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Matt Paulson (CEO of Marketbeat) and Gavin Bechtold share the stage at New Media Summit in Austin, 2026. As newsletters gain prominence, this session explores why a strong website presence remains essential. Using real-world examples, these two discuss how publishers grow audiences on both fronts, the unique roles each channel plays, and the strategies for monetizing content across web and newsletter platforms.
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0:00
I'd like to bring Matt McGarry back on the stage here, as well as Matt Paulson
0:05
and Gavin Bechtold, who is the head of partnerships at Ezoic. So please give them all a round of applause
0:30
All right. How's everybody doing
0:44
Like the music? Great pick, Gavin. Thank you. Okay. We're going to talk about websites for a minute
0:52
We've only covered that a little bit so far. And I've found that a lot of people underutilize their websites
0:58
and how much money you can make from a website, how much audience growth you can get from a website
1:04
So that's what this session is all about, how to grow your website traffic and mostly how to monetize your website traffic
1:10
So I'm going to talk to Matt and Gavin, and then we'll have a little bit more time for audience Q&A at the end
1:16
because Matt didn't get to do that earlier. So real quick, Matt, you already introduced yourself
1:21
but Gavin and Matt, just quickly remind us again what your companies do, who you are, et cetera? Sure. Ezoic is a monetization platform. We help
1:32
websites create predictable, diversified revenue through programmatic ads. If that sounds confusing
1:38
we help you turn your website traffic into revenue. Ezoic's been around for 15 years
1:44
I've been a part of the ride for 11 of those years. Today, I work directly with our largest
1:51
customers, including Matt and Ryan, who, as you mentioned, unfortunately can't be here
1:56
But I'll just get a little bit more one-on-one time with you today. Yep. And Matt, tell us how much website traffic you're bringing in every month and how much
2:08
money you make from your website. Yeah, about 400,000 to 500,000 page views a day
2:12
So 12 to 15 million page views on a website a month. We make like 300,000-ish a month from display ads
2:19
Yeah. Not bad. Okay. Gavin, you work with literally hundreds of publishers
2:25
Why do you think so many newsletter-focused publishers and creators underinvest in their websites
2:32
In my opinion, I believe people do overlook the web, especially with this group, right
2:36
Because many of you are newsletter first. That's what you know. And I think there is a perception out there that a newsletter is easier to begin than a website
2:46
However, the reality is there's so much extra value when a subscriber clicks through your newsletter and lands on your website, staying in your own ecosystem rather than driving them off through an external link
3:00
I say that because it compounds value, acting as a flywheel for your subscribers and also opening up new monetization channels that aren't possible in the inbox alone
3:11
I actually think a lot of newsletter folks are recognizing that. Beehive is actually the perfect example
3:18
They started as a newsletter-first business. They've since created their website builder because they recognize the value of having a web presence
3:28
Brian was here. Similar story. He started with a local newsletter list, transitioned to the web, now more recently monetizing on the web
3:39
Matt, I think you're more old school. you started with the WebFirst, right? Yeah, tell us like the evolution of your audience, Matt
3:45
Like, did you start WebFirst? Did you start NewsletterFirst? How has that changed in the past 20 years
3:50
Yeah, started in 2006, like a long time ago. And back then, like, this was maybe like after the first wave of eZenes
3:59
but kind of before the second wave of them. Really, that was kind of the big blogging wave
4:04
where everybody had a blogger.com blog or like a WordPress blog. and the game was to try to rank for keywords
4:11
and then you could go to your website and click on ads or display ads from Azoic or other people like that
4:19
That was the game for a while. And then you kind of realized over time
4:23
it's kind of a treadmill of only you're only as good as the amount of search traffic
4:31
Google sent you today. And obviously that's not a great long-term game plan
4:35
because, you know, Google's whims change all the time. So you want to capture, you know, I figured, like, okay
4:41
I have to capture these people on an email list. It was probably, like, 2010, 2011 when I got my first opt-in
4:47
for the marketing list. And then over time, it just kind of shifted more towards email
4:52
almost entirely towards email and SMS. And now it's shifting back to the web a little bit
4:58
We had, like, 22 and 23 were, like, not great years for display for us. But since working with these guys, we're making more money again
5:05
And how do your, Matt, how does your email list, your newsletter, and the website work together
