What’s Yield Optimisation? - Effective Yield Optimisation for Publishers Explained

You're watching AdThoughts, a video series where we interview industry experts on all things ad tech. In today’s episode, we chat with Brock Munro, Publift’s Head of Yield & Product, about Yield Optimisation (and Management), why it’s important for publishers, and what the best practices surrounding it are.

Yield optimisation is a must-do initiative to ensure the space publishers dedicate to ads on their website generates maximum revenue without compromising user experience. Yield optimisation is the practice of using data analysis and optimisation techniques to increase performance and revenue. It is a strategy used to maximise the value of digital advertising. Publishers can mobilise the practice of yield optimisation to understand the elements or circumstances of these areas and exploit them to maximise efficiency.

Yield management, on the other hand, is a variable pricing strategy that allows ad publishers to sell their ad inventories at the best prices. Yield management results in creating an opportunity for the highest prices of CPM along with maximum fill rate. Working the magic for you, cha-ching!

Read more about effective yield optimisation here.

Key Takeaways

• Yield optimisation is the practice of using data analysis and ad operations strategy to increase the value of your inventory and grow revenue — covering both the supply side (quality of inventory) and the demand side (breadth of bidders competing for it).
• Yield management is a related but distinct concept: it's specifically about variable pricing strategies over time — adjusting floor prices based on user behaviour, demand seasonality, and source of demand to maximise eCPM and fill rate simultaneously.
• Diversifying inventory across direct, PMP, and open auction channels is a proven model: adding scarcity and specificity to higher-priced inventory tiers drives up yield across all buckets.
• Floor price optimisation — setting minimum acceptable prices per impression based on the inventory's value attributes — is a key technique for combating bid shading and ensuring advertisers pay fair market value.
• Experimentation is the secret sauce: every publisher is different, and continuously running small, structured tests on ad unit composition, demand partners, and pricing produces compounding improvements in yield over time.
• Advanced publishers should look at geo-based demand stacks, native and video formats, rich media creatives, and strategic use of First Look pricing tiers inside their ad server to extract yield that standard setups leave on the table.

What is yield optimisation, and how would you explain it to a new publisher?

Naomi: Welcome to another episode of AdThoughts, where we dive into the world of adtech by picking the brains of our expert team members. Today we're taking a look at effective yield optimisation for publishers. Before that, onto some introductions — I'm Naomi from Publift, an award-winning adtech company based right here in Sydney. We help global publishers monetise their content and improve their revenue. Today I have Brock Monroe with me, our Head of Product, who oversees our suite of innovative products. You may recognise him from some of our older videos — he's a true Publift OG with a wealth of knowledge about all things adtech. Say hello, Brock.

Brock: Hello everyone, and thanks Naomi for having me on.

Naomi: Thank you for taking the time to have a chat with us today, Brock. If I was a smaller publisher and I'm still pretty new to adtech and just learning how to optimise my website, how would you explain what yield optimisation is to me?

Brock: Yeah. Yield optimisation is the practice of using data analysis and ad operations strategy to increase the value of your inventory, to grow your revenue. In short, it is a strategy used to maximise the value of digital advertising. Remember that advertisers are always trying to achieve the highest return on investment for all the ad impressions that they buy. While small publishers can test a variety of strategies prior to scaling, as the brand grows, managing and optimising advertising yield becomes increasingly complex. As publishers, we want to make sure advertisers pay the most for any piece of inventory that we make available to them — this in turn improves our return on investment as publishers.

What does yield optimisation look like in practice?

Naomi: Great. Okay, so what does this look like in practice? What would you say are some of the optimisation techniques?

Brock: Yeah, to make this easier to understand, we have methods to impact supply and to impact demand. On the inventory side, the demand side is more fundamental, as it is centred around ensuring that what you as a publisher are offering to the market is valuable and pursued. To prop this up, we look to optimise the structure of an ad unit by altering the look, feel, and location of it on site. For supply, we want to make sure that potential advertisers or bidders are getting what they are looking for. In this use case it's more about ensuring we provide a wide range of bidders with relevant user and architectural information through technologies like Open RTB and Prebid. A combination of high-quality inventory and high-quality information about the user generally translates to improved yield revenues.

Definition — Open RTB: a standardised protocol developed by the IAB that enables real-time programmatic advertising auctions between publishers and advertisers, allowing bid requests and responses to be passed at scale in milliseconds.

Definition — Prebid: an open-source header bidding solution that allows publishers to run simultaneous auctions across multiple demand partners before the ad server makes its final decision, increasing competition and yield.

What is yield management, and how does it differ from yield optimisation?

Naomi: Right. Okay, so I've heard the term thrown around in the office here and there, but I take it this is actually different from yield optimisation — is that right?

Brock: Slightly, yeah — very close though, very much related. Yield management refers to the practice of implementing a variable pricing strategy over time, so that the publisher can realise greater yield or eCPM as time progresses. These pricing strategies allow publishers to change prices based on user behaviour or demand projections. Prices are also altered on the basis of demand seasonality, as well as depending on the sources of the demand. Yield management results in creating an opportunity for the highest price — the highest CPM — along with the maximum fill rate.

