Beyond the spike: turning fan moments into first-party gold with Minute Media’s Rebecca Hyde

BY ROB BEELER + REBECCA HYDE, DIRECTOR OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AT MINUTE MEDIA

For digital publishers, tentpole moments – March Madness, the Super Bowl, a viral news cycle – have always been a double-edged sword. They deliver the traffic spikes that look great in a monthly report, but the audiences they bring rarely stick around. 

In an industry still heavily dependent on pageviews and programmatic CPMs, that churn is baked into the model. Publishers chase the spike, monetize the impression, and start again. But as third-party cookies continue their long goodbye and advertisers push harder for addressable, consent-based audiences, that cycle is becoming harder to justify. 

And so the question isn’t how to get more traffic during a tentpole moment, it’s to convert that moment into something that compounds: a known user, a declared interest, a relationship that survives the final whistle.

That’s exactly the challenge Rob Beeler puts to Rebecca Hyde, Director of Audience Development at Minute Media. By leveraging their editorial platforms, Minute Media has been able to create interactive, authentic experiences that provide premium value to users while simultaneously capturing deterministic first-party data to meet key business objectives. 

Using these successful examples as a case study, they dig into why most publishers are structurally ill-equipped to turn traffic into relationships, and what it actually takes to change that.

Rob: Moments like March Madness and the World Cup drive huge spikes in traffic, but most of it is fleeting. Why has it been so hard for publishers to turn that kind of traffic into something lasting?

Rebecca: Those moments are traditionally built for scale, not continuity. Audiences arrive with hyper-focused intent – to check a score, follow a bracket or read a specific headline – and then they leave. The problem is structural – most digital publishing models are built on pageviews rather than participation so there is simply no infrastructure designed to make the visit survive past the moment.

At Minute Media, we’re building experiences that focus on active participation instead of just passive consumption. We constantly ask ourselves, “What can we build that turns fan interest into involvement?”

Two recent examples of this thinking at work are our Sports Illustrated Bracket Challenge and World Cup Fan Zone. Both experiences took what is usually a siloed experience and turned into an opportunity to build an engaged, invested and returning audience. In the SI Bracket Challenge, instead of filling out a bracket in isolation, fans were able to compete directly against SI’s college basketball experts – connecting them with editorial talent and differentiating the SI experience from other bracket activities available. In the World Cup Fan Zone, fans had access to trivia, games and global leaderboards, so engagement became a daily habit instead of a one-off occurrence. As part of that experience, we also introduced a Fan Gallery, allowing users to upload and share their own celebrations globally, transforming them from passive viewers into active contributors on SI.com.

The strategic shift is simple – build experiences that foster community, not just drive traffic. The winning publishers aren’t just getting the pageviews, they’re giving audiences a place to belong.

Rob: These two initiatives weren’t just content – they were full interactive experiences tied to registration. What made that shift from content to experience so important? 

Rebecca: It completely transforms how we approach identity. For most digital publishers, registration is an afterthought – a gate placed on top of content after it’s built. We’re iterating the very opposite of that: first-party data capture is woven directly into the experience architecture. This keeps the value clear and attainable for the user, ensuring identity enhances participation rather than blocking it.

In SI’s Bracket Challenge, for example, registration wasn’t a barrier, it was a feature that unlocked live rankings, bracket tracking and direct competition against SI staff. That shift drove thousands of registrations, with 45% of total traffic returning throughout the tournament. We saw the exact same pattern with the World Cup Fan Zone, where registered users would return daily to complete new challenges and climb the leaderboard.

Rob: You saw massive spikes in key conversion and audience growth metrics tied to these initiatives. What drove that level of conversion – the timing, the format, or the way the experiences were structured?

Rebecca: It’s a combination of all three. Timing absolutely gives you the tailwind (i.e. launching in tandem with the relevant tentpoles), but timing alone doesn’t sustain engagement. The real driver is structuring these experiences so that registration feels like a natural continuation of the user journey. 

