Flickchart leverages Mile’s cutting-edge tech to automate ad refresh based on users’ activity and interaction with the content, enabling their baseline revenue to double while keeping the users happy.

Flickchart is a social networking site built for movie lovers. It enables users to rank movies and create personal chart of favourites. Users can also participate in discussions, view more information, or connect and invite friends with similar interests.

The Challenge

As a completely user-centric website, Fickchart's goal is simple and clear: generate more revenue without compromising the user experience.

Initially, Flickchart implemented a legacy ad refresh solution to capitalize on user engagement. The solution automatically replaces existing ads with new ones after a predetermined time or upon user interaction (clicks, scrolls). The intention was simple: generate more ad impressions, potentially boosting revenue.

However, this approach quickly unraveled, presenting a significant challenge:

• With constant ad refresh, user engagement experienced a downfall. The average session time came to two minutes and fifteen seconds, and the bounce rate increased to sixty four percent.  
• Though ad refresh led to an increase of forty percent in terms of impressions, their individual value plummeted. The users stopped interacting with the ads, and the advertisers, keen on the effectiveness of their campaigns, saw diminished returns. As a result, the CPM started declining.
• Ads that appear and disappear too quickly may not capture user attention, reducing the likelihood of interaction and engagement. This situation presented a challenge in maintaining the balance between ad frequency and user attention span.

Contrary to its intended goal of boosting ad revenue, the strategy’s shortcomings began to manifest financially. With user experience on the decline and advertisers questioning the value of their investments, Flickchart’s ad revenue began to suffer.

Faced with these challenges, Flickchart recognized the need for a transformative approach to its ad refresh strategy.

The goal was to find a middle ground that respects user engagement while optimizing ad placements for maximum visibility and effectiveness, thereby restoring advertiser confidence and driving revenue growth. This required a nuanced understanding of user behavior, innovative ad technology, and a flexible approach to ad management.

The Solution

Smart Ad Refresh

The search for a better solution led Flickchart to Mile’s Smart Ad Refresh.

Smart Ad Refresh is a technology-driven solution designed to enhance ad effectiveness without compromising user experience. This innovative approach leverages in-depth tracking of user actions, ensuring that ads are only refreshed when users are actively engaged with the content.

Building a user-focused environment

A user-friendly ad refresh mechanism boils down to one thing: data on user activity. Flickchart was already collecting all the data important for an insightful ad refresh, like user’s engagement with the content, interaction with ads, cursor activity, etc. The piece missing from the puzzle was a tool that could put this data to use.

Smart Ad Refresh utilizes advanced algorithms that go beyond simple timeouts or user clicks. It dives deep into granular data, including user behavior, ad viewability, and time-in-view, to determine the optimal moments for refreshing ads.

It ensures that ads are displayed when they are 100% viewable, and users are most likely to be engaged, maximizing the chances of them actually seeing and interacting with the ad content. As refresh requests are initiated based on user actions, each impression becomes more valuable to the advertisers.

It also ensures that the ads are presented in a way that feels natural and unobtrusive, maintaining a positive environment for content consumption. This creates a seamless user experience, keeping users happy and returning for more.

The Impact

Uplift in ad viewability and revenue

Viewability and revenue have increased across devices, which is a major win for both Flickchart and the demand partners.

The improved viewability directly translated into a substantial financial gain. Flickchart is experiencing a remarkable increase in CPM for even refreshed inventories and a phenomenal uplift in ad revenue by 80%.

The user engagement also improved over time.

First impressions Vs. Smart ad refresh impressions

Smart Ad Refresh delivered 42.68% of the total impressions and accounted for about 45% of the total revenue generated every month of Q1, 2024.

With Mile, Flickchart achieved a win-win scenario. They were able to generate healthy ad revenue without compromising user experience. This approach allowed them to maintain their thriving online community while achieving financial sustainability through programmatic advertising.

Want to witness your revenue soar like Flickchart? Contact us today to witness the technology in action.

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