CNET reels in incremental revenue

Background

CNET’s mission is to make the ever-changing world useful. Through its reporting, CNET sheds light on what’s new in modern life and how to get the most out of it. With its suite of newsletters, CNET works to deepen their relationship with readers and cement itself as the destination to discover and research technology and consumer electronics.

Goal

CNET was exploring ways to complement existing efforts for their email newsletter direct-sales and increase the overall yield of the program.

Solution

One tactic that CNET wanted to implement was to expand their media kit by offering advertising partners creative formats beyond display ads. Diversifying their creative offerings would enable CNET to increase the yield of their direct-sold program. It was critical that their solution be low-maintenance, scalable, and avoid overtaxing CNET’s existing resources.

With LiveIntent’s Native Ad Blueprints, CNET saw the opportunity to make their dream of differentiated newsletter inventory a reality. The solution would grant CNET the ability to add native inventory to their email newsletters with greater operational ease for their direct sales team to sell to sponsors. As an added bonus, CNET could open up the new inventory to demand sourced through LiveIntent’s Native Curated Packages program. This would allow CNET immediate access to vertically-aligned demand from LiveIntent’s roster of premium advertisers.

To get started, CNET and LiveIntent partnered to build CNET’s native blueprint. The blueprint would define the layout of the native ad slot and ensure that CNET’s brand styling, like font family and color, would be incorporated. CNET chose a design that allowed the native placement to mesh with editorial content and not disrupt the reading experience for newsletter subscribers. LiveIntent provided guidance throughout the process to ensure the design was optimized to accept demand from the Native Curated Package program.

With their blueprint set, CNET only had to place a Native LiveTag into their newsletter templates and link it to their blueprint to start serving native ads into their newsletters. CNET’s design could now be used across multiple templates without the operational drag of having to hardcode ads for each campaign. After implementing their custom ad unit across the desired newsletters, CNET was now ready to accept advertiser demand, sourced by LiveIntent, through Native Curated Packages. The flexibility of Native Ad Blueprints also enabled CNET’s sales team to sell the native placement independently as a part of their direct-sold program.

Results

Since the implementation of their native email inventory, CNET has seen a 67% increase in newsletter revenue in just the first 60 days.

With Native Ad Blueprints, CNET was able to find the sweet spot between augmenting their direct-sold strategy, upholding a reader-friendly experience, and minimizing operational friction.