By Marc Theermann

One of the most common questions that publishers ask these days is: How can I increase the monetization of my mobile traffic?

Clearly the answer is very different for each publisher, but my goal is to lay out a rough guide to get you thinking about what might work for you.

For the sake of discussion, let us say you are a U.S.-based publisher with a sales team that calls directly on advertisers and agencies.

Also, let us assume most of your traffic is from the United States, and your international traffic is small, so you are not yet monetizing it.

For this scenario, a three-step approach might be right, designed to maximize revenue for every impression and minimize potential channel conflict:

Empower sales team with scarcity and rich media
Set aside premium inventory that only your own sales team is allowed to sell.  Your goal is to create scarcity and maximum brand interaction.

You can build scarcity through a specific placement, such as the ads on the homepage, the start page or a splash-up screen.

Alternatively, you can use a specific ad format for your own team. Perhaps it is an interstitial, or some other form of rich media. In either case it is geared to exclusively expose your brand partners to your audience.

Today?s rich media options in mobile are vast, and any creative your agency dreams up can be executed. You can have full-page transparencies, overlays, interstitials or page takeovers.

I would suggest jumping on the rich media band wagon early. The interaction levels will be high, the brand partner will be excited, and your sales team will have a sexy case study for their next pitch.

Partner with a single ad network
Many publishers have more demand than supply.

If you fall into this category, it makes sense to partner with a mobile ad network with sufficient reach and experience.

Most networks are experts at selling mobile inventory and have the relationships to get you additional exposure.

In addition, media buyers aim to buy inventory at scale. As a result, these ad networks land media budgets that a single publisher could not normally access.

I suggest teaming up with one of these networks exclusively.

With the exception of your premium inventory, give them full and transparent access to your inventory, but set a high floor price.

One premium network partner should give you solid access to the ecosystem, and ensure that your inventory is actively being represented to Madison Avenue.

Monetize unsold inventory via mediation layer
Even after your sales team and network gets to work, you will likely still have some unsold inventory with which to deal. For this you have two choices.

First, you can engage your technology team to connect to multiple ad networks though a daisy chain.

Alternatively, you could partner with a yield optimizer who automatically connects your inventory to multiple networks.

Some added benefits of the latter are consolidated performance reporting and monetization for your international inventory.

Either way, you will probably want to expose this unsold tier to the ecosystem on a blind basis, and through optimal channels. This will minimize channel conflict and, correctly incentivized, your ad network partner to sell at higher prices.

Let us face it, prices are coming up again.

Most of the large high-tech firms nationwide are currently running mobile cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns in the 25-cents range.

At a click-through rate of 1 percent, you are going home with an eCPM of $2.50. Get your hands on those CPC dollars.

The combination of scarce premium inventory for your in-house team, one exclusive ad network partner and a mediation layer should ensure that you are exposing your inventory to almost all demand sources in a controlled way.

If each method works effectively, you will not miss out on big campaigns, you will fill every impression, and your brand partners will be excited to work with you.

Marc Theermann is vice president of mobile at AdMeld, New York. Reach him at .