You'd think Google would have an incentive to serve more AdSense / Ad Exchange (AdX) ads then is intended by the publisher. The fact is, DFP Small Business is a free product. The only money they make is on the AdSense / AdX ads that publishers serve through DFP. Therefore, they would want the publisher to serve as many AdSense / AdX ad impressions as possible. So, does Google in fact serve more AdSense / Ad Exchange advertisements than the optimal level? Short answer: yes.
How do they do this? Most publishers serve competing third party ad networks as price priority line items. This means that the publisher must attribute a value CPM to prioritize the third party ad network against other third party ad networks and AdSense / AdX advertisements. Most publishers value their third party ad networks with the CPM's that the third party ad network earns on a consistent basis. Theoretically, AdSense / AdX advertisements will only serve when their predicted CPM will be able to beat all third party ad networks. However, this is not the case in all instances.
For example, let's say we had only one ad network AOL setup in the top 300x250 spot valued at $2 CPM at an open frequency cap. AdSense / AdX should only serve when it can beat that $2 CPM. Therefore, AdSense / AdX's average CPM should be higher than $2. We have tested this example in many different instances, and AdSense / Ad Exchange's average CPM would be under the $2 mark several times. This means the DFP serves AdSense / AdX with bias.
How does DFP cherry pick their ads? They either set a minimum percentage of AdSense / Ad Exchange ad impressions for enabled ad units or they serve AdSense / Ad Exchange ads when their predicted CPM is within a certain percentage of the value CPM. From our experience, we think it's the latter. The further the value CPM's are from AdSense / AdX's average CPM's, the less AdSense / Ad Exchange advertisements are served.
How do you compensate for DFP's AdSense / AdX bias? If you want to run an advertiser / ad network as a sponsorship line item, make sure to disable AdSense / Ad Exchange from that advertisement unit. If you want your third party advertising networks to run at a fairer playing field, inflate the value CPM's within each line item. We've found that inflating the value CPM's by 25% - 30% does the trick. We've also noticed that AdX runs at less of a bias then AdSense.
DFP Small Business does have a bias for serving their own advertisements; however, don't let those third party ad networks bully you about DFP cherry picking AdSense / AdX (We're talking to you Tribal Fusion). It's never as bad as they say it is. They are merely trying to get exclusive control of your first ad impressions. Never give in to serving an ad network exclusively first on your site unless they absolutely kill all the other ad networks. The most optimal setup is a competitive one within the DFP framework. You do have the ability to compensate for DFP Small Business little secretive bias;)
Kean Graham is one of the banner ad monetization experts at Monetize More. He specializes in boosting the banner ad revenues of high traffic websites. Kean specifically specializes in online classified monetization.
Source Google Adsense
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