How Condé Nast profits from multiple channels.

1. MONETIZE ALL THE THINGS:
HOW CONDÉ NAST PROFITS
FROM MULTIPLE CHANNELS
08.18.17

2. HI

3. JAKE SP URLO CK
NAME:

14. LOUIS ROSETTO
WIRED CO-FOUNDER
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/wired-hotwired-anniversary/
WE HAD TO BE THERE
14
But in the summer of 1994, a transformative piece of software
called Mosaic was fast opening a new frontier to the masses:
the World Wide Web. It quickly became clear that WIRED
needed a website. “We realized this was the future of
everything, and we knew we should be there.”

15. HOTWIRED (1994)
Hotwired (1994–1999) was the
first commercial web magazine,
launched on October 27, 1994.
Although it was part of Wired
Ventures, Hotwired was a
separate entity from Wired, the
print magazine, and had original
content.
THE BEGINNING
15

16. JEFF VEEN
EARLY WIRED INTERN / TYPEKIT COFOUNDER / ADOBE SVP
TRUE VENTURES / AUTOMATTIC INVESTOR
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/wired-hotwired-anniversary/
AS AN INTERN
16
“Then in 1994, Veen was the twenty-
something responsible for converting
the contents of WIRED magazine into
various digital formats each month.
So great was his faith in the internet,
Veen had quit his job as managing
editor of a newspaper in Santa Cruz to
join WIRED's fledging web team.
As an intern.”

17. EARLY
PROTOTYPE
A page from Howard
Rheingold’s notebook with an
early (largely unused) idea
for HotWired's interface.
17

18. 1 2 3
VISION OF HOTWIRED
CAN WE MAKE MONEY?
18
“I said we're not moving forward
until we can justify what we're
doing. We have to understand
what the business is.”
"global jam session."“a place where readers
could participate in an
exchange of ideas.”
LOUIS ROSSETTO
FOUNDER
KEVIN KELLEY
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
HOWARD RHEINGOLD
EXECUTIVE EDITOR

25. TITLE

30. SECTION TITLE

32. SUCK.COM (1995)
Suck.com was one of the earliest
ad-supported content sites on
the Internet. It featured daily
editorial content on a wide variety
of topics, including politics
and pop-culture and was targeted
at Generation X. Their tagline,
and mascots, were "A fish, a
barrel, and a smoking gun". The
site remains online despite having
no new content published since
2001 and several months of
downtime in 2015.
A FISH, A BARREL, AND A SMOKING GUN
32

33. WEBMONKEY
(1995)
Webmonkey was a popular
online tutorial website composed
of various articles on building
webpages from backend to
frontend. The site covered many
aspects of developing on the web
like programming, database,
multimedia, and setting up web
storefronts. The content
presented was much like Wired
magazine but for learning to
design web content. Webmonkey
had content applicable to both
advanced users and newer
internet users interested in the
underlying technologies of the
web.
A FISH, A BARREL, AND A SMOKING GUN
33

34. HOTBOT (1996)
Hotbot was launched in May 1996
by Wired magazine. It became a
popular tool with search results
served by the Inktomi database
and directory results provided
originally by LookSmart and
then DMOZ since mid-1999.
Lycos acquired HotBot as part of
its acquisition of Wired in 1998
and thereafter HotBot languished
with limited development and
falling market share. At the end of
2002 HotBot was relaunched as a
multiple option search tool, giving
users the option to search either
the FAST, Google, Inktomi or Teo
ma databases.
THE BEGINNING
34

37. DISTRIBUTION
PLATFORMS

38. HTTPS
8.18.17

39. AMAZON AFFILIATES
8.18.17

40. AMAZON AFFILIATE LINKS There are a million plugins that do this. Here is a simple one with some
Stackoverflow regex that has made WIRED some 💵
C.R.E.A.M.
40

41. NEWSLETTERS

42. NEWSLETTERS
MAKE MONEY

43. ADBLOCKERS

45. ADBLOCKERS
45
DESKTOP USERS
USING ADBLOCK
26-39%
ADBLOCKERS
• Antiblock.org V2 & V3
• AntiAdblock (ClemensConrads)
• AntiAdblock (ErikSwan)
• AntiAdblock (D3xt3r)
• RTK Anti Adblock
• Anti Ad Buster
• AADB Anti Ads Blocker
• AdUnBlock Free & Premium
• FuckAdBlock / BlockAdBlock (Sitexw)
• ABT - Ad Block Test
• Block Adblock (thepcspy.com)
• Remove Adblock (removeadblock.com)
• Adblock Detector
• StopAdBlock (stopadblock.org)
• No-Adblock (no-adblock.com)
• AdBuddy
• AdBlockConverter (adblockconverter.com)
• HowToRemoveAdblock (howtoremoveadblock.com)
• BlockAdblock (blockadblock.com)
• TryMask (trymask.com)