Naomi: Okay, so what does that all mean in plain English, essentially?

Brock: Yeah, of course. We want to make sure that for every impression that we serve as a publisher, we're getting the maximum price in the auction — or more commonly, the way we like to think about it: we're realising the most revenue we possibly can from each auction.

Naomi: Right, okay. Yeah, that's easier to absorb. Would you be able to explain to us some methods for yield management? I have read about things like real-time bidding and programmatic direct, but I haven't made too much sense out of them. And I'm sure some of our viewers are in the same boat — they could appreciate some of your insight on that.

Brock: Yeah, two really good examples — and we'll dive into them here. But to circle back to the point I made around supply and demand: what we want to be doing is focusing on improving our supply and having a healthy breadth of demand to ensure that prices go up.

What are the key methods for yield management — direct, PMP, open auction, and floor pricing?

Brock: So in practice, there are a few ways that we can target this kind of outcome. Number one is around managing a direct versus PMP versus open auction arrangement for your inventory. One of the more common methods for yield management is to diversify your inventory across multiple channels. This includes direct advertising or direct sales, PMP or Private Marketplace, or as you mentioned programmatic direct, or open auction — which is the very common channel for most publishers out there. So if you have the resources to do so, you should segment your inventory for various groups of buyers whilst incrementally adding scarcity and specialty to the highest-priced items. This is a proven model for building a direct monetisation business. A publisher that has a healthy mix of bespoke products for direct buyers plus a healthy mix of programmatic auction and programmatic deal buyers should expect an increase in yield for each bucket respectively.

Definition — PMP (Private Marketplace): a programmatic deal type where a publisher invites a select group of advertisers to bid on inventory at a negotiated floor price, combining the targeting precision of programmatic with the exclusivity of a direct deal.

Definition — Programmatic direct (Programmatic Guaranteed): a deal where a publisher and advertiser pre-negotiate both the price and volume of impressions, but the transaction is executed programmatically through an ad server rather than manually.

Brock: Diving into the open auction channel specifically — we talk about the RTB solution. RTB, real-time bidding, as the name suggests allows you to sell ad inventory to buyers in real time. Using solutions like Prebid, open bidding, Index or AdX via dynamic allocation, Amazon TAM — a unified auction brings together a breadth of advertisers, prudent for driving up the price for inventory due to market competition in an auction. This is a good alternative to building a direct and PMP monetisation business, due to the availability of products in the market that take care of everything end to end — like what we do at Publift.

Definition — Amazon TAM (Transparent Ad Marketplace): Amazon's server-side header bidding solution that allows publishers to access Amazon demand alongside other bidders in a unified auction.

Definition — Dynamic allocation: a feature in Google Ad Manager that allows Google's programmatic demand (AdX) to compete in real time against direct-sold line items, ensuring that the highest-paying demand always wins the impression.

Brock: Now the third area to talk about today on the yield optimisation side is floor price optimisation. Specifically for your open auction channel — but it definitely flows into direct business and PMP business too. Publishers that are using an ad server should definitely consider the segmentation of inventory at each of those levels for floor pricing. This is where we, ahead of any given auction, decide the minimum acceptable price to sell the inventory. Where the rubber hits the road here is by mapping the value elements of your inventory against a range or price range that an advertiser could possibly pay for it. By doing this, you can price your inventory in a way to combat the advertiser return on investment practices at play — commonly known as bid shading. So in summary, the combination of multi-channel demand and optimising pricing for your inventory will always help a publisher increase their yield.

Definition — Floor price: the minimum CPM a publisher will accept for a given ad impression. Setting floors strategically prevents inventory from being bought cheaply while still maximising fill rate.

Definition — Bid shading: a practice used by DSPs to lower the price they pay in a first-price auction by predicting the lowest bid that will still win, reducing the publisher's revenue. Floor price optimisation is the primary publisher-side defence.

What are the foundational best practices before jumping into advanced yield management?

Naomi: Right. So it seems there are definitely a few key ways a publisher can choose to execute yield management. And I take it that with all of this, it's most probably a case of walking before you can run — are there a series of best practices to consider before jumping into the slightly more advanced stuff?

Brock: Yeah, that's absolutely right, Naomi. We always recommend publishers first give themselves the best chance of success by investing in the right tools. This might mean implementing new header bidding technology, migrating from AdSense to Google Ad Manager for the ad server capabilities, or picking up a partner to help them realise all that we've spoken about so far. It's always important to adhere to the rules and regulations of the tools that you use — so for example, policy violations particularly on the Google stack can lead you into a compliance spiral that keeps you from making proactive improvements to your stack.

Brock: Another big thing on our end is getting the placement basics right. This is all about using the right ad sizes that have been proven over time to output the highest yields for different screen sizes, devices, and users. On top of that, it's important to make sure you're increasing results for key health metrics like viewability, CTR, CPM, and page RPM among others.

