Google’s AI search capabilities are killing traffic to publishers, so the company is currently proposing possible solutions. On Thursday, Tech Giant officially launched its official tool. This is a new tool that allows publishers to generate revenue beyond traffic-dependent options such as advertising.
Offerwall allows publishers to provide site readers with a variety of ways to access content, including options such as micropayments, research acquisition, and advertising. Additionally, Google says publishers can add their own options to their offerwalls, such as signing up for newsletters.
This new feature is available free of charge on Google Ad Manager after more than a year of previous testing with 1,000 publishers.
We also note that using AI to determine when to show offerwalls to each site visitor to increase engagement and revenue. However, publishers can set their own thresholds if they like, before the offer wall appears.
Many of the solutions offered by Offerwall have been tested by publishers across a variety of products and services. For example, micropayments repeatedly failed takeoffs. Economics doesn’t tend to work, and there’s an additional friction in that it has to be paid for each article that isn’t worth paying for readers and publishers, taking into account the costs of implementation and maintenance.
Social networking startups like Twitter, called Post, backed by the A16Z, have recently tried to get publisher micropayments to work, but eventually shut them down due to lack of traction.
In Google, we work with third-party SuperTab, so site visitors can pay small amounts of online content, such as 24 hours a day, several days, a week, and more.
Google also notes that publishers can set up offerwalls to include their own logos and introductory text, allowing them to customize the options they present. One option enabled by default is for visitors to watch short ads to access publisher content. This is the only option with revenue sharing, and in that respect it works just like all ad manager solutions do, Google points out.
Another option is that visitors click to select from a set of topics of interest, save and use to personalize the ad.
Having a more integrated solution will help publishers experiment with a variety of monetization options without committing substantial time and resources to these tests. Google’s announcement did not share early test results with publishers or successfully carry out case studies. However, Google shared one research with TechCrunch, saying that India’s Sakal Media Group has implemented Google Ad Manager’s offerwall feature on Esakal.com, with revenues rising by 20% within three months, with up to 2 million impressions.
However, early reports during the testing period said the publisher saw an average revenue lift of 9% after 1 million messages about AdSense to display reward ads. Google Ad Manager customers saw a lift of 5% to 15% when using Offerwall. Google also confirmed via email to TechCrunch that publishers with Offerwall saw an average revenue rise of 9% over the years of testing.
According to Google, publishers say they can view metrics related to Offerwall in Google Ads Manager reports. These include estimated offerwall revenue, the number of offerwall messages displayed, successful engagement for the offerwall, and post-fallwall pageviews.
Updated after publication with case studies and additional metrics provided by Google.
