Advantages to using DFP if I only use Adsense

[csdude55]

Until recently, I was utilizing an ad management company that was selling ads for my site, using Adsense as a fallback. But the system was fairly slow, so even though my RPM was higher (by about 10%), the number of ad impressions was down (by about 25%), which resulted in me making less money overall.

So as of April 1, I switched back to just using Adsense. I had used the management company for about 3 years, so I'm a little out of practice here.

I have two questions:

1. If I move to DFP, I understand that I can sell ads on an exchange or locally, and then use Adsense as a fallback the same way that the ad management company did. But if I do this, will I see the same speed problems that I had before?

2. If I decide not to sell ads on my own and just use Adsense, is there any advantage at all to using DFP? Adsense shows that 93.25% of all ad requests were shown an ad from Adsense.

TIA!

[ember]

1. Not sure

2. I don't know of any.

[child please]

1. That is kinda impossible to answer without knowing how your previous ad management company was running your ads, specifically did they use DFP or some other ad server?

2. I don't think there is any point to do that then, unless you want to use DFP's targeting criteria but that would also not serve much of a point if you have no other networks. Might as well just serve AdSense ads to everyone, hard-coded into your page instead of running through an adserver.

[csdude55]

That is kinda impossible to answer without knowing how your previous ad management company was running your ads, specifically did they use DFP or some other ad server?

I honestly can't figure out what they were using. The code that I plugged in to my site is identical to the Adsense code, just with a different publisher ID and unit ID. All of the programs I've seen (like DFP) use a totally different code, so I can't figure what they were using.

I wouldn't be too opposed to signing up for a few other networks and let them compete, but not if it slows down my page. In addition to the concern of showing fewer ads, I've found that the faster I can make my pages load, the more pageviews I get. I've worked hard to keep my average load time < 3 seconds, and I'd rather make it faster, not slower.

[woody midrib]

I recently switched to DFP to test Facebook Audience Network with AdSense as fallback. So far, performance is dismal.

Advantages of DFP:

- You can configure some AdSense attributes dynamically with JavaScript (mainly colors).
- You can make ads open the target page in a new window (not a real advantage).

Disadvantages of DFP:

- Slower. This is a big problem on mobile.
- Lots of double served ads.
- No support for custom ad sizes (only affects text ads).
- No support for the new fonts (only affects text ads).

Overall, I saw a revenue decrease of about 30%, in line with reports from other people. DFP seems to serve ads with higher CPC but much lower CTR.

[child please]

I think there is a lot of confusion here about DFP. DFP is an AdSense equivalent, nor should they ever be directly compared. Can you clarify your scenarios, please tell me if I have it correct:

Originally: you ran AdSense ads only, with the AdSense tags coded into your pages
Afterwards: you ran Facebook ads with AdSense as a fallback for remnant inventory?

If this is true, why are you surprised that your revenue decreased and AdSense performed worse? In one case, there is no competition for AdSense - they get everything, all the good impressions from all the good demographics. In the second scenario, Facebook is potentially taking those, not paying as well, and leaving the scraps for AdSense which of course will fill them with lower paying ads!

All this really tells me is that AdSense pays better than Facebook Audience Network (which I am not familiar with). If this is what you are seeing, you probably need to lower the eCPM of your Facebook ads in DFP.

[woody midrib]

My observations above are about running DFP *without* Facebook ads using only AdSense as fallback. With Facebook ads, performance was even worse but that's a different topic.

[child please]

Ok. When you say 'fallback', that makes it seem like you are running some main network and falling back to AdSense.

Anyway, I can't totally comment on that as there would be no point to run AdSense through an ad server (like DFP or any other ad server) if it's the only ads you're running.