ParentingWeekly grows revenue and monetizes untapped areas of its website with sign up ads from Pontiflex

Parents at every stage – from preconception and pregnancy through their babies’ first steps and beyond – looking for advice and information often turn to ParentingWeekly.com for guidance, tools, and support networks. They find expert advice on a range of topics, personalized calendars, and social communities where they can connect with other parents who are going through similar experiences.

Through a family of sites, ParentingWeekly provides its primarily female audience with relevant content, discussion forums, and weekly e-newsletters that are customized to their specific life stage. However, it’s not limited to just new and expectant moms. The leading online destination also provides information and advice specifically for fathers and grandparents.

Challenge

In order to monetize their audience and increase revenue, ParentingWeekly considered a number of advertising solutions. They decided against working with ad networks due to the fear on receiving sub-optimal advertising on their site. They also experimented with video ads, but were not satisfied with the returns.

“We were looking for a way of monetizing our audience without sacrificing the user experience. It was of utmost importance that the advertising on our site kept people engaged and on the site,” said Marlyss Bird, Program Manager at ParentingWeekly.

Solution

Principally speaking, there were three kinds of advertisements that ParentingWeekly could go with. They could run display banners and monetize inventory on a CPM pricing model. However, while display banners can be an effective way to monetize inventory, they can’t be the only way. Over the past few years, returns on CPM advertising have steadily fallen.  In addition, display banners direct users away from the site to a landing page, which went contrary to ParentingWeekly’s objectives of keeping people on the site (a problem also experienced with search ads).

ParentingWeekly decided to implement sign-up ads through Pontiflex. With sign-up ads, people could sign up within the ad, and submit their information to an advertiser without having to click-through to a landing page. User data is sent automatically from ParentingWeekly to the advertiser using Pontiflex’s patent pending data transfer technology.  Sign-up ads are typically served where users are most engaged with site content – where they are in the process of registering for membership or taking advantage of personalized information. ParentingWeekly ran sign up ads on registration thank you pages, sweepstakes sections, and their steals and deals page – which includes special discounts and offers. The site was able to show relevant ads from top brands without sacrificing engagement.

Additionally, the ads powered by Pontiflex were completely transparent and opt-in. At all times, user privacy was protected. Users knew exactly what they were signing up to receive and made active decisions to share their contact information with particular brands.

Likewise, ParentingWeekly had full insight into the performance of their sign-up ads. The site took advantage of Pontiflex’s detailed reporting to track each placement separately used Pontiflex’s optimization technology to ensure that the best performing ads were shown most frequently.

Results

ParentingWeekly began immediately seeing the benefits from their Pontiflex powered ads.

As a result of its partnership with Pontiflex, ParentingWeekly now sees eCPMs of $31 on areas of the site that were previously unmonetized. The site has also found that the thank you pages have the highest response rates and have gained valuable insight into the parts of the site where people are most engaged. According to Marlyss Bird, “With Pontiflex, we have been able to effectively monetize our site in a manner that is completely non-disruptive to our content and our users’ experience and take advantage of significant opportunities to increase revenue.”

By focusing on what they do best: providing relevant information to parents at all stages of pregnancy and early childhood, and letting Pontiflex handle their ad delivery and placement, ParentingWeekly is able to provide even more value to their audience. Parents get the advice and community they need, along with relevant advertising from top brands to help them connect with the products and services they need in this most important time in their lives.