Brock: One of the more important things that we always suggest to publishers — and I continue to push onto my team — is around experimentation. This is truly the secret sauce. Every publisher is different — they have different teams, different strategies. So accepting a one-size-fits-all approach generally ends in a plateau, by investing in the basics only. By taking an experimental approach to improve on those foundational layers, you can continuously improve yield through micro-optimisations. This avoids getting bogged down in large integration work with tech teams implementing new products or various migration layers. Starting small is always encouraged, as small changes to ad unit composition and demand partners can have a massive impact on yield.

What are the advanced yield optimisation techniques for more experienced publishers?

Naomi: Right. So considering all that we've run through today, it'll definitely give a publisher a great start to their yield optimisation journey. What do you think we could share with our more experienced publishers — what are some of the more advanced yield optimisation or management techniques that are out there?

Brock: Yeah, good question. Assuming that the publisher has done the foundational steps, there are plenty of further wins that we can easily realise as an extension of that work. So number one is around taking advantage of your ad server. There are tons of little secrets in your ad server — for us we use Google Ad Manager — that can help you extract higher yield for very low effort. For example, it is worth considering using target CPMs for open auction floors and adding in First Look pricing floors for building tiers of demand across your inventory. Open auction sometimes gets labelled as remnant or leftover, but by strategically placing healthy and aggressive floors in both open auction and First Look, you can really diversify your stack and allow your Google bidders or open auction bidders to take impressions that they usually wouldn't, at a much higher rate — improving your overall yield.

Definition — First Look: a Google Ad Manager feature that allows a designated demand source to bid on inventory before it goes to the open auction, at a pre-set floor price. Used to create tiered demand prioritisation.

Definition — Target CPM: a floor pricing strategy in Google Ad Manager where the system dynamically adjusts bids to hit a target average CPM, balancing fill rate against price.

Brock: The second suggestion I'd make is around setting up geo-based rules for your global audiences. Many of our publisher customers have users from all over the globe. Needless to say, not every supply-side platform or SSP or bidder has global reach — nor are your users in each region very similar to each other on measurements like bandwidth or device technology. By understanding your audience, you can put together geo-targeting ad stacks that enable you to cater your supply to the bidders in each region, whilst making your user experience sensible to users in each market. So for example, users on a high-speed internet connection in an office in New York might have a very different experience to a user in a farming area out in Wagga Wagga. We want to make sure we're catering our ad experience and general website experience to each of those users in a way that is a good user experience — makes the user come back — but also gives us the best chance of monetisation.

Brock: So the third suggestion is around diversifying your inventory with native and video. Getting started with display is low cost, it's efficient, and it's a great way to turn your content into a cash cow. To really accelerate the yield story, however, you should consider implementing native and video offerings into your stack. This recommendation sits in the "improving the quality of your inventory" bucket — by giving advertisers the ability to execute more customisable, interactive formats than they would usually be able to on your site. Generally speaking, advertisers are willing to pay a much higher eCPM for an interactive video or native unit than they would for a regular display unit. This could be as simple as updating your ad server request to include native requests, or as involved as building out a video content strategy and monetising it through direct or programmatic pipes.

Definition — Native advertising: ad formats that match the look and feel of the surrounding content, appearing as sponsored articles, recommended content, or in-feed units rather than as obvious display banners. Typically commands higher eCPMs due to higher engagement.

Brock: As an extension to the video and native piece, you should also look into rich media creatives. Rich media formats provide an upgrade to your display imagery by augmenting basic slots with interactive ad units. Some examples include interscrollers between content units and custom interactive adhesion units. These formats can also be included in your regular header bidding auction or directly through the ad server, so you can use them to improve your auction intensity without having to remove any of your regular partners.

Definition — Interscroller: a high-impact mobile ad format that reveals as the user scrolls, typically occupying the full viewport briefly before the user continues past.

Definition — Adhesion unit: an ad unit that sticks to the edge of the screen (typically the bottom on mobile) as the user scrolls, remaining in view throughout the session for maximum viewability.

What is the single most important takeaway for publishers on yield optimisation?

Naomi: Looks like the advanced publishers have some work cut out for them! But I'm sure it's going to be really valuable for them. So we clearly went through a whole bunch of things on yield management and yield optimisation today — extremely insightful. But if our viewers were to take away one key thing today, Brock, what would you want that to be?

Brock: Yeah, one key thing — it would have to be: experiment continuously and often. This is a mantra that we push heavily at Publift, but we'd suggest the same for any of the publishers listening today or any publisher that we speak to in the market. Looping back through what we said: the diversity of demand and improving the quality of your inventory is the bread and butter to ensure that you get the best yield result. And the best way to iterate on that through time is through experimentation.

Naomi: That's all the time we have for today, Brock. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. And to all our viewers out there — we hope you found this valuable. And if you did, please make sure to like and subscribe to our channel, as it really helps us reach other publishers like you. Thank you so much and we'll see you soon, Brock — hopefully in another AdThoughts video.

Brock: Thanks, Naomi.

This is an edited transcript of AdThoughts, produced by Publift. The words are Naomi and Brock's own — lightly edited for readability (filler words, false starts, typos, punctuation). No claims have been rewritten or generated by AI.

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