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This term is mostly used for sites that make money from their traffic by selling display ad space straight to advertisers. Remnant inventory is any ad space that hasn’t been bought by an advertiser. This needs to be taken into account in another way. (more on this below).
The best case scenario is for a site to sell all of its ad impressions straight to advertisers at high CPMs. But it’s more likely that some of the planned ad impressions won’t be sold.
For example, let’s say a publisher expects to get 5,000,000 visits in the next month, and let’s also say that every page has one 72890 leaderboard ad unit. If the publisher sells 4 million of these leaderboard ad impressions to marketers, they will still have 1 million impressions left over that they need to make money from in some other way.
Remnant Inventory Possibilities
There are four main ways to make money off of leftover ad space:
- Where ads usually go, don’t show anything.
- Run a “house ad” that promotes other parts of the site or goods and services that go with them.
- Run CPA-based affiliate marketing ads
- Ad networks with CPC-based ads
The first choice is obviously not the best. It means that the publisher is throwing away an ad impression that could have been very useful. Each of the other three choices could bring in money for the publisher.
House ads are really just ads that promote another way for publishers to make money. Here’s an example of an ESPN house ad:
Because there wasn’t a direct-sold ad to fill that space, the editor decided to run an ad for a show on the company’s TV station. This doesn’t make ESPN any money, but it can still help the company as a whole by bringing attention to another of its goods.
Options #3 (affiliate banner ads based on CPA) and #4 (ad networks based on CPC) are not likely to bring in as much money as a CPM campaign. Under both plans, the vast majority of ad impressions that aren’t touched are useless. But these ways to make money from the ads that aren’t sold directly will make sure that the owner gets at least some money from the ads that aren’t sold directly.
Most authors who have to deal with remnant ad impressions want to get rid of them completely.
Remnant Strategies
When you try to sell ads directly, using networks can make things more complicated. In particular, marketers may be able to get their ads on your site without buying from your sales team. If they are also running ads through the network you use to make money off of leftover inventory, they may be able to get around your sales team and hurt your efforts to sell directly.
Most ad networks let you block companies you don’t want to see. This function was made so that publishers could block low-quality ads from competing sites, but it can also be used to force advertisers to buy directly.
Here’s a picture of the dashboard for AdSense, which lets authors block certain advertisers:
Remnant upside
When you buy leftover room or stock, you get prices that are much lower than normal. This also means that companies with a small advertising budget can use media that would normally be out of their league.
Remnant downside
The worst part is that you don’t have any other options. You can buy space or stock at the last minute, and you can decide where or when the ad will run.
You also need to have ads that are ready to go at any time. This means you need a creative department, a production department, and an account service department ready to handle any last-minute requests.
FAQ
What does it mean to have “remaining stock”?
Remnant inventory is any ad space that hasn’t been bought by an advertiser yet and is sold at cheap prices below cost.
What’s the deal with the Remnant inventory?
Most of the time, leftover stock is available because it doesn’t sell, because it was cancelled at the last minute, because the advertising industry is slow or because not everything is going to sell.
Why do marketers want to buy leftover space?
Advertisers buy leftover advertising from large networks to use in CPC, CPA, or CPM marketing programmes. Even though expensive stock is valued, leftover stock is not in any way worse.
