Businessman holding a magnifying glass over cubes with dollar signs, looking to maximize AVOD yield.
Streaming video advertising is on the upswing. With competition for both ad dollars and ad space increasing, how can providers sell more ad slots for more money to maximize their AVOD yield? The key lies in knowing what impacts AVOD ad revenues and adopting best practices to attract more advertisers at premium rates.
Key Takeaways
AVOD yield is the revenue generated from advertising on streaming video services.
To increase AVOD ad yield, get to know your viewers so you can deliver better content to bigger audiences.
AVOD providers should balance ad load and program length and leverage server-side ad insertion for programmatic advertising and prebidding.
Providers should set reasonable price floors, try to minimize piracy, optimize viewability, and tailor ads for mobile viewers.
What is AVOD Yield?
AVOD yield is the revenue generated from streaming video advertising. According to Digital TV Research, global AVOD ad revenues hit $41 billion in 2022 and are projected to more than double to $91 billion by 2028. Almost half (41%) of this revenue is generated in the U.S.
To remain successful, ad-supported streaming video services are constantly looking for ways to maximize their AVOD yield. There are two primary ways to optimize ad yield:
Increase ad fill rate (sell more ads)
Increase CPM (increase ad prices)
Making one move can and often will negatively impact the other option. For example, increasing CPM can result in fewer ads being sold – even if the aggregate revenues are higher. The key is to achieve the combination of fill rate and CPM that optimizes total revenues.
10 Best Practices for Maximizing Streaming Video Ad Yield
As noted, streaming video ad revenues are impacted by both the number of ads sold and the price fetched for those ads. The following 10 best practices can help companies maximize their ad yield while retaining and growing their viewer base.
1. Get to Know Your Viewers
The most essential step in any advertising or marketing endeavor is to think like the customer. In the world of streaming video, that means getting to know your viewers. The more you know about what your viewers like, what they watch, and what they do when they’re not watching, the better you can match potential advertisers with available audiences and ad space. When you can better match advertisers and viewers, you can more effectively monetize that relationship. You’ll also be able to produce more appealing content for your core audience, which will help drive viewership and corresponding ad rates.
How do you get to know your viewers? AVOD providers collect a wealth of data about their audience. That viewer data can be collected with other data about those customers – their online purchases, interests, and behaviors – to provide detailed insights into specific user types. Sharing this demographic and behavioral data with potential advertisers helps them better target their advertising campaigns.
How AVOD offers data-driven ad targeting.
2. Attract Bigger Audiences with Quality Content
The more viewers who watch a given program, the higher ad rates you can charge. This argues heavily in favor of providing stronger content to streaming audiences. The content can be evergreen or newly produced, as long as it garners popular appeal. While niche programming can attract valuable targeted audiences for specific advertisers, providing content with a wide appeal attracts larger viewership numbers – and the more viewers, the higher potential ad rates.
Providing a constant stream of high-quality content also fosters viewer loyalty. You’ll keep more viewers for all your content if they know you’ll always have something new and interesting for them to watch.
3. Balance Ad Load with Content-Length
Maxing out ad load is a surefire way to turn off viewers and diminish the value of your available ad time. A survey by Hub Entertainment Research suggests that streaming viewers expect no more than five ads in a program – and are likely to pay less attention if there are more ads shown.
You need to program just enough ads to maximize revenue without causing viewers to switch channels. You also need to make sure that the ad load aligns with the content length. Too many ads in a short program can hamper the viewer experience.
4. Leverage Server-Side Ad Insertion
Server-side ad insertion (SSAI), also known as dynamic ad insertion, is a way to seamlessly insert advertisements into streaming video content. It intercepts content from the AVOD providers and inserts targeted ads into the stream. SSAI enables programmatic advertising (discussed next) and real-time ad decisioning. It also enables microtargeted ads, for which providers can charge higher rates.
How server-side ad insertion works.
5. Embrace Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to closely target advertising to specific viewers. Real-time bidding streamlines the ad buying process and enhances ad personalization, leading to higher ad rates. It also increases fill rates for providers, further optimizing ad yield.
How programmatic advertising works.
6. Utilize Prebidding
Programmatic advertising also enables prebidding, which can dramatically increase ad yield. Prebidding lets AVOD providers offer ad inventory to several supply-side platforms (SSPs) simultaneously. (SSPs are automated services that allow streaming services to sell ad space to multiple ad exchanges.) This typically increases the number of bids for an ad slot, potentially raising its price.
7. Set Reasonable Price Floors
To avoid selling ad space at rock-bottom prices, set price floors for programmatic bids. However, avoid setting price floors too high as that might drive away potential advertisers, leaving ad space unsold. Set reasonable bidding floors to attract more bidders and increase fill rates.
8. Fight Content Piracy
You can’t sell ad space based on viewers who pirate your content. Implement strict security measures to minimize unauthorized viewing, ensuring an accurate count of all viewers when setting your ad rates.
9. Optimize Ad Viewability
Do the ads you serve always get viewed? Optimizing viewability is key to viewer satisfaction and the ability to maximize ad rates and ad yield. Use available technology to ensure all ads get served with minimal delay and video quality issues, such as rebuffering, don’t interfere with ad viewing.
10. Optimize Your Ads for Mobile Viewing
A significant number of users watch streaming video on smartphones and other mobile devices. Make sure that the ads you serve are optimized for viewing on small mobile screens. That means shorter ads (mobile viewers have shorter attention spans), ads that consume less bandwidth, and ads that look just as good when viewed in portrait mode.
Turn to Penthera to Maximize AVOD Ad Yield
Penthera offers several solutions to optimize AVOD yield. Our 2nd Look solution enables real-time ad decisioning, which delivers faster ad startup times and increases ad yield. PlayAssure preloads video content, including ad content to decrease rebuffering and video quality issues. And Penthera Download for AVOD enables quick and easy video downloads to mobile viewers, including mobile advertising. When you want to maximize your streaming video ad yield, turn to the AVOD experts at Penthera.
Contact Penthera today to learn more about maximizing AVOD ad yield.
