In Post-Cookie World, Salon Sees 21% Revenue Uplift Through Content Recommendation Partnership

Publisher Improves User Experience and Drives Revenue While Delivering Fewer Ad Impressions

Salon and Revcontent announced an exclusive partnership after Salon ran a head-to-head split test with other content recommendation partners. Driving the national conversation since 1995, Salon has supported fearless journalism with award-winning content, reaching an audience of approximately 10 million monthly unique visitors.

Salon, a digital trailblazer that relies on programmatic ad revenue to offer free content, was seeking revenue uplift through better user engagement and experience; brand-safe content; and flexible technology. The publication tested four different content recommendation vendors, ultimately selecting Revcontent for its significantly higher returns in February 2020.

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Justin Wohl, chief revenue officer at Salon, said, “Revcontent outperformed other content recommendation providers by 21% during Salon’s test period. Revcontent has consistently met our stringent standards for advertiser quality, brand safety and ad performance.”

In Q1 2020, Salon experienced no seasonal volatility in CPMs – notwithstanding the massive impact of COVID-19 across the digital media industry – and has no dependency on cookies or data to drive performance to partners.

Richard Marques, CEO at Revcontent, stated, “Revcontent is consistently outperforming our own guarantee to Salon by about 47% as a result of Salon increasing our viewability. Salon has proven relentless in its pursuit of user experience and revenue. At Revcontent, we want to work with media brands that put user experience at the forefront and pursue the highest quality editorial content, while creating a profit.”

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Justin Wohl, CRO at Salon, details his strategy as well, “Over the past year, we have focused on making major improvements to page speed and ad viewability on Salon. In restricting our partnerships to premium ad vendors only, namely Proper Media and Revcontent, we’ve achieved our goals. Our site loads 5x faster than before, and our average ad unit viewability has nearly doubled year over year. We’re delivering fewer ad impressions, speeding up the experience for our readers, and not suffering any reduction in our earnings.”

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