Encyclopedia Britannica Case Study - Donation Campaigns and Unlock Blocked Ad Revenue

Publisher: Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica

With a legacy spanning 250 years, Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica sit at the top of the pinnacle when it comes to brands in education. The company’s digital platforms serve over 140 million users across 80 countries, and is a reliable source of quality content tailored to children, parents, schools, and the general public. An adblock recovery and donation campaign case study.

Goal: Create New Revenue Streams and Improve Adblock Recovery

The publisher’s main KPIs were to create new, alternative revenue streams in addition to improving performance over previous adblock revenue recovery efforts.  Britannica had tried an alternative adblock recovery solution, but had been underwhelmed with results and latency issues from the approach. Britannica was looking for an adblock recovery solution with a stronger ROI, no/low dev requirement, and no negative impact on site performance.

Solution: Admiral Transact & Admiral Engage

The first step towards generating new revenue was to implement Admiral’s Engage based adblock revenue recovery module. Targeting and asking adblock users upon site entry to allowlist either site with a custom CTA, proved to be a superior solution vs. the previous efforts of reinserting Acceptable Ads. Allowlisting unlocks a publisher’s full ad stack, monetizing that user at 100%.

In addition Merriam-Webster & Encyclopedia Britannica’s previous solution was causing site speed issues and delivered poor RPMs (due to the limitations of Acceptable Ads standards).

Focusing on a permission based approach, step two was to activate Admiral’s Transact Module and target/offer adblock users who did not follow through on the allowlist request, the option of allowing ads on the site OR making a one-time donation to help support MW/EB.

Requiring zero dev-lift, Admiral’s Transact Module, is a turn-key feature that manages implementing subscriptions, memberships and donation programs from end to end. Donors could choose from suggested amounts, or enter their own. Messaging schedules were set to automatically adjust based on the amount previously contributed.

As the campaign continued, recovered revenue grew to 5 digits monthly, delivering six digit returns in the first year and MW/EB plan to integrate Admiral Convert solutions to help grow email subscribers and drive newsletter sign-ups.

Results:

• Thousands of donations received, some in the triple digits!
  
  
• Donation program identified a “most loyal” segment
  
  
• 80% increase in revenue recovery rate
  
  
• Users unlocked by Admiral drove exponentially higher RPM's and solved latency issues of the previous solution.