The Catch 22 Between Revenue, Content, and Performance

A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed the challenges that online content publishers have in monetizing their content as more and more user traffic shifts to mobile devices from traditional desktop/laptop computers/browsers.

Data from Mary Meeker’s 2015 Internet trends report in particular shows that the time adult users in the US spend online per day on mobile is up 51%. And the article cites similar data showing that the time spent on mobile properties of certain publishers jumped 40% in the last 12 months to 52% of the time spent viewing their content.

The problem, though, is that revenue from mobile advertising is not rising nearly quickly enough to offset the decreases from the desktop. There are several reasons for that, including the limited screen size of mobile, which limits the number of ads that can be displayed. Another lies within the format of mobile ads, which are more likely to deter the viewer because they are more intrusive or distracting than on desktop, where it’s easier for the viewer to ignore ads unless it is extremely relevant for them.

But what the article completely misses is the direct relationship between content performance and ad revenue. If you are a content publisher looking to increase or optimize your mobile ad revenue, then it’s time to consider how the performance of your content affects your ability to monetize it through your advertising strategy.

1. Performance matters, especially on mobile

•     The number of ads you can serve depends on the number of page views
•     If pages are slow, then you will get fewer page views, serve fewer ads, make less money

2. Hold 3rd party services and content providers accountable

•    Slow 3rd party services and content can KILL your page load performance
•    You need to have SLAs in place
•    You need to monitor the 3rd parties so you can hold them accountable
•    If an ad network is slow, it will hurt your page load speeds and your ability to generate revenue

3. Content optimization

•    You need to make sure that the content you are delivering is mobile-optimized
•    You need to understand how your content is performing, how to improve it, and the tools to help you do that

4. Perceived end user experience is key

•    Performance problems can originate at many different points
•    Ultimately, the end user only cares about the experience and performance they receive
•    You need instrumentation that will help you identify any contributors to performance degradation regardless of where they originate from front-end to any back-end
•    You need the tools to help you make intelligent decisions/tradeoffs about content, UI/UX, and performance to optimize the business

To optimize website performance and maximize the revenue potential of your content, you need a complete web and mobile application performance monitoring and management platform. That’s where AppDynamics can help with our comprehensive Application Intelligence platform with Unified Monitoring for all of your web and mobile infrastructure.