What is Managed Demand?

This post was most recently updated on July 12th, 2019

Most publishers who try to monetize their websites start with what is considered the most popular advertising network, Google AdSense.

AdSense helps publishers or website owners to monetize their site traffic by inserting snippets of HTML code and displaying ads.

Getting approved and implementing Google Adsense is pretty straightforward, with clear Google instructions/guidelines available, which is why it has now become the most popular introduction for publishers to site monetization.

Adsense however, is just the very tip of the iceberg.

Though Google remains the undisputed king of advertising in the digital space, they are not your only choice. There are other advertising networks available that offer publishers ways to monetize their ad inventory as well.

Appnexus, OpenX, IndexExchange, Rubicon are some names that are pretty popular in the world of programmatic advertising. They offer strong rates and can go head-to-head with Google’s ad networks.

Granted, they will most likely still have advertisers coming from Google, but others would have their unique demand as well. Two great examples would be Facebook’s Audience Network (FAN) and Amazon’s Unified Ad Marketplace (UAM).

These networks boast of their unique advertisers/demand and source none of it from Google, which is a competitor. Advertising networks outside of Google often offer unique or non-standard advertising units as well.

These are not the usual banner or display ads you commonly see on websites, but function in a unique manner, often a little more intrusive to users while offering much higher payouts.

Implementing these networks (including Google’s platforms) through an ad server like Google’s Ad Manager (previously called DFP or DoubleClick for Publishers) to compete alongside header bidding for every impression being served, is what we call Managed Demand.

Utilizing Managed Demand effectively allows for more bid pressure to exist within a publisher’s ad stack and more competition which leads to an eventual increase in CPM rates.

Some Managed Demand can even perform better than header bidding with fill rates of 100% (which means no impressions are wasted).

Some networks, if they notice they are getting a good deal back from the traffic you are providing, will even offer very lucrative deals for good rates if you can guarantee them set impression volumes daily. This is something you will want as a publisher since header bidding CPM rates can sometimes fluctuate unpredictably.

One thing to note about having Managed Demand or utilizing ad networks aside from Google’s Adsense or Ad Exchange, is that not all of them offer 100% fill rates.

This means that if you don’t have what we call a Passback set up behind that network to catch the impressions not being filled, they will go most likely go unmonetized.

The number of Managed Demand you have in your stack does not necessarily equate to better performance, the same logic applying to the partners you have using Header Bidding.

Conclusion

There will be partners who perform poorly on some sites while showing great performance on others, the key is constant testing and identifying the right networks that will give you as a publisher maximum revenue performance.

To find out which demand partners will suit your publisher website best, contact MonetizeMore for a free consultation today!

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.