By Katherine Ruane, Director of Marketing Strategy and Daniela Lomas, Marketing Specialist at Mather Economics
September 26th, 2024
While many publishers have prioritized digital audience growth and subscriptions in recent years, latest trends emphasize the need to refocus on advertising as part of a holistic revenue strategy. Mather has long championed balanced revenue strategies and supported hundreds of publishers through their digital transformation. In response to evolving needs, we’ve launched a suite of advertising solutions designed to optimize strategies, grow revenue, and maximize advertiser yield—all while empowering publishers to maintain strong advertiser relationships and deliver an exceptional reader experience.
In this article, we explore Mather’s Advertising Profitability Analysis, a 12-week engagement designed to help publishers uncover new profit growth opportunities across their print and digital advertising strategies. We’ll also share a recent success story from Australian Community Media, who leveraged our framework to optimize their print advertising strategy, identifying a 7-figure revenue opportunity.
Introducing Mather’s Advertising Profitability Analysis
Our latest offering combines Mather’s strategic expertise with data-driven analysis and benchmarking, empowering publishers to identify quick wins and strategies to finetune their advertising practices across print and digital products for long-term viability.
Our three-phase approach begins with a current state assessment, during which time we’ll gather historical performance data and conduct interviews with your team to establish a baseline understanding of your unique market context and outline initial opportunities for further analysis.
Building on the stakeholder input, our analytics team dives deeper into your advertising performance and sales data, leveraging benchmarks where possible to perform a data-driven gap analysis and inform impact opportunity estimates. This assessment encompasses key focus areas including:
- Advertiser Spend We examine historical advertising campaigns to identify what features drive engagement and profitability.
- Product and Package Optimization: We evaluate your offerings to ensure they are designed to maximize yield.
- O&O vs. Extended Market: We compare performance between your owned and operated vs extended assets to pinpoint where to focus efforts for greatest impact.
- Rate Card Realization and Discounting Trends: We analyze rate card utilization and discounting practices to uncover opportunities.
- Sales Team Performance: By assessing how your sales team contributes to revenue, we highlight strengths and areas for improvement.
We complete the engagement by working closely with your team to create a strategic and tactical roadmap, prioritizing initiatives based on revenue potential and providing clear implementation guidelines. Our focus is on delivering realistic, measurable goals, empowering publishers to execute with confidence.
Uncovering a 7-figure Revenue Opportunity – A Publisher Success Story
In mid-2023, Australian Community Media (ACM), Australia’s largest independent publishing group, engaged Mather to audit their current print advertising practices across several publications. Through this engagement, Mather identified significant untapped revenue potential, amounting to a 7-figure opportunity.
Key findings and recommendations to ACM included:
- Increase Ad Frequency – Encourage advertisers to book more frequent placements, driving steady ad revenue and maximizing ad space usage.
- Rebalance Ad Sizes – Prioritize larger or premium ad formats to boost profitability, ensuring an optimal mix for maximum returns.
- Control Discounting – Implement a disciplined discounting strategy to raise the average net rate, protecting ad value while staying competitive.
- Align Rate Cards – Update outdated rate cards to standardize pricing across sales channels, aligning with market conditions to enhance revenue and ad volume.
Tony Kendall, ACM’s managing director had this to say about their collaboration with Mather:
“From the outset, Mather Economics demonstrated a deep understanding of our needs and objectives. Their approach to analyzing historical advertising data, identifying key market segments, and developing econometric models has provided us with invaluable insights into our pricing strategies. The targeted recommendations and strategic advice have been instrumental in optimizing our rate structures, ultimately enhancing our revenue and customer retention.”
Ready to elevate your advertising strategy?
Reach out to our experts to discover how Mather’s solutions can accelerate your revenue and profit growth.
Bob Terzotis – bob@mathereconomics.com
