352: How to Optimize Your Ad Revenue with Paul Bannister and Courtney Kahn from AdThrive

This week's episode is sponsored by Slickstream. It's something that I'm really excited to talk about because I've been able to work closely with the Slickstream team, kind of weighing in and hearing about different things that they're developing and advising them along their way in an official advisor capacity. And what's come from that is me really being inspired by this team of super smart people focusing on a really specific area. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that, but a little bit of a background before I tell you about that. And the first thing is this acknowledgement of like, you work really hard on.

Your blog, I don't need to tell you that.

Countless hours creating posts that your readers will love and you craft the recipe, the photographs, maybe you have video, all of that stuff. You're putting in a ton of work. But the question is really, are you, your visitor is going to find it, are they going to actually discover that piece of content? And that's why Slickstream exists. It's called the Slickstream Engagement Suite. Now Slickstream is the name of the company, but there's two words there that come after that that are important to point out. Engagement. And what that means is like, are people actually engaging with your content? It's one thing to like discover it on social or search, but there's another piece of the puzzle that we don't talk about as much, which is engagement. Are they actually engaging with it once they get there? So engagement is part and then suite, meaning there's multiple things that are a part of Slickstream. It's not just one thing, there's multiple elements. So what is it? Well, it's an easy to add, state of the art navigation tool to any site. And that means like it could be any cms, it could be any theme. So what are the different pieces of it? Well, it's, it's a responsive as you type search. So an example if you want to see that live is you can go to Pinch of Yum and click on the search and, and you could search something like tacos. And you can see as you're typing the search results are changing. It's awesome. So people can revise and edit and find exactly what they want as they're typing. Another thing is a way to favorite recipes. So as somebody's looking at a recipe, they can come to it and say like, hey, you know what, I actually really like this recipe. I'm gonna hit this heart button and it's gonna add that to a favorites for that user and so they can come back and they can manage their, their favorites on your site. It's a way for them to kind of create a little collection of their favorite recipes on your site. That's an engagement thing. So they know, hey, I have that favorite. I haven't bookmarked it, but I favorited it. And that's gonna be a way for them to engage with your site and keep them coming back, which is a wonderful thing and intelligent content recommendations. So let's say you're looking through a post and you wanna recommend other pieces of content. Slickstream does that in a really intelligent sm, using technology and kind of gathering all of this content using smart tools, behind the scenes, crunching all of the data with that content and then recommending content that's going to be engaging. And there's a lot more that comes with it. So each of these features is designed specifically for user engagement. So it helps your visitors find exactly what they're looking for and then it keeps them coming back for more than. So what does it look like to.

Get somebody to your site? That's a lot of hard work.

But the question is, how do you get them to continue to come back and to continue to engage with content once you're there? That's what Slickstream is all about. So that translates into more monthly sessions, more page views, and in many cases, more ad revenue. Here's the deal. Slickstream there, you'll see it in lots of different places, trusted by hundreds of food bloggers, Pinch of Yum obviously included. And it's really cool to see the range in sizes. It could be sites from tens of thousands of monthly page views to tens of millions. They work with some really huge sites, but they also are beneficial for smaller sites as well. So larger and more established blogs in particular often benefit the most since they have a lot of content, right? So they have a deep catalog and they want to get in front of that. They want to get in front of those readers. So if you have, you know, a deep catalog of content, chances are people might not see all of that or be exposed to all of it. Slick Stream helps to do that as a special promotion for Food Blogger Pro listeners. You can try slickstream engagement suite on your site completely free for 60 days. That's double the standard trial. And there's no commitment. You can cancel at any time. So if you want to get a feel for what it looks like, how it works, it's really easy to get set up and you can start to see really quickly the benefit of using A tool like this, you can go to slickstream.com FBP and enter the promo code.

Here we go.

I'm going to give it to you FBP 60. That'll get you that 60 day trial, test it out, see what it looks like, see what you think of it. I know that you'll be able to really quickly see, wow, this is going to be extremely beneficial for the people who come to my site and it's going to increase the engagement on the content. And that's what Slickstream is all about. Special thank you to Slickstream for sponsoring this episode. Hey, folks, fun episode here. We're talking about all things ads. And for most of us, listening ads is the number one way that we create income from our site. And so it would make sense that we prioritize conversations around how we can be doing that well and changes that are coming down the line. And that's why we're talking with Paul Banister and Courtney Kahn from adthrive today about all things advertising. Industry changes things to consider, things to be aware of. It's a great episode, super informational and also kind of a fun thing. Coming up, not related to ads, but related to keywords. And getting people to your site is a live Q and A that we have with Casey Marquis. Many of you know Casey from mediawise, a expert from Food Blogger Pro, and also somebody with deep industry knowledge around all things SEO as it relates to food and recipe sites. So if you want to check that out, it's happening on April 14th at 3pm and you can go to foodbloggerpro.com keyword Again, that's foodbloggerpro.com keyword to sign up for that live Q and A. And it's going to be a great conversation with Casey. He's going to be updating on industry trends, things that are happening, and all the things you need to be aware of to keep on top of all things search engine optimization. All right, let's go ahead and jump into this episode.

Courtney, Paul, so great to have you on the podcast to talk about all things ads. What I've learned is it's best in introductions for multiple podcast interviews to direct them at people first. So first, Courtney, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Bjork.

Yeah. And Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Bjork. Happy to be here.

