Advertising is an essential component of any publisher’s digital business. Finding the ideal ad practices that maximize revenue, on the other hand, is a difficult issue. Publishers frequently experiment with numerous ad types, sizes, and placements in order to determine what works best, sometimes relying just on their intuition. Unfortunately, this method lacks clear, empirical data on what works. That is where Ad Testing comes into play.
Ad testing, which is a type of A/B testing, comes to the rescue. It entails contrasting the performance of two or more variants of a single element, such as ad kind, size, or location. This post will go over six different sorts of ad tests that publishers may use to optimize their advertising strategy.
Ad Format Testing
• What to test: Which ad type/format achieves the highest Click Through Rate (CTR)?
• How to test: Experiment with alternative ad types on a low-traffic website. For example, if a display ad is placed in the sidebar, compare the CTR with a text ad.
Ad Size Testing
• Which ad size/dimension receives the most impressions?
•How to Perform the Test: Test different ad sizes, such as leaderboard (728×90) and small rectangular (300×250), and see which one performs best based on the style of your page.
Ad Placement Testing
• What to test: Which ad placement/spot has the highest CTR.
• How to test: Experiment with different ad locations, such as relocating advertising closer to the primary content or placing them above the fold, and track how the CTR changes.
Ad Layout Testing
- What to test: Which ad format, size, and placement combinations yield the most money.
- How to test: Create variations of whole ad layouts and assess their performance on a website level using ad layout testing tools.
User Device Testing
- What to test: Which ad variation generates the most impressions/CTR across all devices.
- How to test: Use tools like Google Analytics to track device-specific traffic and test alternative ad layouts and sizes on the most popular devices among your consumers.
Ad Color Testing
- What to test: Which text ad presentation has the highest CTR.
- How to test: Experiment with different text ad colors and styles and compare their CTR.
Some More Testing Considerations
• Webpage Layout: Use tools like Optimizely and VWO to ensure your website is optimized for ad testing.
• material Type: Experiment with different forms of material to improve engagement rates.
• Ads by UI: Test ad types, sizes, and placements based on your website’s existing UI.
• Browser/OS: Perform browser-specific ad testing to optimize performance across multiple browsers.
• Ad Networks: Experiment with several ad networks to determine which ones create the most money for your inventory.
Types of Ad Testing
– A/B testing: This feature enables you to construct a main Control Unit and a Variation to test against.
– Multivariate testing: Allows you to test more than two variants at the same time.
Why Ad Testing is Advantageous
- Increases ad revenue: Successful testing assists publishers in increasing CPM/CTR.
- Provides insights: Data comparison between variations provides useful insights.
- Prevents banner blindness: Testing different ad styles and placements helps to prevent banner blindness.
- Access to actionable data: Testing provides access to data and insights that can be used to make educated decisions.
- Improved control: Different types of ad testing allow for better monitoring and management of data and decisions.
- Efficient: Automation technologies improve the efficiency of ad testing.
Bad Ad Testing Habits to Avoid
– Be patient: Allow enough time for testing.
– Avoid over-optimization by testing one thing at a time to see which test leads to success.
– Think about the user experience: Ensure that testing does not interfere with the user experience.
– Be flexible in the face of change: Remember that what worked in the past may not work in the future.
– Avoid haphazardness: Ad tests should not be done blindly; instead, use past data to drive your testing strategy.
-Time is of the essence: To avoid uncertainty, do testing at the appropriate moment.
Conclusion
Testing is an important part of digital advertising that should be the norm rather than the exception. Whether you test manually or with automation technologies, testing allows you to better understand your inventory, enhance ad income, and develop your long-term strategies. Getting started with an ad testing plan is a lot easier with the support of tools and ad operations pros, allowing you to monitor performance and focus on your growth.
