--- title: "What Is Fill Rate? Definition and Examples | RentAnOTT" description: "Fill rate is the share of ad requests that are answered with an ad. See the formula, why requests go unfilled and how to raise fill without cutting price." url: "https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/fill-rate" markdown_url: "https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/fill-rate.md" category: "Advertising" updated: "2026-10-05" --- # What is fill rate? Fill rate is the percentage of ad requests that are answered with an ad. If a service requests 1,000 ads and receives 700, its fill rate is 70%. Unfilled requests earn nothing. ## How to calculate fill rate Divide ads returned by ad requests sent, and multiply by 100. A related measure, render rate, divides ads actually played by ads returned; an ad can be returned and still fail to play. ## Why requests go unfilled - No demand for that audience, country or device at that moment - A price floor set above what buyers will pay - Frequency caps: the viewer has already seen the available campaigns - Timeouts: the ad took too long to arrive - Technical mismatch: wrong format, duration or VAST version - Missing signals, such as no consent or no app identifier, that buyers require - Seasonality: budgets are thin in January and heavy before the holidays ## How to raise fill - Add demand sources, with a fallback order when the first has nothing - Review price floors by region instead of using one global floor - Pass the content and device information buyers ask for - Publish app-ads.txt so buyers can verify your sellers - Use house ads, promoting your own titles or plans, when nothing is sold ## Fill and price pull against each other Lowering the floor fills more slots at lower prices. The aim is the highest revenue per opportunity, which is CPM multiplied by fill, not the highest value of either on its own. ## Fill rate on RentAnOTT The revenue calculator has a fill rate input alongside CPM, ads per hour and watch hours, so you can see how much revenue each point of fill is worth for your audience. [Try the revenue calculator](https://www.rentanott.com/tools/ott-revenue-calculator). ## Related terms - [CPM](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/cpm) — CPM (cost per mille) is the price an advertiser pays for one thousand ad impressions. It is the standard unit for pricing video advertising, and the rate a streaming service earns for each thousand ads it shows. - [eCPM](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/ecpm) — eCPM (effective cost per mille) is the advertising revenue a publisher actually earns per thousand impressions, across every ad source and pricing model. It converts mixed and partly unsold inventory into one comparable figure. - [Ad load](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/ad-load) — Ad load is the amount of advertising shown per hour of viewing, expressed either as minutes of ads per hour or as the number of ads per hour. It is the main lever an ad-supported service has over both revenue and viewer tolerance. - [Ad server](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/ad-server) — An ad server is the system that decides which ad to show each time a player or stitching service asks for one, delivers the details of that ad and counts the result. For a publisher it is the control center of an advertising business. - [Programmatic advertising](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/programmatic-advertising) — Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of ad impressions through software, in place of orders negotiated by sales teams. Each ad opportunity is offered to buyers and sold, often by auction, in the fraction of a second before the ad plays. - [AVOD](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/avod) — AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) is a streaming model where viewers watch on-demand video for free and the service earns from the ads shown before, during or after it. - [VAST](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary/vast) — VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) is the industry standard, published by the IAB Tech Lab, for how an ad server describes a video ad to a player. A VAST response is an XML document that tells the player which media file to play and which tracking addresses to call. ## Further reading - [Pricing](https://www.rentanott.com/pricing) - [Content monetization platforms compared](https://www.rentanott.com/blogs/content-monetization-platforms) - [OTT subscription plans and tiers](https://www.rentanott.com/blogs/ott-subscription-plans) ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a good fill rate? It depends on market and audience. Established services in high-demand markets fill most requests; new services and low-demand regions often fill well under half at first. ### Is a 100% fill rate the goal? Not necessarily. Reaching it usually means accepting very low prices. Maximize revenue per opportunity instead. ### What should play when an ad slot is not filled? Nothing: the content should simply continue. Alternatively, show a promotion for your own content or paid plan. All 163 terms: [Streaming and OTT glossary](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary). ## Book a demo Tell RentAnOTT what you are launching. The team walks through the platform and maps the path to go-live around your catalog, markets and revenue model. Book a demo: https://www.rentanott.com/contact ## More from RentAnOTT - [Home](https://www.rentanott.com/index.md) — What RentAnOTT is, what every plan includes, and how launch works - [Features](https://www.rentanott.com/features.md) — Every core feature and optional add-on - [Pricing](https://www.rentanott.com/pricing.md) — Platform tiers, apps, add-ons, usage rates and example bills in INR and USD - [Free tools](https://www.rentanott.com/tools.md) — OTT app builder and calculators for streaming revenue, bandwidth, bitrate and pricing - [Insights](https://www.rentanott.com/blogs.md) — All streaming business articles - [Glossary](https://www.rentanott.com/glossary.md) — Definitions of streaming and OTT terms - [Book a demo](https://www.rentanott.com/contact.md) — Talk to RentAnOTT about your launch Full site in one file: https://www.rentanott.com/llms-full.txt