How to Increase Ad Revenue: Top 15 Strategies for Publishers in 2025
Discover effective strategies to boost your online ad revenue. Learn practical tips that can enhance your business’s profitability. Read the article now!
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As always, change has been afoot in the digital ad landscape, and 2025 is set to be another year of opportunities for publishers. From the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and video content to shifts in ad formats and media partnerships, publishers who keep a finger on the industry's pulse will be best placed to grow their advertising revenue.
Such changes, however, can make it challenging to manage your ad revenue. What are the tried and trusted strategies for growing your ad revenue, and are there ways to capitalize on the latest trends? To make your job easier, we've come up with the top 15 strategies to increase your ad revenue.
Understanding Ad Revenue
Before we review the best strategies, it'll be worth clarifying the basics of ad revenue - that is, what advertising revenue actually is, and how it's calculated. We'll also look at some key metrics that can help you optimize your ad inventory and, therefore, maxmize your total ad revenue.
What is Ad Revenue?
Simply put, ad revenue is the income earned from paid advertisements displayed on a website, app, or social media channel.
How is Ad Revenue Calculated?
Ad revenue is calculated by using one of two metrics: Cost Per Mille (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC).
The CPM model represents the cost paid for 1,000 ad views on a single web page. Using this metric, ad revenue is calculated by dividing the total number of ad impressions by 1,000, then multiplying the result by the agreed CPM rate.
The CPC model, in contrast, represents the cost for a single click on an ad. With this metric, ad revenue is calculated by dividing the total number of ad clicks by 1,000, then multiplying the result by the agreed CPC rate.
Both metrics are critical to advertising revenue as they indicate the purchasing power of an audience, with CPMs and CPCs, generally, being higher in developed countries than in developing countries.
Other Key Ad Revenue Metrics
While tracking your CPMs or CPCs is pivotal to increasing your ad revenue, monitoring a few other metrics can also help you.
The first, Total Ad Revenue, represents the total income earned from all the advertisements displayed on a website or app. The second, Revenue Per Visitor (RPV), represents the average ad revenue generated per website visitor. As for the average revenue generated per webpage, this is represented by the Revenue Per Page (RPP) metric.
By tracking these metrics, along with your CPMs or CPCs, you'll ensure that you're earning ad revenue as efficiently as possible.
Top 15 Strategies to Increase Ad Revenue in 2025
Now that we've clarified what ad revenue is and how to track it, here are the top 15 strategies for maximizing your ad revenue in 2025 and beyond.
1. Choose Your Target Audience Carefully
The best place to start increasing your ad revenue is with the people your advertisements are aimed at: your audience. After all, all the changes you make to your advertising revenue strategy will, ultimately, amount to nothing if your ads are aimed at the wrong market.
Apart from considering key critera, such as your audience's location, product preferences and other interests, their age bracket should also be factored. This is because if its members are minors, then it's likely that they'll be unable to purchase the products your advertisements are promoting.
2. Choose the Right Niche
Once you've clarified your advertisements' target audience, the next area to check is the niche or sector you're targeting. If you're displaying ads through an ad network, the CPMs or CPCs of your target audience will be determined by supply and demand, and some industries with a high demand will also have a relatively high level of monetization.
The highest ranking sectors include online banking, online education, e-commerce, insurance and cryptocurrency.
3. Improve Content Quality
It seems like a no-brainer, and yet it's surprising how many publishers neglect this point. Like choosing your audience and niche, it's one of the cornerstones of any advertising revenue strategy, so it's critical that you give it proper attention.
Ensuring that your advertisements are of a high quality means that they should embody good search engine optimization (SEO). Good SEO, in turn, includes:
- written content that addresses the audience's needs, which, in turn, includes relevant keywords that are strategically placed throughout an ad
- keywords that, where possible, are often included in searches (high volume) yet do not attract excessive competition
- images that are aligned with written content and that are accompanied by appropriate captions
- where appropriate, the offer of gated content (eg. infographics, ebooks)
- search engine rankings that reflect the page's usefulness to your target audience.
4. Use Different Ad Types and Ad Formats
While good SEO is non-negotiable, so too is the need, where appropriate, to mix up the types and formats of ads. After all, publishers invariably use a variety of channels – websites, social media accounts and blog posts, among many others – so it can only be expected that the advertisements appearing on these channels will also vary accordingly.
Whether ads are text-, image- or video-based, the varieties are myriad: push notifications, banners, interstitials and pop-ups to name just a few. Different types and formats will have different track records across a spectrum of industries, audiences and devices.
