The future of publisher revenue lives beyond the page
BY JARED COLLETT
Digital publishing is facing a threat larger than cookie deprecation: loss of traffic. This statement isn’t new, and it isn’t shocking, but it is impacting roughly 78% of ad-supported websites and platforms.
There are many different sources of traffic loss, depending on publisher, content, industry, etc. The biggest impact right now, for most publishers, is AI. But this isn’t an article about AI. This is an article about viewing publishers as more than just owned and operated traffic and views. Instead, we should view publishers as brands that reach audiences. Not just any audience or individual on your website and/or app, but your audience all across the internet.
Third-party data is in a weird flux
Dying but not dying; changing, but not changing; adapting, but somehow seeming the same. Meanwhile, first-party data and contextual data are seeing a resurgence. These targeting parameters usually see higher CPMs, but the revenue from these higher CPMs is not offsetting the revenue loss due to traffic. So instead of focusing on impressions and CPMs, we should focus on audiences and the part they play in increasing revenue.
“Oh great, the guy that works for a sports league (yes, fishing is a sport) is going to talk about sponsorships or something that doesn’t relate to my [insert industry here] platform.”
If you have people who come to your site, then you can monetize that audience beyond your platform’s impressions.
Major League Fishing’s traffic is primarily focused on our events and livestreams
So, I’ll admit that we aren’t as impacted by AI scraping as other publishers are. Sure, AI can scrape and get the results of our tournaments, and they can pull our tips and tricks or lifestyle pieces, but they can’t replace our livestreamed events. This makes us a little more protected than most in that regard, but we still suffer from traffic loss. Our traffic loss is primarily caused by Digital Choice Fatigue, which fuels the “Feed-First” internet.
How do we grow revenue when traffic is declining? We can add more ad units to the page, but only within limits before it starts to create a bad user experience or borders on being labeled as MFA. We can add refresh, but it only goes so far. And none of these address the problem.
The best bet is to diversify revenue streams (or build your next river) so you can become less reliant on pageviews and impressions. Some of these diversifications are low-hanging fruit, like email newsletters (and if you haven’t signed up for Beeler’s, here’s your sign), and others are a bit more complex but really allow you to capitalize on your audience beyond your site, like Audience Extension.
Now, for those that aren’t familiar with Audience Extension, allow me to break it down real quick…
Audience Extension is not retargeting
While similar, they are not the same. Retargeting is great for individual campaigns designed to move a user down the marketing funnel towards a conversion. It’s narrow, focused, and still uses your inventory, thus limiting revenue growth. Audience Extension, on the other hand, is more scalable, with a much higher revenue ceiling.
Instead of monetizing your own inventory, you are monetizing your audience, and you are doing it off-site, so it doesn’t take up your precious inventory. Audience Extension forces publishers to stop thinking about impressions and start thinking about audience. It looks at your first-party data, who your audience is, what their behaviors are, etc., and then segments those audiences to be targetable, off-site. In a way, it’s like creating a cohort that you define, price, and control, based solely on your first-party data and how you segment it.
Major League Fishing currently uses Audience Extension quite successfully. Advertisers can reach some boating and outdoor IAB segments through various exchanges and targeting, but we can reach a much more qualified and precise audience, not reliant on third-party cookies or APIs, but based on our own curated first-party data. Sure, it may be a little easier for us because we have a more niche audience, but anyone can create a niche audience segment based on their own content and audience behaviors.
If you can convince an agency or DSP to buy inventory on your site because of your first-party data, then you can convince them to pay a little more to continue to follow that first-party data in a far more scalable fashion.
Monetizing on social media
Beyond email and audience extension, my favorite place to monetize our audience is via social media. Specifically, Meta. There are a lot of fun things you can do with social: collaboration, sponsored branded posts, anything an influencer might do. Brands are influencers too; you just have to think like an influencer.
Thinking like an influencer is what brought me to having an open conversation with a friend of mine who had recently started a company that does social revenue generation for influencers. They had come up with a complex yet simple method for monetizing audiences for these influencers. It was so unique that Meta was surprised when they ran it by them for approval prior to the company patenting it. Essentially, this company was connecting advertisers with influencer audiences without the influencers having to openly promote their products.
And since it is on Meta, the user doesn’t know that they are being targeted by the ad because they follow the specific influencer. It was first-party data targeting inside of the Meta walled garden. It wasn’t Meta’s look-alike or interest data. It was genuine followers. People whom these influencers had directly acquired, had user-initiated relationships with, and could be identified by profile, username, and, in some cases, email. Furthermore, it was a highly engaged and qualified audience.
So, I thought, if this model works for Influencers, then why can’t it work for publishers? Spoilers: It can.
The company does more than simply connect influencer audiences with advertisers
It segments followers based on engagement and interaction with content, then packages those segments so they can be made available as targetable audiences within Meta. Advertisers pay to access these segments, not through a one-time purchase, but by renting access for a negotiated period. During that rental window, the audience appears alongside other targeting options in the advertiser’s Meta account, and the advertiser can choose how much or how little to spend reaching that group. Once the rental period ends, access either expires or is renewed.
Essentially, this is allows any publisher, influencer, or creator to allow their first-party audience (followers) to be rented within Meta. Direct monetization of audience without using a single one of your impressions.
Usually, I try to avoid mentioning vendor names because I’m not writing this to be an advertorial or come across as sales-y. But considering this company owns the patent on the process and is the only one doing this, I feel it’s acceptable. – The company is called AudienceRent. They are designed to be mostly plug-and-play, handling the audience curation and rental offerings to advertisers if you don’t have a dedicated sales team. Or, for organizations like Major League Fishing, that prefer to manage the rentals directly, that’s an option too.
AudienceRent has provided a truly meaningful way of monetizing our audience outside of our owned and operated platforms, and without taking up inventory. They’re product operates similarly to Audience Extension, which has been very successful for us, making the connection immediately clear. And like Audience Extension, this Audience Rental does not allow the advertiser to see who is in the segment, so it’s privacy compliant as well. Essentially, it’s Audience Extension inside of Meta, but with a lot less heavy lifting.
Control the pivot
We publishers and content owners may not be able to control the decline of traffic and impressions as much as we would like, but we can control how we pivot. We can understand our audience, how they provide value to advertisers, and how we can segment them. We can change from treating our audience as a targetable byproduct of our content and brand, to treating them as a renewable and valuable asset.
Products like email, Audience Extension, and AudienceRent all point to the same thing: the future of revenue growth is not about adding more impressions to squeeze more revenue dollars from declining traffic, but about responsibly curating, segmenting, and monetizing the audience you already have. We just have to be prepared and open to making the pivot.
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