You can feel safe about your monetization when you’ve put the right content on the right platforms, but maximising profit requires more detailed analytics – which is highly ineffective if you use the wrong metrics. Some numbers work better on a larger scale, while the others are important as stand-alone metrics.
First of all, it is crucial for publishers to define what they are searching for when choosing metrics to concentrate on. There are two key questions publishers have to ask themselves to define these metrics.
Number one: “Will this help us to get a picture that can lead to an efficient strategy?” Analytics is not only the review of metrics, but also their preparation; these two things are equally important in making good analytics.
The second question is “Can we accurately measure our performance with this?” Numbers like eCPM can be seen out of context, and usually these results do not accurately reflect a site’s advertising performance.
The only way to create a more or less adequate performance picture is to use a variety of metrics together. Now let’s define these metrics.
Visits, Average Session Time, Pageviews Per Session
These metrics create a picture of user behaviour, through which you can determine where, when and how people use your site.
Visits – is a good metric to define what your publication’s reach is and how it changes over time.
Average session time and pageviews are a nice representation of what your visitors do on your site.
Low numbers for these metrics demand a reconsideration; you may rethink how your site pushes its users to continue visiting other pages of your site – navigation and similar content can be changed, for example.
Ad performance
Knowing your ads’ performance is extremely important in measuring your site’s performance. Pay attention to your fill rate and how the publisher’s inventory meets the demand. Adsterra provides you with 100% fill rate so that it will never happen that the ad is not served and you lose impressions and clicks.
eCPM and CPC
Through these metrics, the publisher can understand with the value of different ad units. Estimated cost per thousand impressions (eCPM) is used to refer to revenue per thousand impressions. Here is how it is calculated:
total cost
eCPM = —————– * 1,000
impressions
CPC (cost per click) is the amount a publisher receives when user clicks on an impression and as such, quantifies the value of their ad spaces.
The best way to choose the right KPIs is to emphasise the fact that the more people interfere with your site, the easier it is to find out where your weak points are and how to adapt. At Adsterra we deliver accurate data on your ad performance, that you can be sure to rely on when you’re planning your next steps in making your site better and generating more revenue.
