With the increased complexity in digital advertising we have published this rudimentary document which shares several recommendations.
We hope the article may be exploited to maximize programmatic yield and expose as much inventory as possible to buyers - returning what's important to most publishers, happy users, happy buyers, and increased revenue.
The intended audience of this article is a member of an Ad Operations, Development, or Yield Optimization team(s) of any sized publisher.
The author of this article presumes that the reader is somewhat familiar with IAB Advertising Guidelines, and has a reasonable understanding of ad slots (sometimes called ad units, or referred to as the ad size).
This article may not have all the information relevant to your specific site, implementation, ad stack, and so on, and is meant as a general guide.
Below is a simple set of goals which we believe should be kept top of mind when developing new functionality and keeping a good balance between monetization and user experience.
Your client side ad slots are possibly the most important thing to consider when choosing how to monetize your web site.
Too many ad slots and you might annoy users, as well as make too many requests for the available demand, resulting in lower fill % for the total ad requests.
Too little ad slots, especially for popular sites with good users, may result in failure to monetize as there might be additional buyers willing to bid on compete for additional inventory.
A fine balance must be reached between keeping users happy with the ad load and providing enough inventory to buyer.
Our recommendations align with Google's Better ad standards resource which goes in depth regarding why that lucrative ad format may not be wise for user experience.
No matter what implementation you use we have some best practices to keep in mind when.
The two most common Desktop monitor resolutions as of publishing this article are 1920x1080 (1080p) and 1366x768. 1920x1080 being more common for gaming computers (Source), and 1366x768 more common for general computing (Source).
As such we will consider these two resolutions as the sizes we will consider Desktop (and laptop at 1366x768) in order to provide examples with popular sizes implemented by users everywhere.
Note: The screen resolution may not necessarily tell us the total available browser viewport size, however, it's usually a good indicator.
We recommend configuring ad code on page such that ads are rendered as soon as possible, or right after the user's browser has rendered your page content. Some publishers run ad code asynchronously in order to avoid any render-blocking.
Below is a good example of a common homepage layout with a configuration similar to our layout recommendation.
The ad slots are outlined in red and immediately visible on page load.
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Mobile implementations must make additional considerations to ensure ads are visible while not impacting UX.
With limited real estate it is not always possible to ensure ads are in view, however, popular mobile ad sizes may be exploited.
We recommend configuring ad slots on page such that a leader board and big box are rendered as soon as possible after the user's browser has rendered your page content.
Below is a good example of a common homepage layout on a smartphone with a configuration similar to our layout recommendation.
The initial load shows a 320x50 mobile leaderboard rendered, and displays the rest of the content. This example does not make the 320x50 sticky at the top of the page, while this might impact view-ability numbers it does improve the User Experience.
We recommend configuring ad slots on page such that a leader board and big box are rendered as soon as possible after the user's browser has rendered your page content.
Below is a the same mobile example page using a tablet in portrait mode, a common browsing experience for users.
The initial load shows a Leaderboard rendered, and displays the rest of the content.
Many publishers may want to monetize their sites with Video demand. Considerations should be made to ensure the user experience is not jeopardized.
When introducing in-banner video demand to your site we recommend ensuring that any demand you include does not allow any auto-play sound and creatives adhere to the LEAN Ad Standard.
It won't be possible to review every programmatic ad coming from every programmatic demand source, but if your demand partners can assure you their In-Banner won't auto-play with sound and will be of minimal bandwidth use it can provide peace of mind as a publisher.
We recommend any and all Outstream implements enforce autoplay with sound-off to ensure the best user experience. The last thing you want is for your users to get an ad playing with max volume 
.
Here's an example of an implementation using Prebid, sound is available on mouse-over.
Instream video presents many more challenges to overcome as a publisher, most publishers with long-form instream content not only have to deal with DRM but also ensuring their ad load and user experience does not lead users to ad-blocking, or worse!
As such we do have some general recommendations for a good instream experience, mostly taken from the experiences of the author and discussions internally regarding what we like and don't like about streaming sites.
Please keep in mind any recommendations or configurations we express above may not be the appropriate solution for your business. Publishers are complex with not only user experience requirements, but also business reporting and management requirements which may collide with the expressions above.
As such we recommend ensuring that anything implemented in your network is just that, made for your network.
District M offers a wide variety of publishers site configuration, yield, and UX reviews available with clear and concise recommendations returned for your review.
Contact us for more information.