5:10
Are there synergies there? Yeah, obviously, like we're trying to generate email options on our website
5:15
But then when we have people on our email list, we can send them, like when we send them articles, they include like links back to our website
5:22
So we try to use the website to generate email signups. Then when we have people on our email list, we send them content with links back to the website to try to get them to go back to the website
5:31
And then obviously, hopefully, they'll click on some ads. So you're kind of making that flywheel
5:35
like Gavin mentioned, where they go to the website, they see ads, they join the newsletter, the list
5:40
and they see ads, you monetize them in email, but then when they're directed back to the website
5:44
for articles, you monetize them again with more ads. Yeah. Really, like when you do this at scale
5:48
you want to have four or five different channels and you want them to all feed into each other
5:54
And then just the fact that you have all the channels and maybe you've got YouTube email, SMS
5:59
and they all feed back in your website, I think you're going to make some pretty decent display ad money because somebody who is a subscriber that you've identified and I can tell Izoic, this isn't just a random person on the internet
6:11
This is, I don't know, whoever. And this is like, you can send a hash demo to Izoic to identify the person
6:18
And then they know a lot about that person based off their email and can target those ads better and get higher CPMs that way
6:25
Gavin, can you explain how that works, what Matt just described? Because I think a lot of people think that sounds cool
6:31
but they don't totally understand how that works, why they make more money that way. Can you break that down
6:36
First-party data is really important, and I think it's often overlooked on the web
6:41
I think people are familiar with that, but in its simplest form, it's an email address, a phone number, a registered user
6:48
In newsletters, I think folks already use it to segment your audience, whether that be for content or promotions
6:55
The reality is, though, you can use that same first-party data on a website to secure premium programmatic advertising rates
7:03
And we see about two times to three times what you would traditionally see without leveraging first-party data
7:09
So this is huge. But yeah, as Matt was describing, if you have either a newsletter list or a text list
7:17
and you're driving those users to a website, Ezoic has a method where we store the email, hash it
7:24
pass it on to advertisers, allowing, excuse me, allowing advertisers to bid a more premium CPM
7:31
on your audience. And how does that affect the lifetime value of a newsletter subscriber? Because
7:37
now you're monetizing them, obviously in email and then a website too, when they're directed back
7:42
there. Maybe we'll start with Matt. Like, do you, do you calculate that into your subscriber LTV or
7:48
user LTV? It's, it's really hard to do that because like you don't get postbacks of like
7:53
who's clicking from the advertiser. We kind of just shoot it as like a separate kind of revenue stream
7:59
It doesn't tie back to users, but obviously if I send, like we used to do like slideshows where it'd be like 10 page articles
8:05
where like you click through and there's ads on every page. It doesn't really work anymore, so we got rid of it
8:10
But back in the day, like I could send like, like here's the 10 best stocks to buy in November or whatever
8:18
whatever the thing was, and that'd be 10 pages of ads. and like we make a couple, two, three thousand bucks every time we like send out an email
8:24
and got everybody like go through all the pages. Like it used to work awesome
8:28
Do you have any data on that Gavin? Like how much that can increase subscriber LTV or revenue
8:33
from email when you layer this together Well I think it more just kind of like in theory a website raises your ceiling It allows you to extend engagement beyond the inbox
8:48
And what it actually does is it allows you to monetize the same user in multiple ways through multiple channels
8:55
A simple example of that is let's say you have a newsletter. You're selling a direct sponsorship
9:00
Great. Now, if you have a website, you can sell a direct sponsorship in your newsletter and your website, advertise those love package deals
9:09
And then the next level is, okay, you're doing sponsorships on your website, add programmatic on top of that
9:15
That's instantly layering a new revenue source. The biggest brands today aren't choosing between one or the other
9:21
They're doing both. And that's exactly how you raise your lifetime subscriber value
9:25
It's exactly what Matt is doing. It's what Ryan is doing. to give a really good example with Matt's secondary site
9:33
the earlybirdpublishing.com. I'm familiar with it too, but do you want to share about that
9:39
Yeah, so we have a text list called Early Bird Stock of the Day
9:44
And then every day we text out, kind of do a teaser, like today's stock of the day is a company that sends rockets into space