Because of this, A/B testing and analyzing performance is critical to ensuring that the right types and formats are targeted at the right audiences. For example, if you audience usually uses mobile phones and other mobile devices, consider using banner or interstitial ads.
Once testing and analysis has been completed, the final mix of formats and types for your ad inventory should, ideally, embody a diverse range. This will not only ensure that the final user experience (UX) of a webpage is as good as it can be, but will also maximize the chances of audiences buying an advertised product. Indeed, it's been reported that consumers who search for a product after seeing a display ad promoting it are 59% more likely to buy it.
5. Use Contextual Advertising
If quality ad content is relevant to an audience's interests, then it follows that contextual advertising should also be incorporated into a publisher's advertising revenue strategy.
Simply put, contextual advertising is a form of advertising in which the advertisements displayed on a website are chosen based on the content of the webpage they appear on. If, for example, a visitor is reading an article about banking, the site's ad network will display ads promoting the latest savings accounts and other financial products from major banks.
Because contextual advertising is not based on a user's browser history but, rather, on the content they're viewing at a given moment, it's less invasive. This betters the chances that audiences will be receptive to any displayed advertisements. Indeed, in one recent study, publishers reported that contextual advertising led to a 25% increase in user browsing time and up to a 15-20% increase in ad revenue.
6. Provide Dynamic Content
Another factor worth considering is the nature of the content that a publisher includes with their advertisements. If ads can be more appealing when they're relevant to the articles or other content they're accompanying, then it follows that that content should also be optimized so that it can complement its accompanying ads.
The best way to do this is to ensure that your non-ad content is dynamic. By this we mean content that affords a degree of interactivity with users: think forums, blogs, vlogs and other similar material.
By ensuring that your audience can, if it wishs, amend the content you're publishing, you'll be ensuring that any ads that accompany it will be primed for potential business.
7. Use Programmatic Advertising
Another area worth focusing on is programmatic advertising. Global spending on programmatic advertising is projected to hit $725 billion by 2026 and, to maximize their revenue potential, publishers should employ automated bidding strategies that focus on the right audience at the right time.
One area of programmatic advertising that is projected to experience significant gains is digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. Just in the US, spending on the DOOH market is forecast to hit $19.08 billion this year, and its expected annual growth rate of 7.12% is projected to lead to a market volume of $25.12 billion by 2029.
Given its focus on outdoor structures and locations such as billboards, bus stations and the sides of buildings, some of the key advantages of this form of advertising are that it has a broad reach and that it's resistent to ad-blockers. Depending on the structure they're displayed on, as well as their location, DOOH advertisements can also constitute a particularly effective form of contextual advertising.
8. Use Video and Rewarded Ads
Video content has become increasingly popular in recent years, and that trend is set to continue during 2025 and beyond. For example, Wyzowl reports that 95% of businesses regard video as an important part of their marketing strategy, with 93% of them claiming that it has given them a good ROI. Such statistics are backed by the latest global figures on digital video ad expenditure, which is now $176.6 billion.
But which video ads should you include in your ad inventory? Among the various types, in-stream ads – those that appear either before, during or after other video content – and out-stream ads – those that appear alongside non-video content, such as articles and other text – appear to be the most promising ones. Both types are known for their premium CPMs, and they could contribute to over 70% of total ad revenue in 2025.
Rewarded advertisements, which provide audiences with prizes and other benefits in exchange for viewing them, are another type worth using. They're expected to drive a 30% increase in revenue in 2025.
9. Overcome Ad Blockers
Ad blockers are a problem you'll need to overcome if you're going to increase ad revenue. According to Statista, 763.5 million internet users use ad blockers to stop ads appearing, making them a significant obstacle in any ad strategy.
There are two ways to deal with them. The first is to ask audiences to turn off their ad blockers while they're on your website, app or channel. This, however, could backfire, as audiences may choose to leave your site regardless of how interesting its content may be. And this, in turn, could affect your site's Google ranking.
The second, more viable, option is to use native ads. Popular because of their ability to blend in with other content, native ads will not only afford your audience a more pleasant viewing experience but, more specfically, will also add to the overall benefit they gain from your content. For instance, if your business is a B2B organization, you could display a native ad that promotes a company's B2B digital services on a page that discusses the latest B2B marketing trends.
10. Optimize Your Number of Ads
Even the most carefully crafted ads, free from ad blockers, will be compromised if they're jostling with too many other ads on a web page. An article, video or app that's crowded with ads may, at best, discourage your audience from exploring your site; and at worst, compel them to suddenly leave.
