Yield · 18 Aug 2026
Dynamic floors that do not starve fill
A floor is a signal, not a guarantee. Used badly, it empties the auction. Used well, it stops you giving inventory away.
Hard global floors look tidy in a dashboard and often fail in the countries and formats that actually need demand. A $2.50 floor that works on US desktop display can wipe an in-app 300×250 in a price-sensitive geo. The floor did not “protect yield”. It removed the auction.
Start from clearing prices, not a round number
Use a lookback on winning prices by geo, device, and size. Set the floor a notch under the median win — not at the 90th percentile. The 90th percentile is what a few campaigns paid on a good day. The median is closer to what the market will repeat tomorrow.
Refresh the lookback often enough that a demand mix change shows up, but not so often that a quiet Tuesday rewrites Thursday’s floor. Seven to fourteen days is a workable window for most mid-size publishers. High-volume apps can go shorter if the sample is still statistically useful.
Split where the demand mix is different
App interstitial is not the same market as a 300×250 on a content page. CTV pods are not display. If you only have one floor object, you are averaging unlike auctions into a number that is wrong for both sides.
Geo splits matter more than most teams admit. A single “ROW” bucket hides the markets where you still have buyers. Split the geos that actually contribute volume; leave the long tail on a conservative default until you have enough wins to price them.
Do not raise the floor on every retry
Refresh rules that increment the floor on each retry train buyers to skip the placement. The second and third pass should compete on remaining demand, not on a higher reservation price. If you use a refresh, keep the floor stable or step it down slightly so leftover demand can still clear.
Watch fill when you move a floor
If fill drops more than a few points after a floor change, roll it back on that slice only. Do not unwind the whole site because one size in one country failed. The goal is paid impressions that clear — not a pretty eCPM on a shrinking volume.
Amli Media’s publisher tools can apply floor rules per placement and geo, then show fill and eCPM on the same cut so ops is not guessing from a blended report.