9:52
and then the company is SpaceX. And then you click through on your phone
9:56
and then there'll be a page where it's got like an article and some different AI content about that stock
10:02
But then there's Zoic ads on there and 40, 50 grand a month from sending out that text
10:08
back to our website and then it's monetized by display ads. Yeah, I think it's important to clarify that
10:14
that traffic is a lot more valuable because it is coming from a text list
10:18
It's not coming from organic traffic, which is fine if it is, but the value of his audience is significantly higher
10:25
for advertisers because he has a phone number. Same thing if you have a newsletter, which many of you do
10:32
If you can think about, great, I have this big list. What can I do with it
10:35
Can I intentionally drive it back to a site and monetize it another way
10:40
Then that's a great idea. Yeah, and I like that because a lot of the stuff Matt does
10:45
people think it's super complicated, but that's an example of something simple working super well
10:49
You get people to join an SMS list. You send them articles about what's relevant for that day
10:54
When they click the article, they're monetized with ads that are enhanced by first-party data from Ezoic, and that's doing well
11:02
Gavin, when do you think programmatic advertising actually becomes a viable and meaningful revenue stream for a media business
11:11
Well, I think everyone should be doing it because it's extra revenue. It's passive
11:14
It's easy to do. But I would say at a point where it becomes meaningful is when it scales
11:21
and in our experience that typically looks like about 250,000 monthly website visitors or the
11:29
equivalent size of a subscriber list and if you haven't used that yet like we talked about you can
11:33
use that to drive traffic back to your site maybe it's daily but that's about the range that we're
11:38
seeing with with Matt's stock of the day site it's actually under 250,000 visitors per month and he's
11:45
still bringing in $40,000, $50,000 per month. MarketBeat, of course, is a different animal
11:53
That's millions of visitors per month. Probably about half of it is identified to from newsletter
11:58
and SMS. And that site is doing $200,000 to $250,000 from programmatic alone
12:07
Give us a ballpark about numbers. So what's a realistic expectation of someone who has
12:13
250,000 visitors a month, what type of revenue can they expect? Yeah, so I think a realistic
12:23
expectation, and one of the ways that we look at this is RPM, if you aren't familiar with that
12:28
but revenue per 1,000 views. That's going to vary quite a bit based upon your audience
12:33
but we'll assume it's premium, meaning many of those folks are identified from the US
12:39
They're in a high-value niche. But we see RPMs anywhere from $20 to $100
12:45
Matt's site, the stock site, is $300 RPMs. So with that range, certainly five figures per month in ad revenue
12:55
Are you talking session RPMs? Session RPMs, yeah. Okay. So like a session RPM and like a page RPM
13:02
So like a session RPM would be like revenue per 1,000 sessions
13:07
So a session is like somebody coming to the website, clicking on three or four pages, right? Correct
13:11
Yeah. Matt, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes or misconceptions or just things people miss when they're trying to monetize their website
13:22
Well, what you kind of see a lot, especially with this crowd and people that are at the newsletter conference, it's very email-focused
13:30
And the website's almost like an afterthought. You just don't think about it. Because until recently, neither Substack or Beehive or Kit really had good website tools
13:40
They've all gotten better. So you can build a real website on any of these platforms now
13:46
But you have to think of the web as its own channel in the same way that email or SMS or YouTube is a channel
13:53
It's a great place to send people. It's a great place to make money. It's a great place to have content
13:58
just like you have to not just have it happen by default. You just need to be intentional with it
14:03
and then figure out how you can use it as both engagement and monetization as a separate channel
14:10
That's a good point. Gavin, what do you think? Any mistakes you see publishers make with their websites
14:15
Well, I think a big mistake is if you're currently using programmatic
14:19
it's not leveraging your first-party data, and I think that's overlooked, and maybe people just don't know how to do it
14:26
So for any folks here who are at least at that level who are using programmatic or who are considering it, your number one takeaway should be going to speak with your current app provider and asking them, are they leveraging your first party data
14:41
And if so, how effectively? Because if they're not doing that, they're leaving a lot on the table without knowing it
14:46
And in this context, first party data is just email or phone number, right
14:49
