What to expect during onboarding

You will be given access to the Raptive Setup Assistant, which will guide you through each phase of the onboarding process from start to finish. An Onboarding team member will reach out to you with directions on creating your Raptive account so that you can access the Setup Assistant and get started. The onboarding process is broken up into two phases:

The first phase involves gathering Google Analytics access, ad performance reports, and obtaining Google Ad Manager approval. Once that’s all finished up, we’ll confirm that you’re on board with the standard optimized ad layout, which includes:

• Sticky Sidebar Ads on desktop
  • These sidebar ads will stick at the bottom of your sidebar content and stay on-screen as a reader scrolls down the page. Only on desktop devices and only if a sidebar is active on your site.
• Sticky Content ads starting at medium (20%) density logic
  • Ad density is our method for placing ads in your main content area, which looks at the pixel height of your content area and calculates how many content ads can fit. The number of content ads will vary depending on the length of the post, but the target ad density will be 20% to start, which is a good balance for most sites between revenue and user experience. As an added benefit, the sticky behavior of these content ads means minimal impact to CLS. Read more about our method for ad density.
    
    Once your ads have been live for two weeks, you'll get access to the Ad Preferences page where you can choose between high (25%), medium (20%), or low (15%) density.
• Recipe ads (if applicable)
  • The number of recipe ads will vary depending on the length of the recipe card. Only applicable for sites using a recipe or how-to card.
• Comment ads (if applicable)
  • The number of ads in the comment section will vary depending on the number of comments. Only applicable for sites with comments turned on.
• Sticky Footer ad
  • This high-paying ad sticks to the bottom of the screen on both desktop and mobile. As part of our optimized layout, it will not have a close button.
• Sticky Playlist Video
  • This high-paying video ad unit starts in the content of a post and then collapses to the bottom right corner (desktop) or top center (mobile) and sticks on the page as the reader scrolls.
  • If you do not have any video content for your site, we will provide a stock video so you can take advantage of this video revenue. 
  • For pages where our Sticky Playlist video player can’t run, we will run the Sticky Outstream player instead which loops ads without any video content.

If you are in a contract with your current ad provider, we’ll help you determine the best date to submit notice so that your last day aligns with your install date here. Once your install date is set, then the process will move to phase two.

The second phase is the integration and compliance phase. This includes providing WordPress access, updating your privacy policy with Raptive's required wording, and signing the Raptive Service Agreement. If you're in a contract, then your Onboarding Specialist will help you through one last site review a few days before your install date here to make sure that there haven't been any major changes to your ad performance. Once all the pieces are in place, you’ll be ready to have your Raptive ads installed.

What to expect on your install day

On your install day, a Raptive team member will reach out to let you know that we’ll be logging into your WordPress site and installing the Raptive Ads plugin. The install process is typically straightforward, but we will let you know if we need your assistance at any point. During the day of your install, it’s a good idea to be readily available and easily reachable by email. If you work with a web developer, asking them to be available would also be helpful.

Once the install is complete, we will let you know that your ads are up and running, and provide you with a brief update on your next steps with Raptive.  

What to expect after the Raptive ads have been installed

A few days after your Raptive ads are installed, you will receive access to your Raptive Dashboard. The dashboard updates every morning around 10 am Eastern to reflect the prior days’ earnings. Some parts of your dashboard are populated with data straight from your Google Analytics account, which becomes available after 48 hours due to Google limitations. Every morning when yesterday’s earnings are added, we will also pull in traffic and RPM data from 2 days ago. Once we have the data to populate our reporting, we will send you instructions on how to log in. 

One of the primary metrics you will see in your dashboard is RPM (earnings per 1,000 sessions). RPM is how we gauge ad performance because it lets us know how the ads are earning for a set amount of traffic. Since ad performance fluctuates day to day based on your traffic as well as industry trends, RPM helps us keep an eye on how things are doing and make sure you are making the most money possible. You can read more about the factors that impact RPM here.

You will also have access to some useful reports in your Raptive dashboard including performance breakdowns by page, country, and traffic source. These reports help you analyze the value of your pages and traffic so you can prioritize your efforts.

When you connect your Google Search Console account, you open up access to our Content Optimization tools which will provide you with personalized SEO recommendations and data to help you grow your business.

Two weeks after your ads are installed, you'll also gain access to the Ad Preferences page. This will allow you to make some customizations to your ad layout.

If you have questions about your ads, reporting, or any of our offerings, we highly encourage you to check out our Help Center and be sure to brush up on all the education resources we offer in our Resource Center. 

Our team will be available to help if you experience any technical issues caused by the ads.