Part 3: Ad Layout Best Practices

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A lot of ad unit performance comes down to the actual ad units you choose, and there are lots of them to choose from these days. So, let’s cover some Ad Unit Best Practices.

Number 1, USE STICKY AD UNITS TO MAKE AN IMPACT.

In general, sticky ad units — ads that stay anchored to a portion of the users’ screen as they scroll — are high performers. Think about it: Your viewability is likely to be much higher if the ad follows the user in a non-intrusive way for a while. Compare that to the viewability for an ad that stays put in a single place, where the user can scroll past it in less than half a second.

BOOST PERFORMANCE WITH RAIL UNITS.

Over our years in the digital ad industry, we’ve seen that rail units just have a way of working well for both publishers and advertisers. These are relatively simple ad units that occupy a highly visible place on users’ viewports. They’re elegant and effective — nothing fancy, but they get the job done well.

Bottom rail units stick to the bottom of the user’s screen, centered, while they scroll through a page. The unit should be dynamically injected into your site, and shouldn’t require placement with an ad tag.

Left or right rail units stick to the left or right side of the viewport and remain vertically centered while the user scrolls down the page, without overlapping page content.  The unit should be dynamically injected into your site, and shouldn’t require placement with an ad tag. Another exciting feature about this type of ad unit - it should be able to be dynamically inserted based on screen size to ensure it only shows in instances where it will not overlap content.

You can also use a medium rectangle or skyscraper in your sidebar, and make it sticky! A medium rectangle is a traditional, square or vertically rectangular, banner unit that can be used in both desktop and mobile environments, placed on your site using an ad tag. A unit like this should be able to be set to stay sticky in the sidebar of the page on desktop screens if desired.

Another great sticky unit, corner docked video players are your best bet for consistent video ad placement across various page types. Typically the best user experience across both mobile and desktop devices is a docked video player in the bottom right corner as this often has the least overlap with content on page and stays well out of the way for mobile scrolling with finger tips.

It also plays particularly well with a bottom rail, and both can be served simultaneously without causing a problem to maximize both viewability and revenue.

Often, one of the biggest user experience issues created by corner docked video is choosing a player that is too large. We recommend going with a player size of 300x169 on desktop and 178x100 on mobile, which should maximize revenue without interrupting user experience.

However, if you find, particularly on mobile, that a bottom corner docked video overlaps content, you can always shift to a top right corner dock if it works better with your experience.

Number 3, PAY ATTENTION TO USER BEHAVIOR FOR MOBILE AD PLACEMENT.

As we’ve already alluded to, because mobile is more limited in ad real estate mobile versions of websites can generate highly different UX, you’re going to want to track user behavior to determine where mobile ads should go and what kinds of units they should be.

For example, where do users’ thumbs fall on the screen to start scrolling after your site loads? You won’t want to put an ad right in that spot (to avoid accidental clicks), but what about nearby? Let your mobile users’ behavior choose your ad units and ad placement. 

And, number 4, make sure to INCORPORATE HIGH IMPACT OR INTERACTIVE UNITS.

In general, the more interactive your creatives are, the more advertisers are going to have to pay for them. So, if you’re looking to drive up your CPMs, interactive is the way to go. That means you will want to consider all kinds of gamified units, rewarded video, and similar units.

The units we’ll discuss here are specific to Playwire but should have somewhat similar options with other providers as skins and high impact leaderboards are known across the industry.

Our Flex leaderboard is a premium, full-width ad format that remains in view as the user scrolls through the site. This format can include video and is dynamically injected into your site by our script only when there is a directly sold ad to serve.

A somewhat unique twist on the traditional skin, our Flex Skin unit includes a Flex Leaderboard that sticks to the top of the viewport and dynamically inserts a skin in the left and right margins, or empty areas, of your site. You should have access to some type of site skin unit that has similar functionality.

Another high impact option is a pre-content video ad. Video players, games, or tools on page are often highly-interacted with elements. Use this opportunity to your advantage. Add a pre-content video as a gate to watch any video content, play games, or potentially to use a high-impact tool on page.

A web interstitial unit overlays the screen with a banner ad when the user navigates between pages on your site, in both desktop and mobile environments. The frequency of how often this unit is served will heavily impact user experience. If you are using it, we’d recommend absolutely no more than serving it once every 10 minutes during a user session.

A web interstitial unit overlays the screen with a banner ad when the user navigates between pages on your site, in both desktop and mobile environments. The frequency of how often this unit is served will heavily impact user experience. If you are using it, we’d recommend absolutely no more than serving it once every 10 minutes during a user session.