AdManager users have a possibility to use refreshing ad units without refreshing the whole page. This increases the number of impressions without a “page break” - or without creating pagination articles.

If you use Google DoubleClick AdExchange and want to have refreshing ad units on your website you must mark these slots as a “refresh inventory” - this is mandatory due to Google Policy.

As we operate with big inventory we are able to test refreshing ads on a lot of websites. These are our results:

Refreshable inventory can, in the short term, boost publisher’s revenue up to 30% but only if the additional functionalities are applied. In the long term, refreshable inventory causes a drop in revenue (according to our 7day tests) because refreshing creates unviewable inventory with zero viewability for additional impressions and zero CTR (in some cases users scroll up on the page and click on ad).

These impacts reduced the demand for units and the total revenue fell back to the previous values.

On the other hand some ads as sticky ads, that are anchored to the fixed position on a website, generate high viewability and refreshing them increases revenue in the long term.

How to use refresh inventory to increase the total revenue?

After many tests we created a function called “Fatchilli Smart Refresh” that can help with refreshing ads smartly.

We integrated this functionality to our protag library which is free to use for all our clients.

What does FatChilli Smart Refresh do?

It combines many variables to determine the right time to refresh ads.

• User activity
• Viewable time
• Viewability of slot
• Coverage
• Many other factors

The goal is to refresh the unit only if there is a detected user interaction that may cause it to display ads in the user’s viewport. We reduce the amount of non viewable impressions as an inventory protection.

What are the results?

Results are based on the website's UX. Some positions are suitable to use “Fatchilli Smart Refresh”, others are not.

It's based on:

• Position on the website - Position in a long article gives the unit more time to display more impressions.
• Quality of content -Readers consume quality content for a longer time which gives the units more time to refresh.
• Page speed - Websites with no errors and good speed give ads more available resources to render. Refreshing ads consume internet bandwidth and need resources to render.

Total increase of revenue might get from 10% up to 30%.

Good to know:

Using FatChilli Smart Refresh can create more ad requests and impressions to slot. Coverage may, however, be also lower.

In these situations CPM and ad Request CPM are not good metrics. They must be recalculated to relevant variables.

We must figure out the total revenue of the slot according to the total number of first displayed impressions (or PV).