That's the main thing. You need one or the other to start. That's the main thing. Yeah. If you don't have that, the other popular format is registered users
14:57
So if you have any logins on your site or Google single sign-on is something popular that we see today
15:05
If someone here, like a lot of people, are under-monetizing their website right now
15:10
what do you think are some of the first things they should do after this event to fix that
15:14
We don't have to talk just about ads, just in general. How do you monetize your website more? What are the simple, actionable things they can do over the next couple weeks to fix that
15:22
We'll go with Gavin, then Matt. Yeah. I think one thing while we're on the topic of ads is there's a lot of folks here who have great content online
15:33
but they might put it behind a paywall or a subscription. But they also have a lot of great free content on the web, and it's kind of just existing there
15:43
and they're hoping that people might upgrade and pay for their premium offering
15:48
But what you don't realize is there's a large segment of your audience sitting there who's accessing your content for free
15:55
And you can keep that content free, but you can also monetize that by implementing an ad strategy
16:01
And I think that's something that folks can think about, again, that is oftentimes overlooked
16:07
What do you think about it? What should they do after this? Go sign up for an ad account somewhere
16:12
With Ezoic or anywhere else. It's really not hard to do an initial implementation of an ad network
16:22
It can be as simple as a couple lines of code. It's not too hard to do
16:26
A tech guy can do it in a couple hours. Don't think of this as some big, grand initiative that's going to take a quarter to do
16:33
It might take a quarter to optimize it, but just set it up. You can do it in a few hours
16:37
It's not hard. One thing I'll tell you guys, though, is if you get a website that's got a decent amount
16:43
of traffic, you are going to get tons of emails from different display ad networks that all
16:48
promise the moon and like, oh, we can get you way more money than you're getting now
16:53
And the reality is like, this is kind of a commodity business these days. These guys do some cool unique stuff with like the identity stuff
16:59
But most of the firms that like are like doing display ads that aren't Google or just like
17:06
running Google ads and taking a cut. So like, let's be very careful with who you work with in like the display ad space
17:12
Ezoic is good. If you've got a small website, Google is fine Use them too You hear from some random person that promises I going to get you premium CPMs
17:25
They're not. So just don't fall for that. So I kept my promise, right
17:30
Which was? More money? Yeah, you did make us more money. Yeah, Matt, outside of just putting this stuff into place
17:40
What are some things you do tactically to increase session time, the number of sessions
17:47
any hacks that have worked to just optimize the website to get more time on site, more page views, etc.
17:53
If the goal is to maximize advertising revenue, that's typically you don't focus on that stuff
17:59
It's more you focus on ad placement and which ads are showing
18:04
That's the other thing to optimize. like you should like yeah you want to send people back to your website from your email list
18:11
but there's not a whole lot of magic to that like the magic is like when you turn
18:15
on the interstitial ads and then you like double your ad revenue like there's like an ad unit
18:21
that shows up in between pages like makes a ton of money like at least for us so like just
18:27
having the right placements and working with your team to like put the ads in
18:31
the right places like that is That's like the big unlock. Yeah, well, tell us about that a little bit more
18:35
because a lot of people don't know what placements are making the most money
18:39
So what do you call that placement? Like inner what? Interstitial. Interstitial
18:43
Maybe it's got a different name. I don't know, Gavin. Yeah. Gavin, you know how that works? Can you break that down for us
18:48
Yeah, it's interstitial or vignette is the alternative term for it. But effectively, it works as Matt described
18:57
Someone's browsing through your site, especially if you have a high engagement site
19:00
where people view multiple pages, an ad can show up in between page views
19:05
and it often gets a good click-through and a high RPM. But I think one thing that people also maybe don't understand is
19:14
you can control these ads with your ad provider. You can show exactly what kind of ad placements and formats that you want or don't want to
19:23
So it's not all or nothing. There's really a lot of customization there to really match your goals with your audience
19:31
Yeah, there's a new format called rewarded content. Zoek has it. Google has it
19:37
But let's say you have premium contents behind a paywall. You can have people watch a 30-second ad and then unlock it for them
19:45
That's a great format to make money as well. Yeah, that's cool
