User Engagement Impacts Ad Revenue (According To Data Science)

How User Engagement Impacts Ad Revenue (Data Science)

Watch A Data Scientist Talk About This instead of reading it Using This Video (Dr. greg StaRek)

A Data Driven Approach to User Engagement

We’ve touched on a few of these concepts before when discussing how publishers should approach [monetizing long and short form content](https://blog.ezoic.com/short-form-vs-long-form-content-monetization-tips/). However, as a quick refresher, it’s important to remember just how impactful extending the user session is the earning digital ad revenue.

> …a user’s experience may do more to define the total revenue earned from a user session than just about any other factor at play in the publishing ecosystem

Bounce rate is the enemy of user experience

You can’t treat everyone the same and deliver excellent user experiences

Even if all the assumptions above are true, and you could set ad impression averages on a landing page by landing page basis, you still wouldn’t be properly adjusting for how each user personally reacts to each of these scenarios.

> …what do we do with users that prefer a losing (A/B test) experience?

Applying data science to your site

If you’re not [using Ezoic](https://www.ezoic.com/), the best thing you can do is to start looking closely at your landing pages, and how different site elements are affecting the simple user engagement metrics listed above. Changes that positively improve them will increase ad revenue, and those that don’t will decrease revenue.
This sounds like an oversimplification, and it is. Unfortunately, one universal truth our data science department has found when studying this over the past 6 years is that **there are no real laws as it related to how user experience affects revenue**. The only thing that is fixed is that extended user sessions result in higher ad revenue.
**Optimizing your site to extend user sessions will almost always have you on a true north path** towards better user experiences; plus who doesn’t just want to give you visitors better experience just because they deserve it?
This is obviously where we think A.I. can help the digital publishing space (as noted by the video at the top, and the one right above the last title). If this is a subject you’d like to learn more about, I’d recommend watching both of those; as they dive in a little deeper.
Questions, thoughts? Leave them below and I’ll keep the conversation going.