More than 50 million domains use AMP framework, according to an estimate from last year. And, in 2019, the share of websites using AMP grew by 70%. So, it’s not a surprise to see more and more publishers adopting the framework. 

But the reason for increasing rate of adoption of AMP isn’t just the benefits. It’s how easy it has become to implement AMP pages. For instance, if you use WordPress as CMS, all you need is a plugin to convert regular web pages to AMP pages. While implementing AMP can boost your ranking on SERPs, feature your stories on Carousel, etc., you also need to consider a far more important aspect — monetization. After all, what’s the point of getting more traffic, if you can translate it into better ad revenue. 

First, Why are AMP Pages Under-monetized?

AMP framework was built to deliver excellent page load speed and to enhance mobile web experience for users. In other words, ads weren’t given much focus in the early days. Due to the restrictions on ad formats and the support for third-party JS, AMP revenues weren’t as great as publishers hoped to be. 

“We want to drive the ecosystem forward, but obviously these things don’t happen overnight. The objective of AMP is to have it drive more revenue for publishers than non-AMP pages. We’re not there yet”.

– Google’s vice president of news, Richard Gingras (WSJ, 2016). 

As the demand for better AMP monetization support increased, AMP came up with Real-Time Config (RTC). To put it simply, RTC enabled publishers to connect up to five demand partners, thus emulating a header bidding setup. But RTC had its limitations.

a. Limited demand:

The reason why header bidding increases the revenue substantially is because of the increased demand. Typically, publishers connect to 7 to 8 SSPs directly to run header auctions. RTC can only connect to five demand partners and if a publisher needs a DMP or wants to have a different vendor, then the number goes down further.

b. No Cookie Syncing: 

Bidders need to identify the users to bid the right price and cookie syncing is the mechanism that helps them to do so. But as AMP allows only one non-visible iframe, user sync can be done for just one of the five demand partners. 

c. Usability:

Every time you need to add or remove a vendor, you need to directly change the ad codes on the AMP pages. It’s like running header bidding without a wrapper. There’s no reporting dashboard either.

d. Technical Complexities:

As AMP content loads instantly, you need to also render ads faster. Even with the server-side setup, publishers find it difficult to do so. You need to have the best, scalable infrastructure and distribution systems in place to load content and ads almost together. 

On all, despite the fact that AMP pages have the capability to get the highest CPMs, AMP articles are still under-monetised when compared to non-AMP articles. So, what’s the solution? 

Meet, Automatad’s AMP Monetization Suite

Automatad, an official AMP Real Time Config (RTC) partner offers the most complete AMP monetization suite that helps publishers to sell their ad impressions at the highest possible eCPM. To put it simply, we enable you to bypass the drawbacks of Real-Time Config with our server-side unified auction management solution. 

How?

a. Unified Auction System:

We utilize Real-Time Config to plug in our server-side header bidding wrapper, which in turn, connects your supply to several demand partners (SSPs). For every request, you’ll get more bids, thereby increasing competition and revenue. As we run ultra low-latency auctions on Prebid server, you don’t have to worry about latency. 

b. Cookie Syncing:

We can enable all the demand partners to sync cookies as usual without letting them slow down the page. So, better match rates and higher bids. 

c. Dashboard:

You’ll get a unified reporting dashboard where you can see the performance of the demand partners and make informed decisions. Most importantly, you can manage the ad stack (partners connected via Automatad) with no development work. 

d. Infrastructure:

Our technology fetches ads faster by separating the ad request from the content and with our scalable cache servers and efficient auction setup, you’ll see better bid rates and eCPM.

And, to ensure instant ad delivery for users regardless of geographical locations, we serve our script via a network of CDNs. Instead of serving scripts from our server, multiple CDNs dispersed across the globe will serve the script based on the user’s location. In addition, our DNS provider uses a global Anycast network that helps us to make use of the nearest data center with the capacity to process the request efficiently. More on how we optimize delivery here. 

That’s not all. We increase the market value and demand for your impressions by:

• Increasing the ad viewability with the help of data loading strategy. We render ads based on the position of the user on the page.
• Increasing the competition with multi size & fluid ads and by enabling top performing demand partners via server-side connections. As we mentioned earlier, we can bring in top SSPs to bid for your impressions including OpenX, AppNexus, and Index Exchange. 
• Maximizing user revenue per session with the timer-based ad refresh.
• Continually optimizing the setup. Get access to technical expertise and dedicated account manager so that you can focus on creating content. 

Want to see the impact on revenue? Here’s how a category leader in arts & entertainment increased their AMP ad revenue by 66% using Automatad’s AMP Monetization Suite.

What’s Next?

AMP will continue to play an important role in your business and it’s time to upgrade the setup to capture the best revenue for your AMP traffic. If you would like to know how Automatad can better your AMP setup, reach out to us today.