How content traffic monetization works

Hello! We are LuckyFeed — platform for news traffic monetization. We are in the market since 2016 and have more than 1.5 billion yearly users on our websites. Today we’ll speak about content arbitrage. Like any other vertical, it has its own peculiarities. Let’s see what news showcases are, how they help monetize traffic, and how much one can earn with them.

News showcase: what it is

News showcase is a website with different content categories, e.g. here food recipes, superstitions, life hacks, or news are mixed up with multiple ad units. They can be of any kind, e.g. good-luck charms and sexual performance supplements can be promoted on the same webpage.

There are a few reasons for this. First, the showcase aims at appealing to as many interests as possible. Second, one target audience can be attracted by ad creatives prepared for another, i.e. gambling people can be interested in the charms to attract good luck, thus they get to the corresponding landing page. Ad units on such webpages are always being updated and improved, new mechanisms are tested to increase webmaster’s profit.

The main feature of news showcases deals with the fact that the arbitrators drive traffic to their own websites where the traffic will be monetized. Website users can see multiple ad units at once, thus it becomes easier to get into their pain points, as a result, traffic monetization becomes more effective.

Another differentiating factor compared to other verticals deals with the ease in defying the target audience. The news appeals  to a lot of users at once and most customer audiences read them. The goal here is to understand which news categories perform better and offer a higher CTR.

How content traffic is monetized 

News showcases can be monetized using different models: CPA, CPC, CPM, CPL, e.g. this is what a CPA funnel looks like:

>> Webmaster drives traffic to a selected article in a certain GEO from his/her sources. 

>> Users get to the article where they can see a lot of ad units which appeal to almost any audience, it allows webmasters to use wide targets and convert almost any user into a lead.

In the case of the LuckyFeed platform, the ad delivery is rotated automatically based on the effectiveness index of every ad creative which is calculated taking into account user’s data, traffic source, webmaster, news category, tracking link as well as many other variables.

>> Then the user clicks an ad unit and gets to the landing page where the target action is performed (e.g. approved lead), which the webmaster is paid for.

How much can one earn on a news showcase?

News showcases suit well when one wants to drive a large volume of traffic, since when working with showcases, webmasters face fewer problems dealing with moderation or campaign blocking in their source compared to many other «gray» verticals. This is why in certain circumstances one can earn tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in a month which is proved by success cases of the LuckyFeed partners.

How to drive traffic to a showcase? 

1. Choose a showcase. It is worth noting that a news website can be created by yourself, however, in this case the rest of tasks should also be performed by you manually: adding content, negotiating with advertisers, following trending news, and most importantly: developing intelligent ad delivery, i.e. your own ad network under the hood. It is faster, easier, and more effective to cooperate with an existing news showcase.
2. Choose GEO. Choosing a GEO which suits your resources and goals is one of the key points when working with a news showcase. Take into account that the indicators in every region depend on traffic source, news category, and the approach. We recommend you consult your manager who is aware of the current situation within every GEO and will provide useful tips for your case.
3. Choose news topic. Remember that the piece of news aims at driving audiences who are interesting for the advertisers present on the showcase. This is why it is crucially important to analyze the target audience of your sources. In order to define which topics perform better at a certain moment in a certain source and save a lot of time and budget on tests we recommend you get in touch with our managers. They are constantly monitoring the market and are updated with the recent trends.
   

To provide an example, here are some pieces of advice on how to choose news topics for Google and native ad networks:

• Disable entertaining placements — only the best converting audience will remain on the showcase. 
• Popular topics in Google — articles on pensions, useful tips (i.e., health benefits of garlic and onion).
• In native ad networks content on famous people is trending: celebrities, politicians, as well as notes on health or life hacks.
• Besides «white» content one can use clickbait provocative articles (see an example below), they also allow you to increase the CTR several times.  

The most discussed content brings the highest profits, e.g. the criminal case against the Spanish former football official, Luis Rubiales.

You can also monitor news feeds by yourself and add trending content to the showcase.

• Prepare an ad creative. In case of news there are more approaches to choose from. It is almost impossible to know which approach fits your traffic source, GEO, and audience before you try, this is why (as always) you should experiment and test different options. Below are examples of high-converting bundles: ad creative → news topic with different approaches from our partners. 

News topic »

News from the Events category for the Poland GEO. The article speaks about different options of using salt in everyday situations. Here the «Use-of-the-product»-approach is applied, i.e. the ad creative visualizes what is further explained in more detail.

News topic »

News from the Events category for the Hungary GEO. The celebrity approach is used here, it deals with images of famous people. In the given case a photo of the journalist Henrik Havas is used and the article deals with him, more precisely, with his future pension. By the way, our partners applied this approach and earned $ 11 646 in a month. Read their case study.

News topic»

News from the Pension category for the Czech Republic GEO. Newsbreak — the opportunity to increase one’s pension by applying for early retirement. The associative approach is used here — a stack of bills is associated with income and well-being, which attracts the target audience.

After analyzing these news topics and creatives one comes to the conclusion that they are neutral, especially when compared to gambling, nutra, or adult content whose ad creatives often cause moderation issues in popular traffic sources. In the case of the content vertical arbitrators are unlikely to face similar problems and they pass the moderation process faster and easier.

• Drive traffic from your source. A great advantage of news showcases deals with the fact that you can start with wider audiences. The most important parameters here are traffic cost and gender & age characteristics of your target audience which should correspond to the platforms’ ones.

For instance, you want to drive traffic to the article dealing with pensions’ increase. So, you need to focus on websites where a large part of users are 55+. Then, when working with Google as your traffic source, we recommend you disable the following topics: Games, Work and Education, Arts and entertainment. And when working with YouTube — to disable channels for kids. Ad campaign settings are very individual, they allow you to cut off the unnecessary audience which will underperform by default.

To sum up, the news showcases are a vertical with a huge profit potential and low barriers to entry. Among its core advantages are: a variety of ads from different categories, thus it becomes easier to get into the target audience’s pain points, a wide reach at low price, and fewer moderation issues.

You can drive traffic from almost any source, though every platform has its list of allowed and non-allowed sources, which can be learned from their managers or their website. The showcases suit best for Google Ads, Yandex Advertising Network, and native ad networks which deal with better traffic quality.

In case you generate a high volume of high-quality traffic yourself and want to test working with news, then you should consider working with our platform.

On LuckyFeed you’ll find:

• 25+ available GEOs — Europe, Latin America, The CIS.
• Unlimited capping and the best terms from direct advertisers to monetize any volume of traffic.
• Opportunity to enable extra monetization on the platform in case you work with another vertical.

When webmasters start working with the LuckyFeed showcase, they get a constructor where they can add the most trending news to the website (or ask their manager to do so) and choose which of the articles to drive traffic to.

Public access to the platform is not provided. The access to the LuckyFeed platform can be granted upon request and after an interview with our manager. The requests are considered individually; case studies, experience, and your traffic volume are taken into account when making a decision. You can also get access upon recommendation of one of our current partners. 

To access the platform, please leave a request here »