As if those likelihoods weren't enough, having too many ads on a page may also alert Google to a possible violation of its Webmaster guidelines. And needless to say, most advertisers wouldn't want to share their ad space in a crowded environment.
To avoid an excess in your ad inventory, it's critical that you optimize the amount of them on your site. The ideal number will depend on the size, form and length of your ads, length being especially important if you're displaying video ads.
The nature of the content your ads are accompanying will also be a factor. Remember that, in the marketing world, less can often be more so, when in doubt, it's best to err on the side of caution. Google Analytics can be helpful for checking the optimization of ads.
11. Optimize Ad Sizes
Another area that warrants careful attention is ad sizes. At first glance, larger ads may seem ideal for generating online ad revenue. But it's worth remembering that your audience's interests should come first, and many site visitors may not appreciate visiting web pages where there are more ads than the content they're interested in.
This could be especially the case for users of mobile devices, given that, in the US, over 60% of organic Google searches are from mobile devices. In short, the user experience your audiences have of your website should be your first priority.
For horizontal ads, the medium rectangle (300 x 250 pixels) is typically used for horizontal banner ads. In contrast, a square ad of either 250 x 250 or 200 x 200 pixels can work well on both desktops and mobile devices. For vertical ad spaces, which are particularly ideal for mobile phones, Google Ads recommends the following sizes: 300 x 200, 300 x 100, 300 x 50, 250 x 250 and 200 x 200 pixels.
12. Apply Flexible Pricing
Like other popular products, the demand for – and, therefore, the price of – ads usually peaks at certain times of the year, such as Christmas, Black Friday and Valentine's Day, and then falls at other times. Such seasonality can make it challenging for publishers to earn a consistently decent revenue from their ads, especially if they rely on ads as their primary revenue source.
One way for publishers to manage the peaks and troughs of ad revenue over the long-term is to apply yield optimization. This strategy involves using data analysis and optimization techniques to maximize the revenue from ads that are performing well and, in doing so, minimize the losses that may be experienced with other, more poorly performing, ads.
13. Choose the Correct Ad Placements
Low ad revenue can sometimes be attributed to poor ad placement. To address this, check whether an ad is easily visible on your site, as well as whether it can be easily clicked on. Ad space in the middle of a web page's content, below the navigation bar or within white space, tends to perform better than other parts of a web page.
14. Check Your Website Speed
Another cause of low ad revenue can be a website's slow loading speed, which usually occurs when a site is overloaded with content, including paid digital ads. If not resolved, such a situation can lead to poor UX for the site's visitors and, ultimately, a poor Google ranking for the site. Indeed, as Hubspot reports, an ecommerce site that loads within a second is likely to convert 2.5 more visitors than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
One solution to the problem can be lazy loading. This technique involves digital ads only being loaded onto a web page when a visitor scrolls down to the space on the page that's been allocated for the relevant ad. In other words, if a visitor doesn't scroll down to the relevant part of the page, they won't see the ad in question, as it won't have been loaded yet.
Apart from enhancing the UX of a given website, the other benefit of this approach is that it executes and monitors ad visibility carefully. Because ads are only loaded when their allocated space appears in a visitor's viewport, no ads are wasted, which means that advertisers only pay for the digital ads that have actually been displayed to their intended audience.
15. Track Ad Performance
Finally, while all of the approaches we've mentioned will, in one way or another, help you to grow your ad revenue, the only way to keep your ad strategy on track is to monitor your ads' general performance.
In some cases, this may mean just changing the order of your ads; in others, it could involve more substantial changes, such as amending the ads and shifting their placements or maybe switching to another ad network. It could also mean optimizing your ad inventory by adding more ads to your website or app, including the number of units you have in any one session.
As always, keeping a finger on the pulse is critical, and being flexible enough to make adjustments when necessary.
Final Thoughts
To manage the headwinds and capitalize on the tailwinds of the everchanging digital ad world, it's critical for publishers to get the basics right, such as clarifying their target audiences and industries, and ensuring that the SEO of their ads is where it should be.
But other areas also play a key role in generating ad revenue. Ensuring that an appropriate mix of ads is used will help ensure that audiences enjoy their UX on publishers' sites, as will employing other strategies, such as contextual advertising, contingency plans for ad blockers and being careful with the number and placement of ads.
By employing these measures and tracking their ads' performance, publishers will ensure that they maximize their revenue and, in doing so, will also be ready to reap the benefits of opportunities yet to come in the digital ad landscape.
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