Yeah. This is one of those podcasts that I really look forward to because I always learn a lot in conversations like this. And anytime that I can talk to people who are really deep in a Certain area, like thinking about a certain thing. When you show up, you sit down at the computer. What you're thinking about is the world of publishers and monetization and success for those publishers, I always find is extremely beneficial because you're able to see things at a level that not a lot of people are. And we're going to be talking a lot about those things and industry trends and things coming down the line. And that's actually the first question that I have for you, Paul. Knowing that at a high level you have an awareness of what's happening within the advertising industry. And one of the things that kind of was this. At least this is what it felt like. You can let me know if it's true. It kind of felt like this build up. Like if it was an EDM song, it'd be like you're building up to the beat drop. And then it was like it was Rick Roll played. And then they're like, wait a minute, we're actually there. The beat drop isn't going to happen for another couple of years. And I'm talking about cookie lists and the big changes that were coming down the line for that. And then it kind of got punted. What happened with that? And why is that something that everybody's aware of and concerned with?

Sure. It's a great question and I love the EDM analogy. I will steal that from my.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, great.

So, yeah, you know, the bulk of digital advertising today is built on, is built on cookies, this technology and web browsers that lets advertisers and their ad tech companies track users around and show them. You know, you go to Zappos and you look at some shoes and you see those shoes later on another site. And that's the simplest version of it. And there's a lot more sophisticated things that advertisers are doing, but a lot of it's built on that basic technology. Over the years, a lot of people have raised real privacy issues around that. They don't like being tracked. They don't like the fact that it's not clear what's happening. There's a whole bunch of negatives that come out of it. And so over time, Safari and Firefox and other browsers have blocked that capability, made it so that technology no longer works. But for a long time, Chrome, which is the biggest browser, didn't. It allowed them, and it still allows cookies to work, and that still happens today. And so like when you look at advertising on the web today, the vast majority of the money is spent on Chrome, because that's where advertisers can use this technology. And so I think when was it? Early 2020, right before COVID Google said, okay, we're setting up a timeline to phase out cookies over the next two years. And that caused a lot of panic and chaos. And how's the world going to work in the future? And without the technology, what are we going to do? A lot of us were very engaged in working with Google and working with other companies to try to figure out what came next and how the world looks in the future. And then to your point, Bjork, after 18 months or so of going through this crazy process, last June, Google said, oh, guess what, we're going to delay it another two years.

Yeah.

And so that like completely changed the equation. Everyone took their focus off of it for a while. Even Google was very kind of disengaged from the conversations for a while. But now it's picking back up again. Like, you know, the timeline is sort of like late 2023 for that to happen. And there's just a lot of work going on in different organizations and industry groups and all these different places where people are. It really is like, how does digital advertising look in the future? It's like a big, big question. And that's sort of like, that's where we focus a lot of our time to make sure that as that transition happens, which we're very supportive of, we think users should have more privacy. We think that's really important. But we also obviously think publishers should be able to make a living from creating content. And we want to ensure that that has a big part of the future. And we know that advertisers want to reach consumers on good websites. Like, that's like, that's a thing. And that's, that's not going to change. The question is like, how are they doing in the future? Is like the big question mark.

Yeah. And it seems like when I think about that as a problem, which is you have, if I'm understanding it right, right now, advertisers are, it's like their options are more limited in terms of where they can go to have extremely focused and targeted advertising. And essentially it's Chrome and Chrome on desktop or is it Chrome on mobile as well?

It's both. Yeah, it's both.

Okay, so you have Chrome as your option because Safari, Apple's very privacy focused. So they've removed that. Firefox has removed it. And so on those browsers, advertisers are paying less because they can't get as, as, as, as accurate of a read. It's like a foggier picture of who somebody is that they're advertising to. And so they're all going to Chrome and, or Google and paying to run their ads through that platform because they can get really targeted. They know that. Like, I live in the northern suburbs of Minnesota. I have a dog, I have two kids, and like that. I've been watching the Bachelor. And so they're like, okay, this is interesting. And you like tech. This is an interesting profile. Like, let's advertise whatever it is that somebody would advertise to me, but that would go away eventually. Google said, hey, we're going to take that away. One of the questions that I have, Courtney, is like, when you were having conversations with publishers, they were anticipating this, they were seeing this go away. My guess is the concern was around, are revenues going to evaporate? It's just going to disappear? Is that the primary concern that you'd hear from publisher conversations is like, hey, this change is coming down the line, and I kind of anticipate my business earning this much from ads. How much of that am I going to lose? And is there any way to know?

Yeah, that's exactly what we were seeing from everyone. It was kind of initial panic, and then sort of, well, what happens and what direction are you all going to focus on now? And so I think we're always of the opinion that we can evolve and change to meet whatever the industry is going to face. And it's going to be challenging at every step of the way. But as much as we can, I think we want to help publishers see the light at the end of the tunnel and see that there's potential for greatness at the end of this eventually.

And part of it, too, that you touched on, Paul, is this idea of, it's still going to be there, but in what capacity? What's the best way to do it? And that's one of the thoughts that I've had around this potential change in the future is maybe it's actually more advantageous for the type of people who listen to a podcast like this. They're going to have a certain level of quality content. Maybe that becomes strategic and it becomes an advantage in that if somebody, if an, if an advertiser is not able to build a really specific profile on somebody based on cookies and advertise to them, what's the next best option? Potentially the next best option is to look at a bucket of publishers and to say, like, hey, we know that these publishers produce good content that are generally focused on the same things that we want our people to be focused on. Like somebody can look at a site like Pinch of Yam and say like, hey, that's like generally going to be like 20 to 40 something year old, 90% female and 80% us. Like, okay, like that's not maybe as specific as like, they also drive an Acura, but it gets them pretty close to it. So could there be a scenario where it actually becomes advantageous for certain types of publishers when cookies go away because some of the lower quality sites that would have been advertised on before no longer have those advertising dollars? Or is that me just being optimistic?

