Year-end holidays tend to come along with less traffic and a drop in demand from advertisers as budgets are exhausted. To effectively manage this critical period, publishers need to optimize their ad operations, streamline the campaign’s delivery, and position themselves for a positive start to the next quarter.
Here is a detailed Publisher checklist to prepare for the holiday:
Extend end date for Line Item’s:
Before going on the holidays, ensure that the never ending campaigns such as House Line Items, have their end dates extended into the new year (Dec 2025). This prevents any unintentional stoppages of line items and ensures consistent ad delivery.
Reduce UPR (Unified Pricing Rule) Floors:
During these holidays, usually advertiser demand drops as their budgets are exhausted. So to remain competitive:
- Lower your UPR floors. As per the industry benchmark, consider decreasing the floors by ~20%.
- Adjust further depending on your publisher-specific traffic and demand trends.
This adjustment helps publishers to attract remaining ad spend and prevents unsold impressions.
Accelerate Direct Campaign Delivery (AFAP):
It is observed that traffic often drops during the holidays, which is a challenge for direct campaigns to meet impression goals. To avoid this:
- Switch all direct campaigns to AFAP (As Fast As Possible) delivery settings.
- This ensures campaigns deliver as many impressions as possible within the limited available traffic.
Adjust Ad Refresh Rates
As there will be a drop in traffic, ad requests and impressions are expected to decline. To compensate this you can:
- Consider lowering ad refresh, this can help you to generate more ad requests.
- This small change can help maximize available inventory without impacting user experience.
Automate Reporting and Monitoring
As most of the staff will be on leave and publishers will have limited resources during the holidays, real-time oversight is crucial:
- Implement automated dashboards to monitor revenue, impressions, and ad performance. Publishers can leverage DataBeat’s Ingestion tool that can be used to automate reports.
- Set up alerts for anomalies (e.g., drops in fill rate, revenue for specific inventory) to quickly address any problems. DataBeats CueBeat tools can help with setting up alerts for any such anomalies. Utilize this tool to proactively address potential revenue loss, preventing delays in decision-making
Proactive Outreach to Advertisers
Consider the holidays’ lull to
- Reach out to current advertisers and agencies for some last-minute year-end campaigns/deals.
- Initiate out the talks regarding Q1 campaigns, to pre-allocate budgets at the start of the new year.
This outreach strengthens the relationships between publisher and advertiser and also ensures pipeline continuity for the new year.
Conclusion
Even though there are a few challenges like low traffic and declining ad demand during the holiday season, publishers can manage these issues with careful planning and following the above suggestions/strategies. By adjusting pricing strategies, optimizing delivery settings, and automating operations, publishers can minimize revenue loss and prepare for a strong Q1 comeback.
These easy-to-implement strategies will enable you to enjoy the holiday break without worries, and you will be all set to rock in Q1 2025.