19:51
Kind of like gamify, getting access to more articles by watching that. Kind of like you see with gaming, but in a content context
19:57
Matt, how do you think about, just in general, like a durable audience monetization model
20:04
Because you make a lot of different money. You make money in a lot of different ways
20:07
Like, what do you think is going to work long term? Because programmatic is a big part of your business, but like, how does it all work together? Yeah
20:15
Like, if you're going to do a media business, you really need like 10 different ways to make
20:20
money from your audience. So it could be like programmatic is one way
20:25
like affiliate relationships might be five ways because you have five affiliates
20:29
You might have your own products. You might have like ads from Beehive
20:35
But like the whole business is to like gather the attention of an audience
20:39
and then point that audience in different directions to monetize them. So like one of the directions is point back to your website, get them to click on ads
20:47
Some of it might be to click on ads directly in your newsletter. Some of it might be to come to your like live events
20:51
Some of it might be to, I don't know. You just need a lot of different ways to make money
20:57
So that way you can afford to go gather the attention and do paid ads to grow your lists
21:02
And then make money that way. And how did you start monetizing originally with MarketBeat
21:08
Maybe you talked about this earlier. Originally it was Google AdSense. And then I had gotten kicked out of Google News so many times
21:16
I was like, this is stupid. I need a better strategy than this. So I got kicked out because we were doing automated content and they didn't like that
21:24
So then we just kept making new sites and they kept getting kicked out and I thought, I got to figure out a better strategy here
21:28
So then I was like, okay, I'm just going to get everybody to sign up for an email list
21:32
and then like, even if I get kicked out again, I'll still have the ability to contact these people
21:37
And like initially, like this was 2012, so like who knows how to monetize an email list
21:42
in 2012, nobody. So we made like a premium newsletter, made money that way
21:47
And then it wasn't until 2015 when I met the good people over at Investing Media Solutions
21:53
and they said, oh, you can actually run advertisements in your email for financial publishers and
21:59
make good money doing that. That's really blew up our business over time and store our core bread and butter
22:06
Over time, we've expanded to different things. We get paid to have our content in Yahoo Finance and we make money on our YouTube channel
22:16
lots of different ways. Yeah, you said it took like seven years to figure out your business model
22:22
And I think, was that when you got in touch with Investing Media Solutions? Like that was kind of one of the first moments when you really figured out the business model? Yeah, it was like 2015
22:29
We, I bought the MarketBeat name and like started using that. I really figured out the email thing
22:35
monetizing it from email. And then like from there, we got, we just got better at it over time
22:40
Yeah. I want to get to Q&A in a minute. So you can, everybody here can ask questions for Gavin
22:44
and Matt. One or two more questions before we wrap up. Gavin, is there any advice that you want
22:51
to share for publishers who are skeptical about investing more into the website? And then for
22:55
everybody, is there anything you feel like we missed that we should have covered, questions I
22:58
should have asked you? Well, I think for people on the web, we've been doing this for over a
23:04
decade and we've worked with tens of thousands of sites, so we've seen trends come and go
23:09
And I know a lot of people on the web have been afraid of traffic going down with LLMs and all
23:14
that stuff. And you can still get traffic from Google and LLMs, but what you need when we talk
23:21
about a durable model is web publishers need to have diversified traffic sources. So you can have
23:27
some organic, but we're very focused on people who have these owned audiences like SMS and newsletters
23:34
But I also encourage you to think about where else you can drive traffic from. Social's big
23:38
Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube. These are all channels that you need to think about and diversify if you
23:46
want to stay relevant and have people find you from multiple places. And then once you have that
23:50
consistent audience, you can monetize it in a variety of ways. So yeah, I think people that are
23:56
having the most success today, they are not focusing in one lane, but they are combining
24:02
the best elements of everything in traffic and monetization. Matt, any final thoughts on this
24:10
or one more thing you wanted to cover that you feel like we missed? I'd say no
24:14
Fair enough. All right. Dylan's going to come out with his mic. I'm going to come down
24:19
And if you have a question, raise your hand high so I can find you