I think you're totally right and I think you said the exact right word there, which is quality. And that's been since day one, such a huge focus of ours. Because we know that over time and we're seeing it every day, more and more advertisers, regardless of the cookie stuff, advertisers want to work with quality sites. They want to be with quality content. They want to be in places where ultimately they care about consumers. That's who they care about. And they want to be in places where consumers feel good and can be engaged with. And so that's why we're so focused on quality. And so I think if you're a publisher with great quality content and a quality audience of kind of whatever size, that's like, that's where advertisers want more and more to be. And I think you're totally right that in the future of like less targeting context and quality are going to matter more. And that's a huge place where we spend a lot of our time also, because part of it also is like, while advertisers want those things, I'm like, you can be any size to some level. Advertisers, like, advertisers are huge. You're talking about, you know, the biggest retailers in the world and the biggest car companies in the world and the biggest consumer packaged goods companies. And like they, they can't make a million deals. So they're going to go where they can get, they can, they can make one big deal that gets them a lot of access. And that's why we find more and more people coming to us saying like, oh my God, you've got all these amazing food sites. We've got the, you know, the largest collection of food content in the world is on App Drive. And so more and more they're coming to us saying like, let's work directly on this and Then we get to bring that. Those ad dollars directly to our publishers. That's like a big part. And we think that's accelerating.

It's interesting because it's such a perspective shift. Like, in our world, if we sat around the table and somebody's like, I get a million page views, and that equates to, you know, whatever, that would be 10 million potential ad impressions. You'd be like, oh, my gosh, that's awesome. And then you go to like, my friend who does advertising@target.com and I'm like, hey, you want to do a deal? And he's like, great. How many impressions? I'm like, 10 million. He's like, oh, funny. Like, we need. I don't know what, you know, 3 billion. It's like, oh, okay. Like, we are in very different worlds in regards to perspective, because they're viewing that as like, hey, here's our budget. It's like multiple, multiple millions of dollars that they spend on even just a certain category. So, Courtney, within that context, one of the questions that I know people will have is like, what is quality? And it's so hard because everybody's like, hey, quality content is really important. Content is king. But when it comes down to it, it's really nice when you have Google search console and you can look and say, like, here's a yellow flag, here's a red flag. I need to fix this thing. Like, technical things that you can do, and sometimes we can get absorbed by those. So much so that you are really technical sound. But in terms of your content itself, it's not this ambiguous, nebulous quality because you've gotten so good at technical, but you forget the spirit of quality content. But it's because it's not trackable. You can't really see it. You can't, like, run it through a quality checker and get a score back. So you've seen a lot of sites, you've interacted with a lot of blogs and publishers, and you probably have a little bit of a sixth sense, but would you be able to flesh that out around what that actually looks like? And how do people know if they're quality? Or at least, like, what. How do you work towards quality?

Yeah, so you said a couple of really great things in kind of your preamble. But I think that a lot of publishers who kind of can take a step back to your point, who aren't totally engrossed in all of it's good to be aware of it, and we definitely encourage spending time trying to educate yourself on all of the technical details. But I think for a lot of publishers taking a step back and thinking simplistically about the people coming to the site, advertisers are looking at it in the same way. They're not always going directly to the complicated data side of it. They're thinking about what's going to be the most engaging, what's going to keep people around for a long period of time. And that's where they want to put their ads. They really want to make sure that they're going to be seen, that they're going to be interacted with. Not necessarily clicking on it, but even just viewing the ad itself.

Yep.

So content that is compelling, it's engaging. You know, video is really big. It's been big for a while, but continues to be a big thing. You know, whatever's going to keep people around on the site is where they want to be.

Yeah. And within that, things that keep people around are kind of. This category of. It could be entertainment. Like it's something that's really fun to read. Trying to think. There was this site that Lindsay and I randomly came across the other day and it was, it's. It was, it was. It's kind of like the Onion, but it's all writing. There's no photography. It's a humor. I think it's like east coast based. I forget the name of it. We'll have to look it up and. But it's like I ended up spending like a half an hour on it and it was super funny. The one article that I remember was like what your favorite, like dad Saab band says about who you are. It was like. Mine was like bony bear. So it's like, oh, yeah, actually that's pretty accurate. But. But the idea of being like, oh, it was really well done content. And I found myself spending more time there. But it's kind of. It's kind of a hard thing to know if you're doing that well. I think a lot about the Ira Glass quote where he talks about the gap and I won't do the talk through the whole thing. But this idea of like, as a creator, like you, you kind of know where you want to be and you kind of know where you are and you know, there's this gap in between it, but you're trying to like get there and it's kind of hard to know where that is and it's kind of hard to get there. But is. Would there be any type of metrics that you could track to know if something is engaging. I think of like time on page as an example or like bounce rate, like would those be places you could point people towards? Or is it more of the art? And art is just naturally hard to quantify.

There's definitely a lot you can look at with time on page and bounce rate and all of that. But I do think to some extent it is a bit of an art because it's, you know, to your point, it's not always the most beautiful, like templated site that is the one that advertisers are going to want to stick around on. But when they are able to figure out, okay, this valuable reader is coming to the site and staying around and not jumping right away like that, that is meaningful to them. I think.

Yeah.

