At Fortune.com, direct ad sales are a direct driver of ad revenue. A large majority of the company’s ad revenue comes from its premium, direct-sold units, even though those units make up a relatively small overall percentage of Fortune’s total ad inventory. Premium ads deliver premium CPMs for Fortune, and the publication’s high-impact display unit, called the Crown, is immensely popular with advertisers due to exceptional performance. For more than five years, Fortune has relied on Clipcentric as a critical partner to produce and power its high-impact premium ad units.
“Clipcentric really helps us over-deliver for our advertisers,” said Austin Kopplin, senior director of digital revenue operations. “When Fortune spun off from Meredith Corporation several years ago, our team vetted several high impact creative providers and solutions. We chose Clipcentric because their tech gave us a lot of flexibility inside our ad units, and their production team has a really quick turnaround that helps us get units live, even when our advertisers don’t always submit the best assets,” he added.
Crowning Achievement
The Crown unit is the powerhouse of Fortune’s ad portfolio. “There’s so much demand that we struggle to keep up with it. It serves on almost every page and it’s responsive on mobile,” Kopplin said. Crown units run at the top of the page, giving advertisers premium real estate above the masthead. “The crown unit has the best click-through rate performance of any of our units, so we’re able to frequently raise CPMs on it because it’s so in-demand.”
Inside the Crown unit container, Clipcentric’s tech enables a variety of features that make each ad compelling and give Fortune’s sales team the ability to sell different flavors of the ad without needing to constantly get new formats approved on its pages.
“We have a lot of B2B advertisers who may not have the most compelling content, but with Clipcentric we can offer unique features in our ad products,” Kopplin said. These features frequently include in-banner video, animation, and even live streaming. “This year we were able to live stream content from an advertiser’s high-profile user conference right from the ad unit.”
In addition to the Crown unit, Clipcentric also powers many of Fortune’s other premium units like scrollers, video walls, and 3D cubes.
Fortune's new Bridge unit blends prime real estate from the Crown ad container atop the page with a mid-page ad that, as the user scrolls, joins up or "bridges" with the creative atop the page and locks together:
Click here to view a live demo of Fortune's Bridge ad unit
Clipcentric Supports Fortune Across the Ad Lifecycle, From Sale to Serve
Before a campaign is even sold, Clipcentric is supporting Fortune’s own ad sales process by providing a dynamic, branded ad gallery, as well as spec sheets and campaign mocks to help advertisers envision what’s possible inside Fortune’s units.
While Clipcentric’s technology handles the creation and serving of complex ad features, the Clipcentric team of ad designers allows Fortune to offer a full-service solution to its advertisers. Advertisers submit creative assets to Fortune, who passes them along to Clipcentric for assembly and testing.
“It’s really shortened our timeline, because the turnaround from Clipcentric is so quick,” said Kopplin. “They’re able to do so much with the assets we get, and really turn them into compelling units.” Clipcentric provides traffic-ready tags back to Fortune so campaigns can get underway quickly.
“We’re very happy with the partnership. Clipcentric adds a lot for client services and flexibility,” Kopplin said.
A Partnership For a Dynamic Future
Fortune is preparing for a sea change in digital advertising - the company is assessing new approaches and opportunities. “We see a lot of referral traffic, but this year we’re shifting away from AMP, which will give us more opportunity for high impact creative,” said Kopplin. "We’ll be able to experiment with data-driven ads and other features we haven’t been able to do on AMP.” Fortune is also building out its first-party data strategy and looking at contextual advertising, and hopes to offer more unique native ads in-flow with article content.
“We really lean on Clipcentric for ideas and advice on how to implement some of these new strategies,” said Kopplin. Clipcentric’s ability to handle complex dynamic and data-driven creative helps Fortune iterate on entirely new ad formats and feature combinations and get them quickly tested and in market. Kopplin and his team can rapidly respond to what his advertisers demand. “We know we can go to Clipcentric and say, ‘Hey, can you help us figure this out?’ and they will get it done.”
