Situation Overview:
The Kiplinger Washington Editors is a 96 year old publisher of business forecasts and personal finance advice, available in print and online. Their award-winning Website, Kiplinger.com, attracts 3.5 million unique visits and 30 million page views per month and has become a vibrant portion of the company’s revenue, through online sales and subscriptions as well as advertising and onsite partnerships. It’s readers are highly engaged and money savvy. They spend an average of eight minutes on the site per day with an average household income of $90K.
Like many publishers today, Kiplinger understands that there is no longer a direct correlation between the number of ad units on a page and an increase in ad revenue: more units ≢ more money for publishers. So, in early 2017, when Kiplinger.com embarked on a major redesign, not only did it focus on streamlining its aesthetic but it also sought to evaluate both the contribution that each ad unit had in sales and the contextual value that the units provided to readers. Included in this was a review of several native advertising partners whose sponsored content links appeared on the site. Dianomi was part of this review.
Solution
Kiplinger began working with native ad platform, Dianomi, in 2015. Like Kiplinger, Dianomi’s advertisers and audience skew toward the business and finance user. Dianomi works with publishers to increase both their native ad yield and improve the user experience by delivering the right content to the right reader at the right time.
Kiplinger uses Dianomi’s Sponsored Content Units, which features the native ads of over 300 global business and financial advertisers, running at any moment. Dianomi’s Sponsored Content Units are optimized by Dianomi’s algorithm to deliver the placement of those advertisers that drive the most engagement and the most revenue on the publisher’s page. Kiplinger’s readers only see contextually relevant, brand safe ads on the pages where they are most likely to engage.
“We went all-in with Dianomi and gave them dedicated placements and utilized their link tools,” said Phil Hawken, Business Development Manager, Kiplinger.com. “With Dianomi, we’re able to target our readers with native ad content on the topics they might be looking for, like an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). We can test different sponsored content on the site and target content to different sections and identify which channels and exactly where these ads will best perform.”
Results
Dianomi is now Kiplinger’s exclusive contextual native ad partner. Using Dianomi, Kiplinger is able to make more revenue off of a clearer page. The publisher is seeing a growth in revenues from native ad placements. Kiplinger now has a Dianomi native ad unit on almost every page and has reduced the number of native ad partners from 5 to 1. Most importantly, Kiplinger is benefitting by giving its readers more of what they want.
“We looked at several native ad companies, and Dianomi was most relevant and highest performing,” said Hawken. “The presentation works well for our readers; Dianomi helped us clean up the site and the sponsored content is relevant and provides value to our readers.”
KPI Improvements
Growth in click through – slideshows +77% articles +48%
Percentage growth in CPM – slideshows +336% articles +248%
Fewer Banner Ads on Kiplinger.com Led to Better Monetization