In SI’s Bracket Challenge, users weren’t just registering to get a newsletter, they were protecting their personal investment. Registration allowed them to save their brackets, receive status updates, compare performance and stay in the running for the grand prize (including tickets, merchandise and SI rewards). That clear value exchange drove a 278% increase in newsletter subscribers alongside our core registration growth.

Similarly, in the World Cup Fan Zone, the gameplay loops were designed for daily repetition. Our top performing game averaged 10x plays per player, showing the power of progression and competition in driving repeat engagement. Meanwhile, our daily trivia challenge achieved a 66% completion rate, showing strong fan engagement with formats that enable them to prove their knowledge. When registration unlocks a deeper, personalized layer of an experience, the fan sees it as a benefit, not a transaction.

Rob: These case studies highlight gamification: leaderboards, bracket submissions, live interaction. What is it about those mechanics that turns a casual reader into someone willing to register?

Rebecca: Gamification works because it converts interest into investment. Mechanics like leaderboards and bracket submissions let fans see themselves, and their fandom, inside the experience. Registration then preserves this effort by protecting their standing, creating a foundation for a larger audience ecosystem.

As we scale, these experiences become entry points into a deeper layer where fans can benchmark themselves against friends and/or rivals, setting the stage for competition between entire communities, not just individuals.

This is the direction we’re heading in – moving from engagement to investment to identity – building digital destinations where fans become part of the competition, the community and the culture. 

Rob: In SI’s Bracket Challenge, you generated thousands of bracket submissions across men’s and women’s tournaments. What does that participation level tell you about how audiences want to engage during these moments?

Rebecca: It tells us that the demand for active participation is far higher than most publishers realize. Fans don’t just want to read the coverage, they want an entry point into the event itself.

Those brackets show that when you give fans the opportunity to prove their sports passion and knowledge, they don’t hesitate.

Think about the physical world: tailgating, watch parties and stadium fan zones are all organic ways fans insert themselves into the event. The industry’s blind spot is that we haven’t properly translated that physical instinct into digital spaces. Online, publishers still treat fans like observers behind a wall. We want to give them the digital tools to interact and build communities in real-time.

Rob: A lot of publishers talk about first-party data but struggle to actually grow it. How do experiences like these change the equation?

Rebecca: They change the equation by moving us away from guesswork. We’re shifting from tracking vague online footprints to capturing a fan’s true identity. Traditional editorial content yields behavioral signals – clicks, pageviews, dwell time – and though useful, those signals are increasingly unreliable. 

An interactive, registration-powered digital strategy does something far more: it collects known users who have explicitly opted in, declared their intent and self-associated with a specific fandom or interest. That turns data into a community asset rather than a byproduct of traffic.

Rob: If a publisher wanted to replicate this kind of success, what’s the one thing they’d need to get right?

Rebecca: Everything hinges on the value exchange. Timing, format and platform are secondary to whether a fan instantly understands what they are getting in return for their attention and identity.

Many publishers treat registration as a gateway rather than a reward. Historically, publishers (ourselves included) have been guilty of this – demanding data too early or forcing a newsletter signup that offers no immediate gratification. Without a meaningful trade-off, the user bounces.

Success happens when the value is proven before the ask. Once a fan invests the effort to build a bracket, test their trivia knowledge or play a game, registration becomes the natural way to extend that journey – unlocking continuity, recognition and connection. To make this stick, that exchange has to persist from the first touchpoint all the way to long-term loyalty, which is why we’re now designing our experiences around audience lifetime value rather than single-session spikes.

When you align value, community and identity, long-term audience retention stops being a challenge and becomes a natural byproduct of the experience itself.

Looking to get more creative with your own audience?

Minute Media builds video, distribution, and monetization technology for publishers – and because they run their own Owned & Operated properties, that technology is truly “built for publishers, by publishers”. 

The team knows firsthand that growing revenue and engagement takes constant experimentation, and can help you think through the tools  that make sense for your audience and your business. To learn more, get in touch at minutemedia.com/company/contact.

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This is content created in paid partnership with Minute Media. We only feature partners who we believe bring real value to the publisher community.