How to Turn Your Carousel into a Revenue Source

Are you a publisher looking for new ways to monetize your site’s existing features? One source may be in plain view.

This article will make the case for monetizing your homepage carousel. We’ll also share examples from two innovative companies that have implemented carousel ads into their ad servers.

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Why should I monetize my carousel?

The short answer: more ad revenue!

Like Amazon and others, your homepage carousel likely contains rotating images and messages highlighting select organic content.

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Adding sponsored slots to your carousel allows you to show visually-compelling and contextually-relevant ads - and boost both user engagement and your advertising revenue.

They’re valuable because:

• Sponsored carousel listings can complement your organic spots for a non-intrusive ad experience. They can blend in and look like a natural part of the rotation.
• Advertisers pay more for above-the-fold, high-interaction ad units.

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Can you share some innovative examples of carousel ads?

Absolutely! We’ll focus on two publishers that are using sponsored spots to monetize their carousels.

1. Atom Tickets
   
   Atom Tickets, an online platform for movie tickets and concessions, monetizes some of its homepage carousel slots by selling them to movie studios - and combines them with companion skin ads to promote the latest blockbusters. The visually-stunning, above-the-fold spots offer a compelling experience for users and advertisers alike.

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1. The ad quality and delivery encourage advertisers to pay higher CPMs for these prominent homepage placements - without impacting user experience.

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1. Coupang
   
   Coupang, a South Korean retail site similar to Amazon, uses its homepage carousel to display sponsored product listings in addition to its organic spots. For example, this paid spot for a beauty product line appears in rotation with its organic spots for grocery items.

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Both the paid and organic spots appear in the six-slot carousel menu that users can control. As a result, the paid carousel listings don’t feel as intrusive as, say, a programmatic banner.

While neither Atom Tickets nor Coupang monetize all of their carousel slots, their insertion of sponsored spots offers an easy way to drive incremental revenue. You can do the same by adding sponsored placements to your organic content carousel.

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How do I implement carousel ads?

Monetizing your homepage carousel requires a non-programmatic, server-side solution that integrates native ads with your organic content.

Amazon and other large-scale publishers spent years building and refining their carousel ad platforms in-house.

For publishers looking to monetize their carousels in just weeks, Kevel offers API access to tools that deliver native ads via JSON responses to avoid ad blockers and respect user privacy without slowing down your site.