24:23
And we'll do some Q&A. Hey, Matt. That was great. We manufacture leather goods, high quality leather goods
24:44
and we're around 300,000 in sales and top line per month. And my mindset lately is just keep the
24:52
gas going until we get to a million per month to not diversify too much. But my tendency is to
24:58
always want to be diversifying and trying different things and not having all my eggs in one basket
25:05
Listening to what you're saying right now, diversification, being durable, have different
25:10
income streams. When do you think is a good time to switch and start diversifying into different
25:18
income streams? Yeah, I'm kind of a big fan of the Hermosi idea of more, better, new. Like
25:25
if you can do more of what you're doing now, that's kind of the first growth lever
25:30
If you're spending 10 grand a month on Facebook and it's going well, try 20 and just do more
25:37
And then when it stops working, then you figure out how do you do what you do better
25:41
And then finally, the last thing is, okay, let's do something new
25:45
once you've really capped stuff out. So I'm really a fan of just trying to
25:50
knowing what works now, just doing more of it until it stops working. and then that the time you move on to the next thing All right we going to go right here Nathan What up man I appreciate the shout out there I would love to hear a little bit about
26:06
specifically in Fimpubs, what are some of the offers that are hot right now
26:12
Because it seems like there's some that come in and out of vogue
26:16
And how do people get in to those offers, the ones that do really, really well
26:20
Like the financial media stuff? Yeah, exactly, the affiliate stuff, yeah. Thank you, Nathan May from the Feed Media Group, a premier Facebook media buyer
26:30
So right now, so like in financial publishing, whatever is hot, like whatever offers hot is the one that's kind of tied to the big macro story in the market
26:41
So like this year, the biggest story is going to be like the SpaceX IPO
26:45
It'll be the first trillion dollar IPO ever. Everybody wants to get in on it
26:51
People are trying to find ways to get SpaceX stock before it goes public
26:55
The assumption is that it's going to pop, right? So some of the financial newsletter publishers
27:01
like there's this guy named Jeff Brown with Brownstone Research Group. He's part of Market Wise, which was a spinoff of Agora
27:07
He's got a big newsletter promotion about that right now, and it is crushing it
27:13
They are going to write us a $500,000 check next month from the sales we generated for that offer
27:17
It is the best one we've seen in two years. So it's like anything SpaceX related right now is awesome
27:23
Like the Elon Musk stuff in general kind of comes and goes, like when he's in the news or not
27:29
Like when there's another presidential election, that'll be the big story. So these days it really follows the news
27:36
And like if you want to like promote these offers, like initially like most people won't give you the time of day
27:42
because like unless they know you can generate sales, they just don't want to waste time with you. So really you have to start out through an agency
27:49
like in investing media solutions where they have access to all of the offers
27:53
and know you're not going to get the best, best price per sale
27:57
but at least you get access to the inventory. And then when you prove that, yes, I can actually generate some sales
28:03
for whoever, for Stansbury Research or Brownstone or Paradigm Press or any of those people, then you can go get that direct relationship
28:11
All right, we're going to go all the way over here, left side of the room. Hey, excuse my ignorance on this
28:16
This is all fairly new to me. But we have a hyper-local media brand, so newsletters in very local locations, bedroom communities, 300,000 people
28:26
And we want our ad set to reflect that. So are there companies like Zoic or others that will do media buys for hyper-local versus national brands and whatnot
28:37
When you say media buys, do you mean, can you just expand on that? I don't know actually what I'm talking about
28:41
But, like, any of the ways that you talked about monetization on the click-through and stuff, like, we don't want to be advertising national brands in what's designed as a hyper-local newsletter
28:52
Oh, so you want more curated local ads? Yes. Yeah. Well, one of the things that modern ad companies can do now is you can actually limit or show more of what you want to show
29:04
so if you have a specific content or category that you want displayed on your site
29:10
that's something that we could work with you on for example but for local newsletters or publications
29:18
you're going to probably have the most success going directly to local advertisers
29:23
and if you want to do something on top of that that's where we could help
29:27
Alright, we've got time for about two more questions we'll go in the middle to Colby
29:32