Paul, Also like, I think like engagement matters. Like you can't measure this, but when you, for food in particular, like there's this funny thing about food search where I almost again, you can't measure this. But like, you actually don't want to be the first click on the search results. You might want to be the first rank. You want to be the last click. You want to be the one that when the user clicks on it, they're like, ah, this is the chicken parmesan that I'm making because this is the one that I like the most. And then that user is more likely to come back to cook it, to make a comment, to leave a rating. If you've got that kind of capability, like, to engage with you in some way. And like that's where you're, that's where that's because in my mind my quality is actually about the user. Because the user is what Google cares about. The user is what advertisers care about. The user is what you as the publisher care about. So if we, and I agree with Courtney 100% like it is art. But I always think about like, how like again, like I plan in my retirement to be a food blogger, but that's ways away. Yeah, I love all of our blogs, but like I always think about, like how do I, how do I, how, how do I become the last click here? How do I become the one that this user really wants?

Well and essentially if you translate that into practically speaking, what does that mean? Last click equals best answer or like fully, fully fulfilled in terms of what you're looking for? And what I love about that idea of the user is thinking about what is this person trying to get and how do I get them what they want? And that becomes a skill that gets into kind of Macro content planning, which is who am I creating this content for and how can it be most helpful? I think specifically of the meal planning stuff that we did with Pinch of Yum. We did a series on meal planning and the Pinch of Yum team thought a lot about how do we make this as helpful as possible, as clear as possible, as easy to understand as possible. And you think of macro, who are the people, what are their needs, how do we serve those needs? And then the micro is what is the actual content that's going to fulfill that. And it's really hard because there's a lot of different components to that. It's photography, it's writing, it's recipe development, it's understanding WordPress, but then it's also general audience building and thinking through who are these people and how are they going to use it. One of the follow up questions that I have on that is around the balance between usability and ad optimization and knowing that the best performing ads probably maybe not, but it seems like the best performing ads are also going to be the ads that are most visible, which means they're taking up the most screen real estate. Maybe it's in a place where somebody's spending a lot of time preparing a recipe. So how do you advise people when they are struggling to make decisions around that balance? Because you could go on one extreme, the most usable site from an advertising perspective has no ads on it and you're not making any money, then that's not going to work. And on the other extreme, a site could become so inundated with ads that it makes for a poor user experience and then those people won't come back, which also isn't optimizing your revenue. So do either of you have thoughts on how publishers can find their like advertising Zen in regards to optimization for user experience and revenue, I really think.

What you said about your audience and even thinking about what you and Lindsay do for Pinch of Yum in terms of like serving your readers on social media and on the blog and you know, in lots of different places getting their insight is so important and I don't think enough publishers spend time figuring that out. I think a lot of publishers have created content from a passion place and haven't necessarily evolved to think about who's coming to the site and how they can adapt the content for them. So I think that is really an important piece of it is learning what your readers care about and what is going to bug them about your ad experience or not bug them. And I would say, you know, with Ads, there are certainly lots of people who don't. Don't love them initially, but getting feedback from a lot of people and not just letting like one or two people be the decision makers for what happens on your site, I think is really important.

And then can you talk about that piece? Because that's come up. I think for me personally, for us, sometimes you have a really squeaky wheel and it could impact you insofar as, like, making a drastic decision. Is that kind of what you're getting at?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are definitely. You get some feedback from readers. That really hurts. It kind of gets you to your core. And I think sometimes it's hard to put that in perspective of everyone coming to the site and thinking about how it all comes together. But I think there's a judgment call you have to make. And sometimes it requires talking to your audience. But then it also is like the gut check of, like, you know what? This ad layout does not feel right to me. I'm not comfortable running, you know, lots of ads in the content. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to focus on, you know, I know a lot of readers come to my recipes and so they're sitting there for long periods of time. That's where I'm going to have an ad. Or, you know, someone who's comfortable running a sticky footer or sticky video ad, they may choose to run something that's a little bit more invasive in one place but not going to cause. Yeah, yeah. Feel heavy everywhere else.

That makes sense. And I think to your point about audience makes sense, where, like, let's say you have a site all around minimalism, like your audience's take on aesthetic and clutter and is going to be different than. And I don't know that these audiences, these are just pulling out of the top of my head. But like a coupon site, like maybe that world, you just kind of expect more to be happening there and, you know, more offers, so to speak, if you're in the mindset of couponing. And so maybe you might be able to have a little bit more prevalent ads in a layout like that. Speaking of optimization and revenue, when it comes from ads, what are the things that people can be doing to earn more? Because a lot of times we think about increasing traffic, which is important. How do I get more people to my site? But one of the things I've tried to encourage people to think about, whether it be ads or other revenue sources, is what are the ways that you can, let's say you never increase traffic again. It's an interesting thought experiment for creators and business owners. What if you never increase traffic again? How could your business continually grow from a revenue perspective? And one of the ways that it can grow is you can change how you're optimizing ads. So, Paul, do you have any recommendations for things that people might be able to consider in regards to increasing their ad revenue on their site?

You know, I can. I'll let Courtney chime in on this too, because she knows a lot about this. Like, I can only speak for like, us and like how, how we do it. I think, you know, for us, like, we try to take a very consultative approach to working with each publisher and really trying to, for them, like adapt and change over time because they'll be. There are ad units that we ran a couple of years ago that were great at the time, and over time they become less and less valuable and we've basically sunset them and get rid of them and replace them with new things that are more modern and work better. So I think part of it is.

Do you have examples of those? The ones that you've sunsetted and ones that are more. Newer, modern?

We used to run these in image ads that sat on top of the photos on your site. And you know, five years ago, something like that, they were a big deal. And like, I think they may be completely gone at this point that we may have like, literally no one left with those. So those are something that like, at a point in time they were doing pretty well. Whereas, like, you know, Courtney obviously mentioned, like, video is a huge thing and that continues to be a huge thing. We continue to evolve that and create kind of new types of players and new opportunities. And that's a place where advertisers, you know, advertisers love video. Like they love TV ads. And this is, you know, the equivalent on the web. And so that's like a big focus. So we spend a lot of time on how to new video apps. So it's like, you know, it's a mixed bag, but I think it's like working with, you know, a company like ours to help advise you on what the right things to do are. Because, like, that changes over time. It's not, it's not kind of a one, it's not a set it and forget it. Like we can happily take that over, but like, it is something that needs to evolve and change over time.

