Publishers Pull Ad Inventory From Programmatic Markets to Protect Ad Prices
Source: STAQ
“In no way do I want to drop my floors to 25 cents because I don’t want crappy ads coming.”
Publishers have been adjusting their floor prices and increasing the minimum price at which an impression can be sold. Unfortunately, the lower the ad prices fall the higher the chance that it falls to undesirable advertisers. As demand has fallen, publishers are attempting to keep a supply in balance and get ahead of the game.
Some publishers are resorting to drastic measures such as reducing inventory in the efforts to prevent ad prices from devaluing their inventory long term.
What will that look like? Using ad slots to push internal subscription programs or potentially eliminated ad slots? Buzzfeed has jumped on the bandwagon and begun the process of removing display ads that receive lower viewability scores.
The average US Display ad CPM in an open auction has fallen from a high of $1.34 on March 1, to $.90 by May 3. While the average CPM has rebounded since bottoming out at $0.83 on April 8 the future is still full of uncertainty.
Mobile App Push Notification Open Rates Up 22%
Image: Business of Apps
A recent report revealed that open rates for mobile app push notifications rose 22% during March 2020 driven by the global pandemic leading to widespread lockdown measures.
Based on the analysis of over 2 billion app installs by customer engagement firm Airship, the findings also revealed that nearly 32% of website visits by opt-in users were from direct opens of web notifications during the same time period. Some of the largest jumps in push notification send volume was observed by Media app categories including +43% and +60% open rates.
At the same time, businesses sent more mobile app push notifications +16% and 36% more web notifications during March. Open rates for websites jumped 119% with 88% of web notification direct opens coming from mobile devices. That’s a 10% increase over January and a 42% rise from 2019.
“These trends show increasing marketer reliance and consumer receptivity to in-the-moment notifications, which is positive, but businesses must ensure messaging is helping to streamline operations and orchestrate excellent customer experiences across channels to leverage as much from digital as possible in these trying times.” -Brett Caine, CEO of Airship.
Game App Developers Find New Ways To Engage Users
During the Covid-19 pandemic, mobile game developers have refined their apps to meet demand and improve the experience of gamers under lockdown.
New research by GameRefinery took a closer look at these modifications and found that publishers and developers reacted to lockdowns in several ways:
- Raising awareness and notifying users (e.g. Hero Wars)
- Adding free gifts (e.g. in-game currency) (e.g. RAID: Shadow Legends)
- Extending events and rolling out more playable content (e.g. Candy Crush Saga)
- Cooperating with partners and building long-term COVID-19 campaigns (e.g. Empires & Puzzles)
- Major gameplay and balance fixes to location-based games to encourage social distancing (e.g. Pokemon Go)