Oh, Colby. Hi, I'm Adam Shapiro. I'm with Subtext. Hi, Adam. I have been on a quest to be able to assign a dollar value to an SMS user
29:42
and then you put up a slide that says 10 times to 20 times, and you're my new best friend
29:48
You're welcome. How do you, how, why is that person more valuable over SMS than they are over email
29:56
Thank you, Adam Shapiro from Subtext, our premier SMS service. I am shameless
30:02
Well, there's a lot less competition in the SMS inbox than there is the email inbox
30:08
People get fewer texts from brands than they do emails. So it's more of a blue ocean
30:14
The open rates on SMS is like 90% because people open their SMSs unless you get filtered
30:20
People see them. You have to take more steps to sign up through SMS
30:24
So to get on our SMS list, you've got to give us your phone number, and then you've got to click on a confirmation text
30:30
It's actually kind of hard to do. So the engagement is higher, higher open rates, less competition, all that stuff
30:37
All right, we've got time for two more. Okay, I was going to do one. I'll do quick over there
30:42
I've got one more over here, but we'll have time. If Matt wants to hang out and Gavin wants to hang out afterwards, we can do Q&A offstage
30:49
So Matt, you mentioned 10 ways to monetize your media business. If you were starting your media business from scratch today, how would you order your monetization channels and why
31:01
What niche are you in? Newsletters. But I'm curious from your personal experience
31:08
Okay, but like, what's your newsletter about? Local businesses in Austin. Okay
31:15
Oh, yeah. If I'm you, I would probably go focus on sponsorships
31:21
Like, go find your buddy that's got whatever Austin restaurant that you want to drive business to
31:27
If you're local, go find the local advertiser that you can drive value to today
31:33
If you have a local audience, then go drive business to a local business
31:38
That's where I would start. All right. Last question before we wrap up
31:44
I'm with Britannica, and we have a substantial amount of traffic that goes to our websites every day
31:50
We care immensely about user trust and integrity. I'm just curious, you mentioned several different ways to monetize
32:01
There's a wide spectrum of more aggressive to least aggressive, like sending five emails a
32:06
day, interstitial ads, et cetera. How do you in your company strike that
32:10
balance to where you say, okay, this is the right medium. We're not crossing a line with our users
32:16
to where they want to unsubscribe, but they still feel like they're getting a quality experience
32:20
Who are you asking there? You start. Well, one of the things that we look at in our company is something called ad density
32:37
So what Ezoic does is it measures the ads on the page with the amount of content
32:42
and it balances all that in with the user experience. So one of the things that we often find is when, let's say
32:50
another website comes to us that was using a previous ad provider
32:54
that perhaps was a bit aggressive, and we've seen those experiences before. But over time, our system will balance out the ads
33:01
and allow you to earn more with fewer ads over time. So that's one of the metrics that we look at
33:07
But ultimately, you set the goals on how aggressive you want to be
33:12
are you revenue focused, are you user experience focused, and then you can kind of choose how you
33:17
want to customize that. And, you know, Matt has set that up to his own specs. Yeah, I think there's
33:23
like this expectations game of like, what do your users expect, like, the experience to be? And like
33:29
as long as you're matching kind of that experience, like, in finance, like, the ads are aggressive
33:34
the emails are aggressive, but like, that's the industry. So like, that's, everybody's like that
33:38
to some extent. So like, in finance, people expect there to be lots of ads, because it's like
33:42
news content with the ads around it. And like you monetize through ads
33:46
Like people expect lots of emails because the stock market changes all the time. So it's really like, who is my audience
33:52
What do they care? What do they actually care about versus like what they say they care about
33:56
And like, what are they expecting the experience to be? And like, as long as you're not like
34:01
it's like one thing that like violates like people's experience expectations is like
34:05
there's this tool called retention.com where like we'll get somebody's email address
34:09
even though they didn't type it into your website, Then you can email them and say, hey, Cy came to MarketBeat
34:14
You should stick around. That is a violation of the expectations because if the person didn't give me their email address
34:21
they obviously don't want me to email them. So understanding what those expectations are of privacy and experience
34:27
and that's kind of matching your experience to what your users expect
34:30
and things go pretty well then. All right. Gavin, Matt, this was great
34:35
Thank you. Thank you
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