Yeah, the only other thing to say is, you know, we're able to have good data on our ad performance here. So we can kind of keep track of like, okay, we tried out this, this ad placement. It didn't work very well. So let's, let's get rid of it. And so that's really nice to do. And so if you have someone to help you dig into that more, that's great. But, you know, I think ad types that we've seen do well for a lot of publishers are the sticky types. So either video or something that's going to stick either to the bottom of the page or if you're on your phone, stick to the bottom of the phone and hang out with the readers.

Sticky, sticky, meaning that, like, is you'd have, let's say, imagine you have an ad in your sidebar, or if you're on mobile, which is probably a better use case, you have something injected into your blog post, you scroll past it. So it's like maybe on there for a little bit, but then you go past it versus you pull up the site and then overlaid over your content is an ad, a really small one at the bottom. Again, I'm thinking mobile, but it could be desktop or the video player example you gave, where, you know, there's a little in the lower third or whatever, kind of almost like picture in picture, there's a little video player playing. So, Paul, you had mentioned this, but Courtney, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts around it. This idea of. And I think you mentioned this earlier too. Video is a big deal. And I think people hear that and they're like, video, like, video, video, video. Lindsey had a joke when I owned three bitcoin three years ago, where anytime you'd start any conversation, I would just reply by saying, bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin. I was kind of stuck on it.

And.

But she said that, like, as a joke around this idea of, like, that just being a thing that's always happening. But I feel like in this world, video can be that. And suddenly it just becomes this thing where everybody's like, video, video, video. But what does that, what does that actually mean? Like, is it, is it important because of engagement? Is it important because you, you're able to earn more from it? Like, why is video a big deal? And what does that practically mean for a publisher in regards to where their focus should be and what they should be doing?

Yeah, engagement is the number one thing. I think a lot of advertisers want to either be close to video that you've created or their own video ads that they can put on for your readers. Whatever is Going to be most engaging and have them keep an eye on things, you know. And I think, I think about like whenever I'm making a recipe myself, like whenever I get there and I'm in the thick of it and there's something complicated that happens and I'm like, oh no, I don't know how to do this. Being able to go to a video first, maybe if you have a video at the top of your recipe or something like that, you know, that's a really great place for a lot of advertisers want to spend their money. Um, and you know, it just helps bring things to life so much more than regular content can. And I think that is a big piece of it in terms of why it's such a focus and trying to. So much of content has been written for a long time and moving towards this in the future, I think is, is really where they're hoping to go.

This being video. Yeah, like there's a shift towards advertising dollars being more effective is what I hear. If in the context of a video. And you think about even on a, on a, you know, in general trends like people are consuming more video undoubtedly than they were 10 years ago. And that also looks different. Like it might be video on a blog post, like in the lower third, but there's also video content within reels or you know, like ads inserted and YouTube shorts or whatever it might be. So is part of the reason why that's advantageous for a publisher? Is it because there's a supply and demand issue around video where there's a lot of demand from advertisers to run video ads, but is there enough supply to meet that or is there an issue on the macro level, Paul, when it comes to the general trend of video ads and the ability for advertisers to actually get those in front of people?

I think your supply and demand point is right. Simply there's far more banner ads on the Internet than there are video ads. And so you've got less supply. And then advertisers value video more because you can tell a better story, you can sell better in a 30 second video than a flat or slightly animated banner ad. So there's more value there also. So I think to your supply and demand point, that's a big piece of it. I think also to add on the video thing, there's also, I think from a publisher perspective when it comes to ads and when it comes to video content, there's sort of like a continuum. There's ways to get started and ways to evolve too. You can get started with video ads. Like we've got a player that just runs ads. It doesn't even need content and that's not going to necessarily drive engagement, but it brings value that's incremental to the publisher and that's good. The next step is like, if you've got some videos but not that many that match all the content, we've got a player that will play any video you have against any content and that has some engagement value to the user because now at least there's some opportunity for them to see a piece of content that you've created that's different than what they're looking at and that might be engaging to them and also make money from the ads there. So that's good. And then the next layer on top of that is related video content where I'll use my chicken Parmesan example. You go to the chicken Parmesan recipe and you've got a chicken Parmesan video that's actually literally what the user was looking for. And it's much more engaging. And we're starting to do some testing and it's early. We don't know what the answers are yet. But can that drive more SEO even? Can that drive that user spending more time on the page and like bring out even more value on top of the ad revenue? Um, again, like, like it's about like kind of like that continual, like getting started with something basic and like moving further and further up the path of like, kind of like, I don't say more advanced, but like creating more video content and ultimately bringing more value to users.

