Increasing Ad Revenue with an Optimized Front-end Design

Overview

A large and growing US-based digital media publishing company wanted to transform their publishing process, to increase scale, speed of content publishing, reduce cost as well as simplify and automate processes. They were also expecting the new publishing platform to drive better advertising revenues with better experiences and integrations.

Project Outcome Metrics

Average time on page increased by 30 minutes
13 more pages visited on average
Hosting costs reduced by 27%
32% better cost per action
200% improvement in click and view-throughs
8% increase in revenue due to leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in marketing analytics and publishing processes

Services: Cloud Hosting, Customer Experience - CX, Employee Experience - EX, Business Process Optimization

Sector(s): Digital Media Publishing

Technologies: Amazon Web Services, WordPress, JavaScript, Google DoubleClick for Publishers

Challenge

Shifting focus to front-end and adtech

Our ‘Digital Transformation Strategy’ is a service that, through rigorous discussion with the client and research, will establish the likely areas for impactful IT transformation. Having deployed this service we realized that solving for hosting costs alone wasn’t our objective in this engagement and, as a result, after re-hosting the client's websites to a more nimble, fast, and cost-effective hosting platform, we shifted our focus to their sites’ front-ends and adtech to maximize the revenues they generate from advertising.

We identified two areas that were ripe for digital transformation:

1. Our client’s legacy CMS systems - For a media and content business, the ability to push new content quickly and seamlessly to their websites is the key to attracting a high volume of visitors before a competing brand publishes their own content on a topic that’s hot and trending.

2. Our client’s adtech stack - The right adtech can help content-rich websites improve cost per action, click-throughs and view-throughs, which are critical metrics in the industry.

Solution

Migrating to an improved hosting platform

We are experts in Agile methodology, so scrum boards were quickly set up, and teams of our developers were deployed across a number of tasks.

We began with migrating our client’s website front-ends to an open source content management system that could help them speed up their content management and publishing functions. WordPress was a perfect technology: it solved the problem of scale, and allowed for tha smooth migration where the metadata of the content could be kept intact. We built custom migration scripts and ensured that our client’s teams were on board with the new technology. In the process, we also focused on the cost benefits that could be realized by the client as we moved to an open source CMS that would result in a smoother, simpler website governance process.

Transforming the CMS, re-engineering the adtech stack, and building a new CX and EX

After successfully migrating the front-end, the client’s brand editors realized that their new CMS allowed them to introduce new content to the websites through familiar interfaces. This improved the pace at which their brands were pumping engaging content to their websites by obviating manual processes and operational challenges.

While engagement rates were seeing a boost due to the CMS transition, we began our work on the advertising side. Our first point of focus was to integrate all of the client’s brand websites to the Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) platform. This simple yet impactful move helped us introduce solid revenue forecasting, traffic management and optimization functions through a single, feature-rich platform.

However, the real challenge was to help the client maximize the ad revenues through optimally sized, precisely targeted, and lucratively positioned ads that convert instead of prompting the user to bounce to a different website. To this end, we performed integrations with over 47 adtech partners. Through this exercise, we leveraged some of the most advanced targeting techniques, and the latest strategies for digital advertising success using JavaScript technologies like ES6, Express.js, and Node.js on the back-end, along with AWS technologies like ECS, SQS, Cognito, and S3.

A specific example is in our integration of our client’s sites with Sulvo, which optimizes the UX while unifying demand and helping retain the adblock traffic. Similarly, we performed integrations with video advertising partners like YieldLove and Seracast, and multiple advertising networks to seal all the leakages and help our client squeeze every last drop of revenue from their traffic.

Deploying a fast and secure API strategy

Finally, in order to secure and optimize front- to back-end communications, we deployed an API Strategy. Swagger tools (Swagger UI, Validation, and Router) were leveraged to build APIs that could facilitate communication between the front-end and the back-end in a simple, fast, and secure manner.

Outcomes

Results were transformative: we helped our client achieve scale, speed, and better profit margins. We improved page load times and the average stats associated with the average user, who now spent an additional 30 minutes on some of the sites and visited 13 more pages. Our back-end work improved hosting costs by 27% and our adtech work brought 8% more revenue. The client now has an ultra-optimized backend which is completely scalable.

Through this engagement we ensured repeatable success for our client - and their level of satisfaction with us is reflected in our continuing work with them via our managed hosting services. A decade into the relationship, we remain a reliable partner that ensures near-100% uptime, competitive hosting costs, and high-speed websites for a business that relies on these factors for success.

32%

better cost per action

200%

improvement in click- and view-throughs.

more pages visited on average

minutes increased average time on page