Ad Revenue Tip: Monetize International Traffic

Did you know that for the typical U.S. website, about 30 to 40 percent of your traffic comes from non-U.S. visitors? While we’re all aware that the World Wide Web is truly international, few web developers consider this fact when it comes to monetizing their traffic. If you’ve ever taken your laptop on the road, you may have noticed that most ad networks tailor their banners and pay-per-click ads to the location of the browser. Most of the time, this optimizes the ads—but in some locations where an ad network doesn’t have a sales office or presence, the ads will show up blank. Because of this, international traffic is an often untapped source of ad revenue that can be captured in a few easy steps.

1. Analyze Visitor Data By Location

If you haven’t already, install an analytics tool on your website that reports on the geographic location of your visitors. The Expo-MAX Analytics tool is a free solution that makes it easy to see where your visitors are coming from. Take note of the top 4 or 5 countries that are sending visitors to your site other than the U.S.

2. Investigate Your Ad Networks Coverage

Next, determine whether or not your ad network shows ads to international visitors from those locations. This can be a bit tricky. The most definitive way to do this is to simply call them up and ask. But if they don’t have a good answer for you or are otherwise unreachable, you can try accessing your site via a proxy. You can also ask a friend or forumgoer to take a free screenshots of your homepage.

3. Diversify Your Ad Network

If your ad network already covers the sources of your international traffic, there may be nothing else you need to do. But you may want to pay attention to the types of ads they show and see if they are relevant to your international audience. Whether your ad network covers foreign locations or not, it may be worthwhile to check out other ad networks and see if the better serve international markets with more targeted ads or higher payouts.

4. Target Your Website Based on Visitor Location (Optional)

As an additional step, you can also tweak your website with a PHP code to display different ads or content based on the visitor’s location. It’s fairly simple to have a website show a customized version according to location in the same way that websites can automatically be optimized for mobile browsers and other devices. Otherwise, you can simply incorporate your new international ad networks onto your existing page, alternating between your existing or preferred ad network.

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