Yeah. So if I'm understanding that, right. There's kind of these three tiers that you could consider and important with the first two tiers that you use as an example, the idea would be that would be a switch that you'd turn on or like a setting where it would inject a video player potentially across all of your pages. In the first example would be one that would just run ads. So like, let's say you're, you want to be strategic and you're saying like, hey, November, December, really high performing months. I want to make sure that I capitalize on revenue. So I'm going to run an ad player even though I know it's going to be a detrimental user experience potentially. Unless they're like really awesome ads. Right. Like super bowl ads that you're going to love. Like, you know you're going to take a hit from usability standpoint, but you're going to say, hey, this is justified based on doing this for a couple months maybe I know that I'm going to have high earning potential in November, December, I'm going to run these ads, this ad specific video player, and you can run that across your entire site. It's injected into a post and people scroll by. It starts playing, it drops to the lower third, continues to play until somebody closes it out if they want to do that. That'd be tier one. Tier two would be you have a thousand blog posts, but you've only have five videos. So you put all of those into a related player and you say, play this across my site and it's my recipes. But you might go to a chocolate chip cookies post and it will play a chicken Parmesan recipe video, which it's like, hey, still correlation there. It's still food, still your content, but not the exact piece of content. The third option would be the most aligned and potentially upside from a usability standpoint in that, as you were talking about before, Courtney, it's going to provide you some visual examples of how the recipe is made and you're going to have the advantage of the recipe player along with it. And that actually ties into a question that came from our Food Blogger Pro podcast Facebook group. Heather was asking, does a recipe video of the recipe provide higher RPM or more revenue? So what she's asking is in that third case scenario where the recipe video matches the recipe that people are on, does that provide higher RPM than, let's say, an unrelated playlist of your five recipe players or five recipe videos and just a player that's uncorrelated to the recipe itself?

Today, I would say no. In the future, I think that's going to change. I think that buyers are going, advertisers are going to want, like we were talking about before, like they want the most engagement. They want to be in the best places. And the best places are going to be content with a match video and ads against it. Like, that's a really good user experience and that's what they're going to want. I think for the longer term, we're definitely encouraging our publishers to make more of that match video content because I think it's going to be better over time. But today I don't think there's, I mean, there might be some minor difference, but it's, it's unmeasurably low today.

Yeah. And the related piece to that that you had mentioned is this idea of SEO benefit of video. And if you're doing video Right. There's two things that you should note for anybody listening. You should make sure that you have structured data around that recipe. So in the same way that you have a recipe with structured data, you can do that for a video. You can say, here's what this video is about, here's how long it is, here's the description for it, and you can put that in with the. And I think you can do that with like a Net thread player too if you have an individual video. Right. And the second piece is you should have a site map for your videos. And this is something we didn't have for a very long time. But sitemap essentially you would load, you'd load that in and you'd have, you'd put it into Google search console and say like, here's a list of all of my videos. So Google knows like, great, here's the video. So I can crawl those. So if somebody's looking for a video, a specific video, then we can surface that like in a video search. Anything else from a technical standpoint that would be important for people to know from a video standpoint or anything that you can think of that you'd add on there.

Courtney can't think of anything else to add to that right now.

Cool. A follow up question on that then again from Heather. So we've said at this point, probably not a huge difference from an RPM perspective if you have a specific video for the specific recipe versus like a playlist player or even just the ad player. But we do know based on just our gut as creators that it's probably going to be a better experience for somebody to see the video that matches the content. I've done that before where like I'm reading an article about iguanas that are falling out of trees in Florida and then it's like a story about koalas. And I was like, I wanted to see the iguanas, but. And I was like, and then you just kind of lose a little bit of trust with the site. And so yeah, and so there's some, there's a usability piece for sure that I think is worth considering and that needs to factor in. But Heather's follow up question is she said, I have a bunch of videos, but obviously not covering all my recipes. Does creating a video for a recipe help you earn more than the videos already on the page? And so if in that specific question the answer to her would be. And it's kind of what we were talking about before. Hey, if you're thinking about optimizing revenue and you're okay with a little bit of a usability hit. Put all of those into a playlist player and then inject that into your site throughout as a revenue optimization strategy. Is that generally aligned kind of in that second bucket of. Of kind of plays that you could have in this category? Is that sound right, Courtney?

Yeah, I think just being open to. And it's different for everybody, so it's kind of difficult to blanket statement it, but. But I think, you know, for the most part, creating video, getting out on your site and en masse isn't bad in any way. And it's going to help advertisers, you know, figure out what works best for them and understand kind of what the right approach is for them just to spend on the videos and the site itself.

Yeah, that last piece that you talked about is something that I was thinking about earlier when you were talking about advertisers themselves and when you were talking about it, I don't remember if it's you, Paul, or Courtney, but I had this visualization of a person at an advertising agency, like, scrolling through a site and kind of making a decision about if they want to work with that site or not. Can you help paint the picture of what's actually happening behind the scenes in regards to advertisers looking at our sites?

That's funny. Most advertisers, I would say, don't look at that many sites. I think also, like, maybe like seven, eight years ago, that was happening a bit more often. People wanted to really know. I think more and more these days, advertisers are trusting people like us that they know that we're bringing them good sites, that they feel good about it. So they might know some of our sites. Like, I've actually been in advertising meetings where the advertiser is like, oh, my God, I love Pinch of Yum. Like, sure. And like, that happens. But a lot of the time they're like, okay, we know App Thrive is working with these sites, and we know that they've got really good sites. So, like, we're good with this group of sites. And I think that happens kind of more often these days where they're not really checking everything. They're more, like, looking at the big picture and then like, letting other people like us kind of worry more about.

The details and what's the split? Now, if you were to say on a percentage basis with Programmatic, and if you could explain what Programmatic is versus what I've always called handshake deals.

