Passback Tags

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Published by: Heather Carver , Match Media, us
Published on: January 18, 2012

How do you handle passback tags for network partners on your site(s)? The sites I work on use DFP as an ad server and I was wondering how others handle passbacks for partners who do not have 100% fill. In some cases it makes sense to default directly to a 100% fill "catchall" partner but in the event where the CPM for a particular partner is high sometimes it makes sense to send them back into the ad server again to compete on CPM with other partners. Any insight into how others handle this type of situation would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Comments

#1 Kevin Brake - January 19, 2012

Remember when running a daisy chain that it's going to slow down your page loads the longer the chain gets. So what seems like the most monetizable solution, might have a negative effect on the user's experience. Also, it's important to determine the eCPM of ad networks by really looking at the fill rate. An ad network that has a $1.50 eCPM, but a 10% fill rate is not better than an ad network that has a $0.90 eCPM with a 50% fill rate.

#2 Jonathan Brunelle - January 18, 2012

Hello Heather,

Passback is swampy terrain as it becomes complex quickly and you dig in the 2nd and 3rd level.
There are a few things you can do : daisy chaining calls, single ad network with 100% fill rates or calling a DFP site of your own and pit all ad networks and your own CPC on that site.

Daisy chaining your passback impressions is the best way to achieve the hightest ECPM , but it's also the most time consuming method. For any given site, you need to know which ad network has the highest ECPM ( taking into fill rates and discrepancies ) and give this partner the first passback then pass it to the 2nd highest ECPM ad network and so forth.

constantly monitoring your setup and optimizing on a site by site basis becomes time consuming, so you only pick a few high volume sites where you get usually good ecpms from ad networks. This also gets heavier as you ad more remnant partners into the mix.

Sometimes, it's just best to passback to an ad network with 100% fill rate , a catchall partner as you call it,and not worry about it.

At other times it's best to call a DFP site of your own in which there will be house ads, cpc ads as well as a few networks in it ( you wont know on which site this delivered tho )

The important part is to understand your sites and what works best on each of them. There is no easy short cut if you want to manage this yourself.

There are always 3rd party who can manage this for you, as long as you are willing to give a cut away.

Another way would be to make deal with other publishers who could use a fixed amount of inventory to complement their content offering porfolio.

*January is a slow month in the industry from what i've seen for the past 5 years... so your problems may soon end as fill rates will increase soon.

Hopes this helps,
JB

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