What is it?
You can monetize your audience without having to sell ads yourself by using platforms like LiveIntent, Paved, which handle everything for you.
These platforms insert ads in the locations you choose within your newsletter, and you earn revenue based on the performance of these ads.
Because the ads are not tailored to your audience and the brand is not picking you specifically for your audience relationship, the amount you can earn here is incredibly low and it is almost never worth monetizing in this way.
The Good and the Bad
- Near-passive income.
- No set-up costs or investment required.
- Very low CPMs compared to negotiating your own deals.
- You don't have total control over which ads are shown.
- Usually need to get approved by ad platform.
Examples to Steal
Programmatic ads work well in situations where it's impractical to fill out your advertising schedules.
For instance, Patch is a network of hundreds of local news sources. When you sign up for their newsletter, you get sent an algorithmically curated batch of stories based on your ZIP code.
To serve different ads depending upon location, you need to make a ton of tiny deals to fill out your quota for each specific area.
That becomes very difficult to manage at scale, so Patch works with LiveIntent to help plug the gaps with more generic ads that appeal nationwide.
As they're less targeted, the CPMs are of course lower, and you need a lot of scale to make a good return.
