has the largest mobile marketplace in LATAM with commercial presence in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina, and even Spain.

We help you increase your earnings as a publisher with our advanced ad network platform with over 100 Ad Networks.

We provide personalized support, the highest eCPM in the market, and guidance on strategies to maximize your profits.