These days, it's hard to even break them apart to some level. So programmatic. In the olden days of advertising, like Mad Men, Don Draper kind of thing, everything was handshake deals. It was the publisher of Vogue magazine would talk to an ad agency and get them to commit to spend $500,000 in their magazine. And it was all handshake deals and signed contracts and then a bunch of people ferrying ads and stuff back and forth. And that migrated onto digital advertising in the beginning, and it's a chunk of advertising. But what has been developed over time is what's called programmatic advertising, which is that there are thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of sites and apps and other things where you can spend money as an advertiser. And on the flip side, there are hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions of potential advertisers out there, and it's fundamentally impossible for people to handshake deal with thousands and thousands of websites or thousands and thousands of advertisers. Like, you can't do it. It doesn't work. So programmatic is like these ad technology systems that have sprung up to automate a lot of those things and make it so as a publisher, you can work with thousands of advertisers. You don't have to make thousands of deals. And on the reverse side, as an advertiser, you can work with thousands of sites but not have to make thousands of deals. So it's automation and technology to make that better. And that has sort of like eaten advertising at this point. Like, nearly everything in some way or another kind of runs through those sort of systems. Even when there are handshakes in place, we don't give out our own numbers, but, like, bigger and bigger number every year that's moving in that direction. And sometimes you can't even quite tell. Like, we work with a lot of advertisers where we'll talk to them and they'll be like, this sounds great. We love all your sites. We're not going to do a handshake deal with you, but we're still going to target our advertising via Programmatic at your sites. And so we can't even measure, but we know it's kind of hybrid.

Like they say, we're going to run our programmatic ads through your ad network because we trust you. Like, there's a multiplier on the. The sourcing that you do for publishers.

Exactly, exactly.

And so in those situations, I think what I'm trying to go back to and understand then is like, how does quality play in to a world of programmatic advertising? Is quality what gets you into an ad network like Ad Thrive that then the advertisers know that you're doing the work to find quality content? Or does it still. It's probably still matters from like an engagement perspective. But it's not like somebody's going to look through and be like, oh pinch of yum, like we really like them, let's run our chicken ads on their site. Because it's more like hey, we know generally speaking this bucket of content, hey great pinch of yum is in it. But it's not like that's going to be fine tuned enough for us to perform better than some other random site. And that the numbers are just so big too that it feels like they wouldn't make sense.

I think it is a little bit of both. Some of it is a big advertiser, a big retailer might say we're going to make a deal with Conde Nast and with NBC and with two other really big media companies and we're going to make a deal with outdrive and we're going to buy outs across all of them. And it's for a retailer. So it really can work on any site. And every site's sort of, I don't say interchangeable but they're just gonna like the systems will optimize towards the best places and like the systems will just do their work and like that's kind of it and that like that's good because it's money but it's like it's, it's like kind of like across the board. But then you are gonna get a lot more like people who are interested in like deeper targeting and they're gonna say oh like this site is vegetarian or this site is easy meals or this site is Asian food of some sort. Like, like those like kind of sub niches are like pretty interesting to different groups of advertisers. So I think like you know like everyone's going to get some like base level of like advertiser spending from like those like fairly kind of broad big advertisers. But then like everyone's also going to find their pockets of like ones that are unique to us. And like sometimes it's not even like as obvious. Like we like we're working on something with like you know like a company that sells like cleaning products and like they wanted to be on sites that have like actually messier recipes.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Things like that. We are like oh like I thought of connection so it's like. And there's a lot more like that where it's like, it's a little bit more, like a bit deeper. So. Yeah, so that would be my long.

Yep. No, that makes sense. And helpful to have kind of the context around it. It's always interesting for me to know it's such an important piece of the. The business model for us and for so many other people. And it's always helpful to know, like, what does that look like? How does that world work, even if it's at a super high level so we understand kind of what's happening and can think strategically about it in regards to how we're producing content. What I really hear is the takeaway from it is obviously quality. Quality meaning, like, you want content that's engaging, so people are sticking around, they're looking at it, they're using it. And that being an indicator to advertisers that their ads are going to get seen and viewed. It sounds like the ultimate takeaway here or the ultimate win would be if somebody could think about moving forward. How do I create video content that's really sticky, that people love, that they watch if their mindset is around? Advertising optimization from a revenue perspective feels like that would be in the. In the year ahead, something that would be a win related to that. Courtney one of the questions that I know people will be curious about is what's coming down the line? Like, things are changing in this world. And I'm sure you feel this where as soon as you figure out the next path forward, it's like, wait a minute, like the railroad track has shifted and it's actually this way. But if you were to. If you were to kind of project out and say, like, hey, generally speaking, here's where we see the industry shifting and changing and some things for publishers to be aware of, anything that you'd have. Courtney. And then I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. Paul.

Yeah. Oh, gosh. So there's so much going on. But I would say I think this is kind of a year of transition for the ad industry and, like, trying to kind of figure out what's next for us and for the industry at large. So lots for us in terms of focusing on how do we improve our ad code and get set up for the future and build better relationships in the marketplace and new tools that our publishers can use to think more broadly about their businesses at large. I think there's going to be a lot of change, and it's always scary because there's unknowns But I think that with all the changes coming down the line, we're hoping to help publishers be prepared in lots of different ways, thinking about all the facets of their business and not necessarily just ads. It's obviously important to us and we want to help educate publishers and help them understand where the industry is going. But also think about what's your SEO strategy, what's your email strategy, how are you thinking about how the two correlate? And so I think lots coming in the future for that.

Yeah, I love that. And excited to see what's coming down the line. Paul, anything you'd add to that as publishers think about kind of changing landscape, things that they can not necessarily have to move or adjust or change. But I kind of imagine it as this will be my last analogy for the day when we go up to the cabin with Lindsay's family and there's the clear lake and you could kind of see a storm and you'd like, this might come this way or might not, but not that everything has to be this storm that's coming down the line. But I think that's naturally how we think of things. What are the things that are changing? What's the storm that I should at least keep an eye on anything that you would point out or that publishers should be aware of.

