How Future’s In-House Tech Boosts Ad Viewability and Revenue

Specialist media publisher Future plc., which houses more than 250 editorial titles including TechRadar and Marie Claire, has increased the viewability of digital ads on its recently acquired Kiplinger title after migrating the site to its proprietary backend platform, Vanilla. Ad viewability, a metric defined by the IAB that reflects whether an ad rendered and was viewable for a specific period of time, reflects the technical sophistication of a domain and its layout, said Ana Milicevic, principal and cofounder of Sparrow Advisors. Buyers can use viewability as a filtering criterion for their sources of supply, setting minimums to improve the likelihood that a reader sees their ad. By increasing ad viewability, Kiplinger aims to tap into more premium sources of demand. “The better advertisers tend to swim in the parts of the internet with higher ad viewability,” Milicevic said. The uptick in viewability on Kiplinger reflects not just the importance of site architecture to digital revenue but a core competency of Future plc., which operates a suite of in-house technology and has streamlined the migration process for new acquisitions, said chief revenue officer Zack Sullivan. “We operate on a one-platform strategy,” Sullivan said. “We maintain one site architecture, one CMS and one ad code. So when we make acquisitions, we go through the really hard yards up front to make these sites migrate.” Improved placement, latency and site experience Future acquired Kiplinger in October 2021 as part of a larger portfolio of brands it purchased from Dennis Publishing for $416 million. By September 2022, Future had fully migrated Kiplinger to its Vanilla platform. One month later, the site began improving its ad performance and viewability across several metrics. By October, Kiplinger had increased the viewability of its ads by 11% month over month, and its average ad viewability is 70%, according to Sullivan. It has increased the viewability of its video ad products from 40% to 75%. The migration led to a 40% increase in average dwell time, meaning readers spend more time on the page. Sullivan declined to offer financial details about specific titles, but digital ad revenue across the Future portfolio rose 24% in 2022 to $283 million (excluding affiliate), according to public filings. Vanilla has helped materialize these results through a few simple adjustments. First, its site architecture, whose contours can be seen with slight variation across the Future portfolio, increased the ad load of the site compared to its prior layout. Among other changes, Vanilla introduces an ad above the fold on both the homepage and individual articles. It also increases the number of mid-page units that readers encounter as they make their way through the articles, according to the publisher. The top of a Kiplinger article in 2019 (l.) vs. 2023 (r.) demonstrates how Vanilla increases ad viewability by employing formats that readers are likelier to encounter. Second, Vanilla embeds video within article pages and uses a sticky video product that follows readers as they scroll. These out-stream video products net lucrative video advertising revenue for Future, adding incremental revenue on top of existing display advertising. Third, by working in step with other proprietary technology—including its content management system Proof, ad stack Hybrid and ecommerce engine Hawk—Vanilla lets Future serve highly relevant ads to readers. For instance, Future collects and shares first-party information across its portfolio, which lets it generate robust profiles of frequent or logged-in visitors and make probabilistic assumptions about its unknown ones. Finally, the Vanilla platform also reduces the site latency of its ad products, increasing the likelihood that an ad renders before a reader has scrolled past. Improving site performance also improves the domain in search engine rankings, boosting its visibility and increasing traffic. These changes increase the overall ad load of the page, which tends to worsen the user experience. But the increase in dwell time across Kiplinger suggests the opposite. By loading more quickly and serving readers’ needs with its content, the title has shown an early ability to hold users’ attention longer and monetize it better, according to Milicevic. The challenge and appeal of an acquisition-heavy company In recent years, a number of media companies, including Dotdash Meredith, Recurrent Ventures and Outside Media, have embraced acquisition as a means of rapidly building scale. By purchasing dozens of titles, grouping them by category and selling that bundled reach to advertisers, the publishers sought to compete more efficiently with social platforms and increase deal sizes. Future Plc. Debuts TechRadar Gaming to Meet Rising Demand But the strategy has proven challenging for a number of reasons, particularly the operational rigor needed to successfully acquire one company, let alone dozens. In December, Dotdash Meredith reported a 28% decline in advertising revenue, while Recurrent Ventures and Outside Media resorted to layoffs this year to correct for a revenue imbalance. However, under chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne, who plans to step down by the end of 2023, Future has codified the process into a relative science. Its empire of brands, combined with its suite of proprietary technology, has created a network effect for the media company, Sullivan said. “[Byng-Thorne]’s strategy has always been about having the platform effect, which gives us complementary options,” he said. “We only move into audiences where there are multiple ways to monetize.”

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