48. AFTER THE VEIL
ISN’T THAT A 2PAC ALBUM?
48
25% 15%
SETTLEDINITIAL WHITELIST

49. APPLE NEWS

51. APPLE NEWS
FILL RATE
51
0% 10.1%
IAD BACKFILLHOUSE FILL RATE

52. advertisingSettings: {
frequency: 10
}

53. NEWSLETTER
SUBSCRIPTIONS
A newsletter subscriber is 10x
more likely to subscribe to the
magazine.
DRIVE USERS TO NEWSLETTERS
53

54. NEWSLETTERS
MAKE MONEY

55. GOOGLE AMP

56. SUBSCRIPTION
WIDGETS IN AMP
NewYorker is leading the way
here at Condé Nast, but other
brands will be following.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
56

57. 1 2 3
WIRED ON AMPCASE STUDY FROM GOOGLE
https://www.ampproject.org/case-studies/wired/
PROGRAM OBJECTIVE
57
63% IN CTR ON ADS 175K ARTICLES25% INCREASE IN CTR

58. INCREASED AD
VISIBILITY
WIRED has increased local
recirculation, and aims for
engagement on related videos
in AMP. Galleries will be
better supported soon.
Also newsletters. Because?
MONEY MONEY MONEY
58

59. NEWSLETTERS
MAKE MONEY

60. A CASE FOR
BETTER
GALLERIES
IN AMP
“Galleries are a template with high ad
inventory impact on the mobile web
and low inventory impact with the
current AMP implementation options.
We need a better UX for AMP galleries,
something that can accommodate long
captions, images with different aspect
ratios, recirculation widgets, and, of
course, ads. It also needs to feel cool
and load fast,” said Baldwin.
MONEY MONEY MONEY
60

61. FACEBOOK INSTANT
02.22.17

62. CONDÉ NAST CASE STUDY
INTERNAL

63. TESTING, PHASE ONE:
WHAT CAN WE DO HERE?
63
• GQ, Vanity Fair and Wired posted 3-4 articles a day to Facebook Instant Articles for a period of
close to a month (end of March through end of April)
• Main findings:
• Vanity Fair saw more mobile traffic coming to FBIA articles vs. regular articles, while GQ and
Wired had lower traffic to those posts
• Desktop traffic was lower when an article was posted via FBIA
• The lower traffic, combined with a lower likelihood to recirculate, generated fewer page views
overall
• Ad impressions per page view were also lower due to FBIA rules and limitations

64. TESTING, PHASE TWO:
LET’S TRY AGAIN
64
• Why: Our goal was to separate the impact of FBIA from the impact of the editorial selection of the
3-4 articles published to FBIA each day. Additionally, we wanted to explore how improvements by
the tech team to ad delivery effect ad inventory.
• What: The brands were to post 100% of FBIA eligible content (articles, above ~350 words) to
Facebook Instant Articles
• When: One full week
• Vanity Fair and GQ: May 11-17 • Wired: May 16-22

65. 65
TESTING:
THE SCORING MODEL
LET’S PUT A RANK ON EVERYTHING
Article FBIA/Mobile vs. Desktop
Traffic
Visits x Page views per visit
(including recircula5on)
Monetization
First PV x FBIA/mobile ar5cle
impressions per page x eCPM plus
Subsequent PV x mobile site
impressions per page x eCPM

66. TEST POSTING
ON FBIA
Number of articles posted:
WE’LL DO IT LIVE
66
31%
69%
27%
Percent of all posted content
89 42 74

67. IT WASN’T GREAT…
67
FBIA IMPACT ON TRAFFIC
AND MONETIZATION
Mobile Visits +25% -25% +109 %
Desktop Visits -17% -60% -9%
Mobile PV / Visit -24% +1% -36%
Mobile Impressions/Visit +14% -21% +75%
eCPM -16% -12% -33%

68. FBIA IMPACT ON REVENUE
IT GETS BETTER?
68
14%-51%-11%

69. AD DENSITY
ADS ALL THE TIME
69
<meta property="fb:use_automatic_ad_placement" content="enable=true ad_density=default">
<meta property="fb:use_automatic_ad_placement" content="enable=true ad_density=medium">
<meta property="fb:use_automatic_ad_placement" content="enable=true ad_density=low”>

70. ADS IN RECIRCULATION
(BETA)
TWEET @WHYISJAKE TO WIN FAVOR IN THE COMING YEAR
70
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en" prefix="op: http://media.facebook.com/op#">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta property="fb:op-recirculation-ads" content="placement_id=YOUR-ID">
<link rel="canonical" href="http://home.fburl.com/test.html">
<title>Jake's awesome article. @whyisjake on Twitter</title>
</head>
<body>
...
</body>
</html>
You can also place ads within the recirculation units at the bottom of
your Instant Article. You will need to be signed up with Audience
Network to enable this ad placement.

71. JAKE SPURLO CK
@whyisjake