We're really trying hard to make it so our publishers, I don't say don't have to worry because like we all should worry a little bit and we all should have like be concerned and we should all should keep our eye on the horizon and you never know where the storm is going to come from sometimes. So like I think like partly like healthy, a little bit of healthy paranoia is always good. We do try to make it so our publishers can worry less and try to take control of a lot of those things for them, particularly with ads. But to Courtney's point, like trying to help in more areas as well. You know, we're trying to, we talked about it a little bit before like really, you know, go more direct to advertisers get, build those stronger relationships, make it so today and in like the cookie less future. When advertisers think about like you know, buying ads on quality sites on the Internet that like they come to us and we're finding a lot of success there. So I think it is like, you know, you know, sort of vague but like we should all be worried and be thoughtful about these things. But like, you know, and again, all we can do is speak for us but like talk to us we, we feel it's our job to really try to make it so like, you know, people can rest easy and feel good.

Yeah, that's great. And kind of comes whole circle around this idea of people who are constantly thinking about a really specific area and that's what you guys are doing. It's like, it's, it's that world. My kind of last thought here for people who are, are in that category and maybe do have some sense of, to your point, healthy paranoia. So I think there's always something to be said about diversification. And if the one way that you're creating revenue right now is ads, great. But think about maybe taking on something else. Sponsor content. Maybe you have a product that you would want to fold in. You know, you can go even more macro. And this is getting outside of the world of ads. But just to speak on this a little bit, but like, hey, maybe you also look at like doing some type of uncorrelated revenue. Like you have a little rental house that you have, and that would be one opportunity. So I know you guys are like, not our, not our category. It's not the thing that we're going to speak to, but kind of as a last thought, would want to share that as people think about kind of diversification and as it relates to revenue within your businesses to make space for that. So my last question for you, and I know we're going over, so I'll try and wrap it up quick, but you each have a lot of insight into people who are really doing a good job at a high level producing content and building a business. What is one thing that you'd point out as something you see as a through line for people who have built a business, built a blog, are operating that at a certain level of success? If you were to look across the board and say, like, hey, this is something that I see as a similarity with these people, would there be one thing that you could pinpoint or pull out as kind of an inspirational characteristic or personality trait?

So I was actually going to try to circle back to this with your takeaways, but didn't find a place to come back to it. But I would say, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about personally, just as I've been talking to lots of different sites and seeing what they do. But that focus on your audience is so important. I see that for all of the publishers who are successful, they have a connection with their audience that not everyone is focused on and they're not necessarily talking to them. One on one, but they are collecting data. They're using social media to, like, have, you know, ask, drop your question and I'll respond. And so your readers get insight into your personal life and get to understand you better. And all of that seems to really help the grand scheme of what their business ends up being because they. They really know what content is going to draw in more readers and what their readers are going to keep coming back for. So I can't say that enough. I think figuring out how to really understand your audience as best you can is really important.

That's awesome. In the software world, we talk a lot about, like, product market fit, but it's almost like content audience fit. Like, do you understand well the content that you're producing and how that fits into the needs of your audience? I think that's a great takeaway. Paul, anything you'd add?

I agree totally with both those things. Like, the thing I've been thinking a little bit is, like, all that's true, but in a funny way, your most important audience member is you, like, do what you love and do what you're great at. And that makes it way more likely that you'll find the right audience for you. Like, if you're doing something that you're not totally passionate about, like, it's always going to be harder to find the audience and do what they need. Whereas if you do what you love, like, the people who also love that will find you, I think.

Yeah, that's awesome. I tried to frantically find this quote, and it's one of those quotes where it's been attributed to three people, and Mark Twain is one of them. It feels like all quotes come back to Mark Twain, but the one that I pulled up is Frederick Buchner. Is that how he says last name? Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need. And I see that as really true. In the content world, if you can find something that is your great joy and there's also a great need for it, that's going to lead to some really cool things. And I think that's a great note to end on. So usually at this point, we ask where people can connect with and follow along with what you guys are doing. And I know you do produce content that people could check out and read. But anything that you'd want to highlight here at the end, for people who are interested in diving deep on any.

Of this stuff, definitely check out our blog. Mad thrive.com.

Right? Yeah, we'll. We'll link to that. And obviously ad thrive itself as well. And as always, just really appreciate you both for your insights and ideas and all the work that you do in this space and makes a difference in people's lives. So I will end as I started. Paul, first, thank you for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Bjork. Really appreciate it.

Yeah. And Courtney, thank you as well.

Thank you, Bjork. Honored to be here.

Great. That's a wrap. Thanks.

Hello. Hello, Leslie here from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode and we really hope that you have enjoyed it. Before we sign off, I wanted to mention a really exciting live event that we have coming up on April 14, and it's a live Q and A all about keyword research with Food Blogger Pro expert Casey Marquis. So he's going to be joining Bjork to answer all of your questions about keyword research during this live Q and A. So normally our live Q&As are actually exclusively for Food Blogger Pro members only, but this one is live to everyone, to the entire public. So whether you're a member or not, we really would encourage you to come. If you really want to learn more about keyword research and SEO, it's just going to be a fantastic time. So if you'd like to get registered, the Q and A is going to be on April 14th at 4pm Eastern, 3pm Central. And you can get registered by going to foodbloggerpro.com keyword and there you'll be able to register by putting in your name, your email, and a question you have about keyword research. So maybe you're wondering how to get started or you have a specific question about domain authority or search volume. You can ask all of those questions and then we'll be really excited to hit all of them and as much as we can during the Q and A. So again, you can get registered by going to foodbloggerpro.com keyword and we can't wait to see you there on April 14th. All right, that's all we've got for you in today's episode. Thanks again for tuning in. And until next time, make it a great week.

Sam.