Floor Price
A floor price (also called a floor CPM) is the minimum price per 1,000 impressions you are willing to accept for a placement. Bids below the floor are rejected — the placement returns no ad rather than a low-value one.
What is a floor?
In programmatic advertising, a floor prevents inventory from being sold below its market value. Without a floor, an auction with only one low-bidding campaign would serve at that campaign's bid regardless of how little it pays. A floor gives you a guaranteed minimum — if no bid clears it, the placement shows nothing.
Inlay floors operate at the placement level. Each placement can have its own floor, allowing you to set higher minimums for premium positions (e.g. above-the-fold editorial blocks) and lower minimums for less prominent ones.
How it's applied
During the auction, Inlay compares each bid's CPM against the placement's floorCpm:
- If the winning bid is ≥ floor CPM, the ad is served at the winning bid price
- If the winning bid is < floor CPM, no ad is served and the impression is unfilled
- If no bid clears the floor, a house ad is served instead — the slot is never blank, but no revenue is recorded for that impression
Publisher revenue is calculated on the actual serving CPM (the winning bid), not the floor CPM.
Setting a floor
The floor CPM is set when creating or editing a placement. Enter a value in USD — for example, 1.50 means $1.50 per 1,000 impressions.
You can update the floor at any time from the placement detail page. The new floor takes effect immediately on the next impression.
0(the default) means any positive bid is accepted. This maximises fill rate at the expense of potentially very low CPMs early in the network's growth.Fill rate tradeoffs
Setting a floor is a tradeoff between CPM and fill rate:
| Floor CPM | Expected effect |
|---|---|
$0.00 | Maximum fill rate. Every impression is monetised, but at whatever CPM the market bears. |
$0.50–$1.00 | Good starting point for blog and editorial content. Filters out the lowest-quality bids. |
$1.00–$2.50 | Mid-tier. Appropriate for content pages with engaged audiences. Some impressions will be unfilled. |
$2.50+ | Premium positioning. Expect lower fill rates but higher revenue per served impression. |
Recommended floors by format
| Ad Format | Suggested floor |
|---|---|
| Content Card (article) | $0.75 – $1.50 |
| In-Feed Social | $0.50 – $1.00 |
| Editorial Block | $2.00 – $4.00 |
Start low, raise gradually
$0or a low value. Watch your analytics for 7–14 days to see the average CPM you're achieving. Then raise the floor to match or slightly exceed the median CPM — this filters low bids without significantly hurting fill rate.