Five approaches to developing more intelligent metrics

Published: 12 Oct 2022

To ensure your premium content is delivering value, it’s essential to understand how you can be approaching your metrics more intelligently. Many publishers are already moving beyond click through rates to looking at attention and engagement metrics, but what else can you be doing?

Five of our expert Associates gave us their top tip for re-thinking your approach to metrics to make sure that you’re deriving the most value from your premium content.

Focus on the pages delivering the most value – not those that are the most popular.

Publishers should look at the actual RPM of a page and ask themselves what is the net revenue? Currently, there is a disconnect because most publishers are not prioritising the pages that bring the most value. Instead, they are looking at which content is popular. For example, premium content about food or travel is brand-safe and attracts a higher CPM from advertisers while also earning lower bounce rates and higher dwell time. These are the pages that publishers should be focusing on the most.

Marc Thomas, GM, EMEA, EX.CO

Look beyond the click.

Publishers must go beyond classic metrics like viewability and dwell time. It is only through the measurement and analysis of true user engagement and attention-focused metrics that publishers can derive value from their premium content, maximising their opportunities to monetise that content in an efficient way that works for both users and advertising partners.

Russell James, Senior Director, Publisher Development, Ogury

Re-think what your measurement strategies will look like post-cookies.

Measurement will require a cultural change post-cookies. Publishers are already looking at alternatives and moving to metrics like consideration, frequency and attention as buyers increasingly look to understand how publishers can demonstrate the power of their first-party data. One example is Hello! By overlaying audiences powered by first-party data they increased brand consideration by over 15% and brand awareness by 129%. This is going to be the point of difference for publishers.

Thomas Baart, Customer Success Manager, Permutive

Aim for real-time reporting to respond rapidly to anomalies.

As a first step, publishers should re-construct their data pipelines to start exposing all key revenue metrics in real-time, or at least ensure next day availability of such reporting—and then build smart alerts on top to keep an eye for any precipitous drops or anomalies. Once this foundation is in place, start running yield tests and experiments with specific hypotheses and parameters, and measure their impact on CPM, Real CPM (rCPM), and value per auction.

James Van Sweringen, Director of Revenue Operations, Blockthrough

Enhance your CRM with impression-level signals.

Not every impression is created equal. Any sophisticated monetisation strategy must pay special attention to what makes an impression valuable. Your CRM data can be enhanced by capturing impression-level signals about the visitor and the context of the page, enabling new possibilities for monetisation of your premium content. Understanding the relationship between your users, content and revenue opens up the possibility of creating and recommending content custom-tailored to your high-value audience.

Pablo Casado, Manager gTech Professional Services, Google