House ad
Definition
An ad for your own products or content, used to fill inventory that has not sold.
Why it matters if you sell your own ads
House ads are better than blank space and better than a low-paying network fallback for promoting your own newsletter or shop. Most ad servers let you set them as the last resort in the waterfall.
What house ads are for
A house ad fills a slot that would otherwise be empty or sold cheaply, and points the reader at something the publisher owns. The usual candidates:
- A newsletter signup, a podcast or a video channel.
- Your own products, courses, events or memberships.
- Your best article, to keep a reader on the site.
- The ad space itself: an "Advertise here" message aimed at the businesses reading your site.
A house ad earns nothing directly, which is why most publishers put it last in line: direct campaigns first, a paying network next, the house ad when neither has anything to show.
When a house ad beats a paying network
A network impression pays something. A house ad pays nothing up front but can be worth more when the action it drives is valuable. The way to decide is arithmetic, with your own numbers.
Worked example, with round numbers. A footer slot has 40,000 unsold impressions a month and the network pays $0.50 per thousand for it: $20 a month. Run a newsletter house ad instead and suppose one impression in a thousand becomes a click and a third of those clicks subscribe: about 13 new subscribers. If a subscriber is worth more than about $1.50 to you, the house ad won.
The answer changes by site and by slot, which is the point. Measure the clicks, put a value on the outcome and decide per placement rather than out of habit.
The house ad that sells your ad space
For a publisher who wants direct advertisers, the most useful house ad advertises the slot itself. The businesses most likely to buy a placement on your site are the ones already reading it, and an unsold slot that says it is available, with a link to where they can buy it, reaches exactly them for nothing.
Mistakes to avoid
- The same creative for a year. Readers stop seeing a banner that never changes. Rotate it.
- A house ad dressed as a third-party ad. It should look like it comes from you.
- Counting house impressions as sold. Report paid and unpaid traffic separately, or your sell-through figures will flatter you.
How Pyrobid handles it
Every static and sticky banner slot has a fallback for when no campaign has booked it. You can show an Advertise Here card that you design yourself and that links to your own ad portal, upload your own image with a link, hand the slot to the ad code you ran before, or leave it empty so the space collapses. If you keep your existing ad code, the Advertise Here card takes one unsold view in ten, and you can switch that off. Views and clicks of your own fallback are counted, and the reports switch between paid traffic and all traffic, so house impressions never inflate what you sold.
Common questions
Is a house ad the same as a passback?
No. A passback hands the slot to another ad source that pays. A house ad is your own promotion and pays nothing directly. Many sites use both, in that order.
Do house ads count as impressions?
They are impressions, but not sold ones. Keep them out of the figures you show advertisers and out of your sell-through rate.
What should an "Advertise here" house ad say?
What the slot is, who reads the page and where to buy it. One line and a link is enough, because the page it links to carries the detail.
Related terms
Put a floor price on your own inventory
Your advertisers sign up on your own branded portal, fund an account and bid above your floor. You keep one hundred percent, and your existing ads stay on as the fallback.
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